National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

Mr CALDWELL (Fadden—Opposition Chief Whip) (20:16): That was an excellent contribution, I thought, from the member for Wannon, making some very good points, many of which I'll touch on. I want to make the point at the outset, in relation to the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 generally, that the NDIS scheme now has over 760,000 participants.

On average, it works out to be just over 5,000 participants per electorate. In my electorate, for example, there are 6,148 participants. Tonight, I stand here because it is absolutely critical that this legislation does the right thing by you and does the right thing for every future participant on the scheme to make sure that it is sustainable and structured in a way that will mean there is less fraud and fewer bad actors and that we can genuinely see this scheme held up to what it was meant to be.

The concerning thing, I've got to say, as an observation, is that there are 94 members of the Labor Party holding seats in this place and, on this bill, we have had 13 of them turn up to represent their community, speak and explain what this legislation will do. If I were in one of those other 81 electorates who haven't heard from their MP, I'd have some serious questions to ask about the representation they were receiving, because, on average, in each one of those electorates, as I said, there are about 5,000 participants right now who will be impacted by the changes that are proposed by this legislation.

In some electorates, like the electorate of Spence, there are about 11,000 participants. The member for Spence hasn't come in. Now, the member for Spence is a good bloke, but I think he owes it to his community to come in here and explain how those 11,000 participants are going to be securely and properly transferred under these new proposals by the government.

Mr Tehan: Why wouldn't he come in and speak? Mr CALDWELL: Well, there are probably still a lot of questions to be answered. As the member for Wannon has just said, why wouldn't a member come in here to talk about this great reform?

This is the third crack at reform this government's had, I must say, and this is the biggest of them. They've gone right to the drawer and said, 'How are we going to fix this thing?' and this is it—what we're debating tonight. So I think every member should be in here talking about what's happening, but we haven't seen about 81 of them.

We as a coalition provide strong and continued bipartisan support for the NDIS. Make no mistake: every single Australian who has a severe and permanent disability ought to be a properly looked-after participant in this scheme,. We want Australians to have dignity, independence and greater choice, and, for that to be available for each and every Australian that needs it into the future, the scheme must be financially sustainable.

As my friend here, the member for Wannon, said, originally we were only anticipating this was going to support about 410,000 Australians, but it now supports over 760,000 participants, and it is growing out of control. The estimated cost, accordingly, went from $13.6 billion to, this year, around $50 billion, with projections that it's going to blow out to $70 billion by the end of the decade.

It is absolutely unsustainable on that trajectory. As I said, this is now the Albanese government's third attempt to fix this scheme. In April 2023, they committed to reducing the annual growth rate to eight per cent, but they've missed that target.The Minister for Health and Ageing, who's here tonight—through the happy accident, I suspect, of being a South Australian and not wanting to watch the State of Origin, but nonetheless he's here—announced that the Albanese government would seek to further reduce the annual growth in the scheme to between five and six per cent over the medium term.

Again, this hasn't been achieved. Right now, growth in the NDIS is sitting at 10.3 per cent, which means the two per cent growth target proposed by the government represents a substantial reduction. The reality, we suspect, is that many people within our community who rely on these supports will be removed from the scheme or receive a significant reduction in their support packages.

One of the things I wanted to raise in the House tonight was my concern about what happens when there is a genuine failure by this scheme to fund worthy recipients and participants. The minister may or may not recall this, but on 19 June last year I wrote to him about the AEIOU facility in my electorate on the Gold Coast. I wrote this: 'I write to you with serious concern and a sense of urgency regarding the imminent closure of the AEIOU Foundation's Gold Coast early intervention centre for children with autism, scheduled for 27 June 2025.

This purpose-built facility, which currently supports autistic children and employs local staff, is the only one of the AEIOU's 11 centres nationwide set to close its doors entirely. Two others will cease their day-care components, but only the Gold Coast community faces the complete loss of a critical service. Families have been given just two weeks notice, leaving them with no realistic alternatives for their children's specialised care.' That was on 19 June 2025.

Fast-forward to March 2026. The AEIOU Foundation, sadly, went into liquidation and closed its entire operation, leaving many, many children, with some of the highest needs, out there without the supports that they had been so reliant on. There are so many families with questions about why the NDIS funding system failed them.

The AEIOU Foundation had been a home-grown success story, built out of the family experience of James and Louise Morton, and it was formalised in 2005. For 21 years, starting in Brisbane, in Moorooka—probably not far from the member for Griffith's electorate—this service was critical for families in providing much-needed services to their children. But unfortunately, through the complete, abject failure of the funding model of the NDIS, those families have now been left behind.

I urge the minister: please make sure those sorts of things do not happen when these changes are made. The one thing that unifies all of us—if nothing else about the worthiness of the NDIS generally and its objectives—is that we are all intensely angered and upset by the number of rip-offs, scams, shonks and crooks that are using this for their own benefit. It's absolutely critical that the safeguards that are put in place to cut the crooks out of this business be much stronger than they are today, so the coalition will always support initiatives that place stronger safeguards around that aspect of it.

The bill, by introducing additional provider registration requirements, goes some way to addressing the rising number of bad actors taking advantage of participants and taxpayers. I hope this works. I really do, because right now about 94 per cent of providers are unregistered.

With around $50 billion in taxpayer funds going out the door to pay for this scheme, we absolutely need to make sure that every single dollar is landing with someone who needs it, and it is an absolute, grotesque disappointment that there are crooks in this system taking advantage and taking much-needed funds away from those who need them the most. I reckon that, for all the good stories that we hear about the successes that we all have in our electorates in helping someone navigate the NDIS system and get that outcome, we hear just as many stories of the bad actors.

I think it's probably better that I finish on the good stories, because there is more good than there is bad. I remember, on New Year's Eve a couple of years ago, going to the fireworks that we have at Paradise Point, a wonderful local event. I was walking along with my family, as we do—we all think we're anonymous and just getting on with our business—and a lady came across the pedestrian crossing in a motorised wheelchair.

I sort of stepped aside to let her go through, and she then turned it towards me and caught my attention. Mr Tehan: Trying to run you over! Mr CALDWELL: Well, she would have if I hadn't helped her, I reckon!

But this lady stopped me on New Year's Eve in the motorised wheelchair that my team and I had been able to advocate for her to receive that week. That was life changing for that woman. It meant that she was out on New Year's Eve at Paradise Point with her friends and family, just like I was.

Now, if there's something that needs to motivate each and every one of us in this place to make sure that this scheme works, it's people like her. I'll finish on that story, because there is so much good to be achieved through the NDIS. It is genuinely something that we as a nation can and should be very proud of.

The coalition are providing our support and our preparedness to work with the government to make sure that this legislation and whatever other steps are reasonably needed by the government to make this scheme better and more sustainable in the future—we will be there to support that because it is very worthwhile.