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

Senator THORPE (Victoria—Independent VIC Whip) (18:04): I rise to speak to the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026. In 2023, the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability confirmed that the rate of disability in this country is nearly three times the rate of disability in the general population.

It also found that the youngest children in the criminal justice system are most often Aboriginal children—people with neurodisability and those who are involved in child protection systems. The NDIS could be a part of the solution to stop the overincarceration of First Peoples and to stop the removal of our children. But this scheme has never lived up to its potential for First Peoples with a disability.

First Peoples with disability are 28 per cent less likely to receive care via the NDIS than the rest of the population, and the government ignores the extended kinship networks in many Aboriginal communities that spread caring responsibilities across grandparents, aunties and uncles, older siblings and community members who contribute to the care of a person with a disability.

These networks of care pick up the pieces where there are no appropriate services, yet they are unrecognised, undervalued and unsupported. These inequities will be made even worse under Labor's bill. I'm going to outline just a few of the ways that this bill is going to harm First Peoples with a disability.

The bill requires that a person with disability confirms the disability is permanent and then goes to all lengths to demonstrate they have exhausted all possible treatments before accessing the NDIS. Apart from being entirely inconsistent with the concept of disability under the UN convention, this part of the bill means that so-called treatments are only accessible to people who already have the financial means and support systems to access them.

This bill will allow a person's functional capacity, needs and plan to be assessed without considering their personal, social and environmental factors. This is despite the royal commission being very clear that the experiences of First Peoples with disability can't be separated from the ongoing impacts of colonisation, intergenerational trauma and racism. This same plea is included in several submissions by First Peoples to the inquiry into this bill.

A person can be kicked off the NDIS if the government cannot contact them. It doesn't matter if they don't have a phone, laptop, internet access or are even living in the long grass. If they don't have the resources or an address—and most Aboriginal people are homeless on their own lands—then they have no hope.

We know that most First Peoples who live remotely are excluded from internet connectivity, and this provision intentionally targets and punishes them further. This bill will make it much harder for Aboriginal community controlled organisations to become NDIS providers, with new burdens on administration. Community controlled organisations are already heavily regulated.

With fewer ACCHOs providing NDIS supports to First Peoples with disability, there will be fewer culturally safe supports available. The burden this bill places on ACCHOs directly contradicts the government's claim that it will strengthen ACCHOs through Closing the Gap. This bill is going to mean fewer First Peoples with disability will get the support they need, and the available supports will lack cultural safety and geographic accessibility.

This is just another way that the state will force my people off country to get the basic support they need to meet their daily needs. No-one would dispute that the NDIS, just like all government programs, should be run on principles of transparency, accountability, equity and fairness so that people who use the NDIS get the best possible supports given by the best providers.

But this bill is not about strengthening the NDIS. Instead, Labor is treating people with disability as collateral damage for their own maladministration to cut hundreds of thousands of people from necessary supports. Minister McAllister's claim that people must be cut from the scheme because it was never designed for so many people is gammon.

If policy can't be designed and changed to meet the needs of the people, what's the point of it? Of course, government spending on the protection racket that is AUKUS has never been questioned. AUKUS has never been subject to proper public scrutiny—even now that we are paying hundreds of billions of dollars for op shop submarines.

In addition, the government magically found $52 billion for increased defence capabilities in the recent budget. The marginal cost to ensure the NDIS delivers to all who need it is nothing in comparison. If all the government cares about is the economic bottom line, they should know that, when run properly, the NDIS can save money by supporting people to participate in society.

This is not just my opinion. The Productivity Commission, the Grattan Institute and Disability Advocacy Network Australia, among others, have all come to the same conclusion. The problem is not just the bill but the way that Labor has tried to ram it through this parliament.

The Labor government has been dragged kicking and screaming to have an inquiry into this bill. At first, they insisted on only a three-day hearing into such significant legislation. Then, after massive community backlash, the inquiry was extended to 12 weeks.

Still, the inquiry only heard from a handful of First People's organisations, and the inquiry's final 164-page report only mentions First Peoples with disability 27 times. Mostly these mentions are formalities, tick boxes and do not actually analyse the impact of this bill on my people in any substantial way. So even though we all know that First Peoples with disability will be most harmed by this bill—you've made sure of that—yet again, we have largely been ignored, sidelined and erased.

I want to be very clear to every senator in this place that, if you vote to pass this bill, you are acknowledging that the bill will significantly impact all people with disability getting support to live everyday life, and it will disproportionately and severely harm First Peoples with disability; you are voting with the full knowledge that First Peoples with disability and First Peoples disability organisations have not been properly consulted about it nor given their free, prior and informed consent for it; and you are comfortable with the fact that the bill will breach the human rights of First Peoples with a disability by making it harder to access culturally safe supports.

It will force many off country and disregard people's personal, social and environmental circumstances in making decisions about their capacities and needs. I hereby also foreshadow my second reading amendment to that extent. This bill must not pass in its current form.