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

Senator McKIM (Tasmania—Australian Greens Whip) (13:24): At its heart, this debate, this legislation and, in fact, the NDIS itself is about one thing. It is about disabled people and their right to lead a dignified life, just as everyone else has that right. When you cut through the politics, the spin, budget austerity and all the spurious reasons that the government has put up in its arguments that this legislation should be supported, this is about disabled people, and their voices must be heard in this debate.

It's not as if there has been an absence of the voice of disabled people. It's not as if disabled people have not been loud and proud and passionate in this debate, because they have. Through the months of the Senate inquiry and through over 4,000 submissions to that Senate inquiry, overwhelmingly from disabled people, their voices are there.

I want to say thank you to every single disabled person who showed the courage and the commitment to make a submission to the Senate inquiry and, in some cases, to actually show up and give evidence to that Senate inquiry. It takes guts and courage to do that. Some of the testimony that we heard was absolutely heart-wrenching.

Some of the evidence that the inquiry heard about the impacts of these cuts should have caused the government to pause. It should have caused any non-government member of this chamber to make a decision to vote against this diabolical legislation. I want to acknowledge the work of many people in support of that Senate inquiry and, in particular, my friend and colleague Senator Steele-John, who's quite rightly had a lot of nice things said about him today.

What a champion he has been and is and will continue to be for disabled people in this country—an absolutely true leader if ever I've seen one. At its heart, this debate is about disabled people, but it is also about political choice. This is a government that has chosen to take the easy way out—to punch down on disabled people in order to save themselves a relatively small amount of money albeit the biggest cut to a single program in the history of the Commonwealth of Australia.

It is a relatively small amount of money compared to, I don't know, tax breaks for wealthy property speculators or the quarter of a trillion-plus dollars that they've committed to AUKUS submarines or the money they could raise from a gas export tax if they were prepared to stand up to their corporate puppeteers in the fossil fuel industry. No, they're not going to rain in the obscene tax breaks that property speculators still enjoy even post the reforms that were announced in the budget.

They're not going to walk away from their joined-at-the-hip relationship with the United States, President Trump and those AUKUS submarines that will not only cost a motza but make Australia a more dangerous place. They won't impose a tax on gas exports because they're being instructed not to by the fossil fuel corporations. They won't even end public subsidies for burning fossil fuel while the planet's climate breaks down around us.

They won't do any of those things, but they will introduce diabolical legislation on the basis of the big fat con that it is all about preventing fraud. It is a big con that this is all about fraud, because the overwhelming majority of the savings that the government is banking from this legislation are not coming from responding to fraud. They're coming from removing supports and services that help disabled people to lead dignified lives.

That's where. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator O'Neill ): It being 1.30, I shall now proceed to two-minute statements