National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Senator STEELE-JOHN (Western Australia) (10:50): The eyes of 5.5 million disabled people fall at this moment on this parliament. The hundreds of thousands of Australian community members who are our allies are in solidarity with this community. History is watching this debate.
Every word spoken by every senator will be recorded and remembered. The Australian disability community and our families have spoken with a clear and united voice. They have said that these cuts go too fast, go too far, will put us at risk and risk our lives, our livelihoods, our freedom and our very independence.
We have taken on our backs as disabled people, once again, the burden of attempting to educate and explain the reality of our lives to people and government who just don't get it—asking again and again to be heard, telling Labor that the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 must not pass: 'Wrong way.
Go back.' Yet this Labor government has turned away from disabled people, away from our families, away from the experts and the allied health professionals, and away from those that have fought decade after decade to end violence, abuse, exploitation and neglect. Instead, they have turned to the corporations, to the gas exporters and to the billionaires, and the attention which should have been given—which was owed and expected—to the disabled community has instead been given to those powerful vested interests.
It is to those people that the government have listened, to those people that they have decided to commit themselves. Make no mistake, this legislation represents a choice to put the interests of Woodside and its fellow cadre of gas exporters making so much money, selling our gas for their profit, ahead of the interests of disabled people and our families. Make no mistake what is happening here.
It has been laid out, clear as day, in the evidence received by this inquiry and so many others, that if there was a need to provide funding for the NDIS all that is required of the Labor Party is to grow a backbone and tax the gas exporters. A basic 25 per cent rate of tax on their exports would raise enough money to make these cuts—even by your own twisted logic that they are needed in the first place—completely irrelevant.
So let's have no more statements about the tough choices you are making. You are putting your own future political interests and the interests of your government and their donors ahead of disabled people. That's what you are doing.
It is not only a profound act of political cowardice, but it is also a deep and unforgivable political betrayal. I have looked into the eyes of mums and dads who have shared with me how it felt when people like Bill Shorten and Julia Gillard assured them that they no longer had to worry about what would happen to their kids after they passed away. I've spoken with people who lived the first chapters of their lives within the darkness of institutions.
They have shared how it felt to know that they would never again have to worry about having to go back into those spaces, those grouped pits, in which so many of us struggled for so long. They trusted you to keep your word. They trusted you to listen, and in this moment you break that trust and you betray.
In preparation for this debate, I went back and looked at the original intent of the scheme—that thing that you are so keen on telling us all again and again that you are restoring with this monstrous bill. Well, let's have a look at the act. Reasonable and necessary supports are gone.
Individualised supports, which is the idea that what you are able to access in a disabled person should align with what your individual needs are—because we're all different; we don't come in neat little boxes or packages, we don't fit into your automated systems and we don't live a life neat and tidy in a way that is communicable and convenient for you—are gone.
Choice and control—which is the idea that we should control the services that enable us to live, that we should decide the support workers that enable us to get out of the bed in the morning and that we should have control over our own services that enable control over our own lives—are gone. In this legislation dignity, for God's sake, is gone. How do you expect a disabled person to live with dignity and confidence if they must first prostrate themselves before their own government to pass a series of randomly decided tests as to whether they've done enough to cure themselves before they can access the NDIS?
Where is the dignity in that? And you dare tell us that there is no such thing as a mandate or requirement to undertake these ministerially decreed treatments, as though it is not blatantly clear to us and to you that to put a disabled person in a position to choose between keeping the supports that enable them to work, live and experience happiness and not, because you can't afford the test, because it isn't available where you live, because it is not appropriate for you, because you don't want to undergo electroshock therapy, because it is not advised by your doctor or because it is not something that you are comfortable with—and you dare tell us that that does not in fact end up constituting a choice.
When it comes to national responsibility the NDIS's original intent, as you established it, was about ending the bloody game of pass the buck when it comes to disabled people. The states, the territories and the Commonwealth government all say: 'It's not our problem. It's too expensive and too complicated.' Yet you're presiding in this legislation over the complete return to a siloed postcode lottery, where what people receive in Queensland is different from what they receive in WA, which is different from what they receive in the NT—and that's if you ever decide what a foundational support is in the first place.
I don't think people in this place understand what is on the line for disabled people and our families, despite the 4,500-odd submissions made by the community and despite the six hearings. In the contributions that I have heard so far, the basics were not fully understood. I feel that there is a great act of disconnection happening here from the human impact of what you are doing.
Both the government and the Liberals seem to be able to believe that they can deal with disabled people as pieces of data to be added to a spreadsheet for the federal budget. Well, we are not—we are human beings. I will end with a message from one of disabled human beings that will be impacted by these brutal cuts.
Nathan writes: 'I feel like people making these decisions do not truly understand what they will mean for people like me. When you look at a budget, you see numbers on a page. When I look at the proposed cuts, I see pieces of my life being taken away—fewer opportunities to build independence, fewer opportunities to leave my house and participate in my community, fewer opportunities to maintain my health and develop skills and friendships and to continue becoming the best version of myself.' This is not a joke to the disabled community.
This is not a political moment. This is our lives on the line. These cuts are not needed.
This parliament and this government can choose in this moment to turn back, to find courage and to tax the gas exporters and the billionaires rather than to cut the supports needed by a disabled family to live. You can choose to do that. The community is looking and watching you in this moment.
You can choose to listen and to act. If you do not and you decide to complete your betrayal—if the Australian Labor Party decides to have the backs of the gas industry and the billionaires instead of the backs of disabled people and our families—then shame on you. You will betray not only this community but the national character.
You will be condemned by history. The blood and the lives of those who will suffer and die will be on your hands and will live in your consciences forever. And disabled people will not let any of you forget.
Come the next election, we will consider what to do with our votes and we will remember who backed us up, who fought our in corner in this moment and who decided to turn away. Between now and then, we will ensure that every single life, every single cooked decision and every single automated nightmare created by this bill is laid directly at your door. You will find no peace from us.
You will understand what is being done to us, and you will hear our voices growing louder and louder on the streets and on every platform we can gain. We will not be silent or go back into the dark. I foreshadow the moving of my second reading amendment.