MOTIONS
Senator BARBARA POCOCK (South Australia) (11:56): I rise to join my voice with that of others in this chamber who are asking the government, imploring the government, to throw this bill out and to provide the care and support that disabled people across our country deserve. I associate myself with the remarks of my colleagues Senator Steele-John, Senator Allman-Payne, Senator Waters and with Senator Kovacic and Senator Liddle and with the important evidence that you have brought forward.
We share in asking the Senate to revisit this bill and for Labor to change their minds. No-one could have sat through those three days of evidence without feeling deep concern about the losses that individuals, disabled people, will suffer if Labor persists here. No-one could be under any doubt about what this bill will mean for families.
It will cause a cascade of loss of freedoms, loss of life and certainly loss of control for the many millions of carers across our country who are supporting and looking after disabled people with complex issues. This bill is an attack on disabled people. It is an attack on the care workforce.
It is an attack on the economy of care, which provides such important services and freedom to people with disability. It is a cruel and inhumane act. It does not do justice to our standards as a community, as a parliament and as a society.
Some 241,000 disabled people, a huge number, will simply lose their NDIS services, and a cascade of consequences will follow. If they had listened to the evidence of the individuals who came before this parliament and asked us, implored us, to understand their experience and what this meant for them then Labor could not persist with this bill. The bill itself grants massive new powers to the government to cut supports for those who are reliant on NDIS.
It cuts support for so many thousands of people who have disability, who make contributions to our labour market every day with great complexity in their lives. They manage complexity in getting transport to get to work, complexity in doing their jobs, but they do it and they manage it, in many cases because they have the kinds of support that this Labor bill will remove.
It will remove people's ability to shower themselves and to look after their own personal hygiene with support. Can people imagine what that means for 241,000 households? That loss of that kind of basic amenity impacts on individuals.
It impacts on households. It impacts on our labour market and our economy. This bill also creates new access barriers which force people to undergo potentially expensive procedures not recommended or not required by their doctors.
This is cruel, and it really will have a massive impact on those individuals, their families, their parents, their carers. It pushes all of that care back onto those individuals. We know what this means for the privacy of individuals, of people with disability.
We know what it means for the many, many carers. The minister said here this morning that there is no other way to do this. That is wrong.
There are many other ways we can fund appropriate levels of care. There are many other ways we can end massive fraud where very big entities are practising aspects of providing disability support which are fraudulent. There are many things we could do.
The minister has closed them all off. I feel like I'm back in Thatcher's Britain. 'There is no alternative.' There are many alternatives. I spent three days last week in hearings, two of them around housing.
Many people came forward and said, 'If we didn't have the kind of grandfathering provisions that bake in massive benefits for very, very wealthy property investors, we would have billions of dollars added into our budget which could do exactly what is being removed here—fund the services that disabled people need.' I spent a whole day on Friday listening to the cowboys and scoundrels in KPMG telling us about the kinds of activities they have been engaged in, misusing confidential information, to generate huge buckets of revenue.
KPMG's revenue last year was $2.3 billion. There are 680 partners in that firm who do not pay corporate tax. They don't pay payroll tax.
We could change the way in which we tax the big four and generate very significant levels of revenue. We have a bill of $271 billion that Labor has committed to pay on the AUKUS submarine contract, a bill where we're very unlikely to get a significant usable product at the end. We're already sending billion-dollar cheques off to the UK and the US for this very implausible contract which is very unlikely to deliver what we need, and there are billions of dollars wasted in our defence budget.
We can tax gas corporations. A 25 per cent tax could generate $17 billion in a single year. We could stop giving away masses of billions of dollars to fossil fuel companies in fuel subsidies.
There are so many things we could do that are alternatives, and we sit here and hear the Labor government say, 'There is no other way to do this than to punch down on people in our society, people we know in our streets, in our communities and in our households, that depend on our support.' For every $1 that we invest in the NDIS, Per Capita's research tells us we get a $2.25 return to the Australian economy.
We have a very significant care economy there which deserves support and which should be backed in rather than cut and treated in the way that Labor proposes. We had a select committee into work and care here a few years ago with very firm evidence about the role of carers in our economy, assisting so many thousands of Australians. Witnesses came before us and told us what the care responsibilities meant for them and how NDIS support was critical to their participation in our economy and their participation in public life—all of the activities, voluntary and paid, that they contribute.
Make no mistake, this bill is diabolical in its implications for women. This bill is an attack on women. This bill is an attack on the millions of women across our economy who provide care to Australians who desperately need it and rely on it for being able to participate in their lives.
This is a bill which attacks women. It's an attack on carers, disproportionately women. It is wrong.
It is an attack by a government that wears its credentials on its services and support for women every day out there in public. But this bill is a clear demonstration of their failure to understand the implications of these massive cuts for women, for their participation in work, for their participation in their family life and for their participation in so many other activities.
Turning to the experience in South Australia, I have had so many South Australian constituents make contact with my office and ask for their voices to be represented here. They come forward with stories—for example, a 50-year-old woman who finally gained full independence not so long ago and confidence that her son could act in this community with the help of a support worker.
The parent is now able to enjoy retirement knowing their adult child is supported. Parents who are able to work and pay tax because they have some physical and mental load taken by a support worker are now at risk of losing all of that. This is an incredible loss not only for the economy but especially for the individuals and for those they care for.
Their teenager has the chance to get involved in teenage activities, following years of support by a parent, and get the independence so important for young kids. People who are able to walk without fear of falls due to equipment and who've joined a gym with support from a support worker are now at real risk of losing that. And people with intellectual disabilities who have brought their stories to my office are currently able to save up hours and travel out of town.
Before the NDIS, they were unable to leave their small town and overcome issues of isolation. Through the NDIS, people across the state of South Australia and our whole country have been able to gain confidence, to escape isolation, to work on goals, to get jobs and to aim for dreams like others do. Cutting back on all of this is a disaster for these individuals.
I can't talk about this evidence without mentioning the incredible example of the loss of the life of Anne-Marie Smith in South Australia. This is a story of isolation—a failure in the life of a disabled person to see enough people which resulted in the appalling circumstances of her loss of life—which shocked and horrified everyone in our own state, South Australia, and across our country.
Key multiple support interactions are critical to saving the life of someone like Anne-Marie Smith. People will suffer due to this bill. We have heard people say over and over again in this chamber that people will die.
We will be back at inquiries in the future that will look at the cost of this 241,000-person loss of services. We really need to see this for what it is: a Labor bill that is cruel, a Labor bill that is not necessary and a Labor bill which cuts services which could be funded by a whole range of possible actions that could have held off this massive cut. I think of the recent stats we've seen in this country of the growing number of billionaires.
We're now at over 178 billionaires in this country, and their wealth grew by $25 billion last year. We do not tax those billionaires at anything like the rate we tax our nurses, our teachers and our retail workers. We have a whole range of tax levers available to us in this country that mean we can fund decent services for disabled people.
We can fund a decent social safety net which supports people to live with dignity. How dare a government who promised that they wouldn't cut the NDIS now balance their budget by selling disabled people's dignity? It is all wrong and all against our national values.
It's disgusting that Labor would strip a sense of hope away from disabled people and their families when the ultrawealthy are doing so well. We are an increasingly unequal society. It shocks me how much our country has changed in the last 30 years.
We have a massive pulling away of very wealthy people at the top who are not taxed enough, and down at the bottom are a growing number of people who are really struggling. And we wonder, as people in this place, why people are changing their vote—why people are moving their vote away from the big parties. The reason is they don't feel listened to.
They don't feel heard in a place like this and they are bringing their experience to us in their many hundreds, saying: 'Look at what this cut will do to me. Look what it will do to my child, my teenager or my aged parent.' We need to listen to those voices if we want people to have any confidence in our democracy. If we want people to engage in a serious way with policy, we need to show we are listening.
Labor is showing in this bill that it is cruel, it is not listening and it is going to change the lives of hundreds of thousands of Australians for the worse.