MOTIONS

Senator McKIM (Tasmania—Australian Greens Whip) (12:10): Let's be very clear about what Labor is proposing to do to disabled people in Australia. It is attacking the NDIS—a great Labor reform, I might add, from the days when Julia Gillard was the Prime Minister. Labor is intending to attack the NDIS to the extent that somewhere around 240,000 disabled people are going to be booted off the NDIS.

That means they will lose access to critical supports that, in many cases, are life-saving supports: access to carers, access to services and access to desperately needed equipment. People will die as a result of Labor's attacks on the NDIS and, by extension, Labor's decision to attack disabled people. This is a diabolical proposal from Labor.

It is the biggest single cut to a program in the history of the Commonwealth of Australia. Labor will say they have no choice and they have to rein in costs. We in the Greens say to Labor: there is always a choice.

The choice that you have taken is to fund, for example, the AUKUS nuclear submarines at a cost heading rapidly towards $400 billion over the life of that program and, at the same time, move to cut tens of billions of dollars of support from disabled people. The choice you have made is to not tax the one per cent in this country and to not make the billionaires and the ultrawealthy pay their fair share of tax so that we can do more to support people who desperately need support, including disabled people.

The choice Labor has made is to not make big corporations pay their fair share of tax. The choice Labor has made is to not put in place a minimum 25 per cent tax on gas exports to make the big, polluting, profiteering, price-gouging fossil fuel corporations pay their fair share of tax. At the same time, Labor chooses to punch down on disabled people.

Make no mistake; these NDIS cuts will force every single participant to be reassessed, placing massive stress on those people and the family networks that do so much to support them. Even participants with lifelong conditions like cerebral palsy will have to be reassessed with the specific intention of either removing them from disability supports or lowering the level of support that they receive.

These cuts will be the difference between a disabled person being able to leave their house and their not being able to leave their house. These cuts will be the difference between a disabled person being able to have a shower and their not being able to have a shower. These cuts will be the difference between a disabled person being able to improve their verbal communication skills and their remaining non-verbal, unable to communicate verbally.

These cuts will be the difference between a disabled person being able to remain in a mainstream classroom to learn and be educated and their not being able to remain in a mainstream classroom. These are disgraceful and diabolical cuts that Labor is proposing, and they are cuts that Labor is choosing to make. Labor's rhetoric about having no choice but to reduce costs to the NDIS system is absolute rubbish.

It is a diabolical spin on a diabolical proposal. There are always choices in politics. Every day, governments make choices.

Budgets are all about choices. Labor has the choice to walk away from this diabolical proposal, and the Liberals have a choice to stand with the Greens and prevent these cuts from happening. Make no mistake—if the Liberals are genuine about wanting support for disabled people to continue at reasonable levels, they have an opportunity here to vote with the Greens in this Senate and stop Labor's NDIS cuts.

But, before we get to that, the real choice here is for the government. The government could simply acknowledge the stories that were told in the Senate inquiry hearings over the last few weeks—the horrendous stories about what people will face if these cuts go through, about the harm that will be caused to disabled people and about the death that will be caused to some disabled people.

Those stories surely are enough now for Labor to admit the error of its ways and to withdraw this bill from the parliament. No-one who listened to that evidence that was given so bravely and courageously by so many disabled people could possibly argue that this bill should be supported by the parliament. From witness after witness, day after day, we heard heart-rending stories of how much so many disabled people rely on the NDIS to lead dignified lives and how much they rely on the NDIS for the supports they so desperately need.

Those stories were heart-rending. Those stories were told from the heart and from the gut by people who came in because they wanted to be heard and demanded that they be heard by this parliament. The Greens are here to fight these cuts with every fibre of our being.

We will do everything we can to ensure that these cuts do not go through this parliament. These cuts should not receive support from this Senate. Even if the government, Labor, won't see the error of its ways and do what it should, which is withdraw this legislation, the numbers are still there if the opposition joins with the Greens to vote this friendless piece of legislation down.

These kinds of cuts have no place in a compassionate, contemporary society like Australia's. I have no doubt that the email inboxes, the phone messaging apps and the letterboxes of every single senator are being flooded, as mine are, by people with disabilities and by people who care for people with disabilities who want to make sure that these cuts do not progress.

I want to relate one story—just one out of the countless stories that have been told to me. It's from someone I know well, a friend of mine and a constituent of mine in Tasmania who has a child with Down syndrome. As he points out, he's a very proud father of a son with Down syndrome.

He goes at length into the consequences for him and his son if the level of supports for his son are withdrawn. He also makes the point that, while it is great for people with disabilities—in particular, people with Down syndrome—to have support for social experiences, what is often lost in this debate is how the lives of everyone else are enriched by an interaction with someone with a disability like Down syndrome.

As my friend says, it breaks moulds, it enlarges thinking, and it encourages special insights. His son has recently started work at a grocery, and his son who is non-verbal has brought the best out of the other staff at that grocery. He is bringing out their better selves as they find ways to interact with him and then subsequently improve their interactions with each other.

This is not just a debate about how we can support disabled people. It is a debate about what disabled people bring to us—the gifts they give to us and the opportunities they bring to us to learn about ourselves, to improve ourselves as people and to improve ourselves as a society. Those are the opportunities that Labor wants us to spurn, and those are the opportunities that either Labor can ensure we continue to have by withdrawing this legislation or the Liberals can ensure we continue to have by joining with the Greens to oppose this legislation.

Let's be very clear about budget choices. In this budget, Labor chose not to impose a minimum 25 per cent export tax on gas. Labor chose not to make the super wealthy pay a wealth tax in this country.

Labor chose not to put in place genuine reform of our tax system, from negative gearing through to capital gains tax, to not only do something significant to fix the housing crisis but also to make sure the super wealthy property speculators pay their fair share of tax. Labor chose to proceed with the AUKUS nuclear submarine proposal, which, over the lifetime of that program, is now heading up towards $400 billion, and I predict will end up even more than $400 billion.

They chose to do and to not do those things, and, at the same time, they chose to punch down on disabled people and make a massive budget saving—the single biggest saving of a single program in this budget and in the history of the Australian Commonwealth—by slashing funding to the NDIS. This is not just about inquiries. It's not just about reports.

This is actually about people—people who need and deserve support so that they can have a dignified life and their families can have some much-needed relief for the supports that all families with disabled people give and continue to give to their family members who are disabled. So this is a very stark choice. This is a moment in time for the major parties in this parliament—the Labor Party, the Liberal Party and the Nationals—and it is a moment in time where people need to stop and think about the impact of the decisions that they make in this place on the so many millions of Australians who rely either directly or indirectly on the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

When folks do take a moment to think about the implications and to think about the impacts of the decision that this parliament will shortly have to make in regard to the NDIS legislation and Labor's proposed NDIS cuts, when people genuinely think about those impacts and those implications, any decent, compassionate, reasonable thinking human is going to come down on the side of protecting the NDIS from these cuts.

There are savings to be made elsewhere. There is so much revenue that Labor has chosen to leave on the table through its budget choices that this choice to protect disabled people from Labor's NDIS cuts should be abundantly clear. This legislation should not and must not pass this parliament, and the Greens will do everything that we can to ensure that that is the case.