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

Senator HODGINS-MAY (Victoria) (12:53): The National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 is a disgrace and I utterly oppose it. I also want to associate myself with the comments made by my colleagues, in particular Senator Steele-John, who has been the most extraordinary advocate and has fought, and will continue to fight, this disgusting legislation all the way.

This is a bill that should bring shame to this parliament, because, behind all of the language about sustainability, reform and safeguarding the NDIS, what this bill actually does is very simple. It takes away support from disabled people. It puts more pressure on them and on their families, and it does so without the alternative services in place to catch the people who'll be pushed out.

Now, in this parliament, Labor and the Liberals—the corporate parties—are teaming up to do a dirty, cowardly deal that will throw disabled people under the bus. That's what it is, and I want to be very clear about what I find so repulsive about this legislation. It does not make disabled people safer.

It does not make families safer. It does not make children safer. It does not even guarantee that the supports being removed will be replaced in time.

It takes away support and tells people: 'Figure it out somehow. You'll cope.' It is abandonment. The NDIS is one of the most important social reforms this country has ever undertaken.

It was built on a simple and important idea: disabled Australians have the same right as everyone else to live with dignity, independence, choice and inclusion. It isn't a line in a spreadsheet, as my colleague Senator Steele-John has articulated. It is not a budget problem.

It is not an expense that can be cut whenever Treasury wants to find another few billion dollars. For hundreds and thousands of Australians, the NDIS is the difference between being trapped at home and being active members of the community. For a child, it can mean getting the communication support, therapy or early intervention they need to participate in school.

For a parent, it can mean the difference between coping and completely breaking down. For a young person, it can mean being able to leave the house to see friends, study, volunteer or hold down a job. These are not luxuries; these are lives.

This bill puts those lives at direct risk. To be clear, children are directly in the firing line. More than half of NDIS participants are 18 years old or younger.

This bill is expected to see 241,000 people removed from the NDIS by 2031. That includes children with developmental delay. That includes children with disability who are expected to transition into this government's new Thriving Kids program, which is the mystery program that no-one seems to know anything about.

The sector has told us, again and again, that the alternative supports are not ready. We don't know whether these services will be available; whether they will be consistent; whether they will be high quality, like these kids deserve; whether a child in Victoria will receive the same support as a child in Western Australia or Queensland; or whether these services will be like-for-like replacements for what children currently receive through the NDIS.

Yet the government wants to remove these children from the NDIS and figure out what to do later. That's not good enough. You cannot ignore the hard questions until later.

You deal with them. You are a government. You are meant to lead.

This is not how you protect children. You do not take away a child's support and then cross your fingers that another service will manifest another solution. Families deserve and need to know what support their child will receive before their existing support disappears, and the state and territory disability ministers have told this parliament the same thing.

They warned that, if the projected exits from the NDIS are not accompanied by clearly defined alternative supports, they'll create a risk of unmet needs and costs being pushed into the health, education and justice systems. They've said plainly that those systems are not equipped to absorb the demand and cannot deliver like-for-like NDIS services. So who is going to pick up the pieces: the hospital system, an already exhausted early childhood education system or, as so often is the case, mums and dads, grandparents or family who are already often at their breaking point?

The needs do not disappear because the government stops the funding. The child does not become less disabled because their NDIS plan is cut. The family doesn't become less exhausted because Labor has moved the costs off its books.

The need simply moves somewhere else. Thriving Kids cannot and must not be an excuse to cut first and build later. What happens when parental responsibility just means everything?

This legislation wants to fundamentally change what families can expect from the NDIS. It introduces an extraordinarily broad concept of parental responsibility. Labor wants to say that supervision, personal care, transport, emotional support and behavioural support are things that parents should just be able to simply provide themselves.

What happens when a child's disability means that those ordinary responsibilities become extraordinary, intensive and relentless? We all know those families who are in this situation already. They're struggling to survive with the NDIS supports in place.

Imagine them and their predicament when this cruel bill passes. In the inquiry, we heard evidence about a parent whose son required constant supervision and that she couldn't safely leave him alone with his sister. She couldn't take both children out by herself.

Friends stopped coming over, informal supports disappeared and she became exhausted and isolated. But when this family finally received funding for a support worker, everything changed. The child became more regulated; the family could go to the park, and the parent could cook dinner.

That support didn't make this parent any less of a parent. It made it possible for that family to function. This bill takes that away.

It's women and mothers who will be disproportionately forced to pay the price—women who already make up the overwhelming majority of primary carers. When the NDIS withdraws support, the need for care isn't taken away. It's given to unpaid carers, and women take it on.

That's not a cost saving. That is making women subsidise this Labor government through unpaid labour. Shame on you!

Then there is an attack on the independence of disabled people. The minister has indicated that social and community participation funding could be cut by 50 per cent. Think about what that means.

It means that someone may no longer be able to get the support needed to go to work, to volunteer, to visit their friends, to go to the shops, to go to a medical appointment—to participate in society. We heard during the inquiry from a 22-year-old young person with a disability who explained that if their community participation funding was cut, they would probably lose their volunteer role, lose work, become isolated and see their mental health deteriorate.

They said simply: 'I deserve to have a normal life. I deserve to have a life.' I cannot think of a more straightforward indictment of this legislation, because that is exactly what this bill is doing—making someone's life smaller and taking away the things that allow them to participate. They have the gall to say this is about sustainability.

It's not sustainability. It is a message to disabled Australians that they do not matter. Who cares if they can get out and enjoy some of what makes life worth living—relationships or time in nature?

This bill doesn't even do what Labor says it does. Labor has tried to wrap these cuts in the language of addressing fraud and increasing sustainability. Look at where the savings come from.

Only about 13 per cent is attributed to fraud and compliance measures. The overwhelming majority comes from reducing participants' budgets and restricting supports. At least, stop the lies.

If Labor wants to crack down on fraud, then listen to disabled people and crack down on fraud. If providers are ripping off disabled people, let's pursue them, absolutely. If there are administrative inefficiencies, fix them.

God knows disabled people would like it to be easier to navigate the NDIS, but don't pretend that cutting the support of a disabled child is somehow the same thing as tackling fraud. What a load of garbage! Disabled people didn't create this fraud.

They didn't create the administrative problems. They didn't create the budget pressures, and they certainly should not be the people forced to pay for them. The government wants to decide what treatment disabled people must undertake.

It says a person may have to undertake all appropriate measures before their impairment can be considered permanent, but who decides what is appropriate? What happens if the treatment isn't available in your town? What happens if there's a two-year waitlist?

What happens if you can't afford the gap fees? What happens if the treatment is harmful? What happens if you don't want it?

The disability community has told us that the language in this bill is dangerously subjective, and yet the government wants to give itself the power to decide whether someone has done enough. That is deeply paternalistic and deeply offensive. Disabled people should not have to prove that they have exhausted every possible treatment before they're allowed to access the supports needed to live their lives.

There is another way. The Labor government keeps telling us that it has no choice, that these savings are necessary, that the NDIS has to be made sustainable and that disabled people must be punished to balance the budget, but Australia is a wealthy country, and we have choices. Labor could impose a minimum 25 per cent tax on gas exports.

That would raise an estimated $30 billion more over four years than the total value of these NDIS cuts, which is more than enough to invest in support, more than enough to properly build Thriving Kids before kids are pushed off the NDIS and more than enough to guarantee support so that disabled people are not forced to disappear from public life. So, when Labor tells us that there's no alternative, we reject that.

The disabled community rejects that. Tax the gas corporations. Make the multibillion dollar multinational corporations profiting from our resources contribute their fair share and what they owe.

Choose disabled people over gas profits. Choose children over corporate donors. Choose families over lobbyists.

This is a political choice. Labor has chosen gas companies over disabled people. It is that simple.

And the Liberal Party, of course, another corporate party, have backed it right in. These parties can disagree about almost anything. They can fight over tax.

They can fight over climate policy. But, when it comes to making disabled people bear the cost of government choices, suddenly they find that beautiful common ground—unity. They've found a way to agree, and the people who will pay for that agreement are disabled Australians, children, young people, parents and carers.

This is a disgusting, shameful, dirty deal—a deal that throws disabled people under the bus to protect the profits of just 10 gas export projects, and Australians are furious about it. For those reasons, I utterly oppose and reject this bill, and I foreshadow that I will move the Australian Greens second reading amendment circulated in my name on sheet 3978, calling for this bill to be discharged to the bin.