National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Senator STEELE-JOHN (Western Australia) (12:37): by leave—I move Australian Greens amendments (1) to (6) on sheet 3832: (1) Clause 2, page 2 (table item 3), omit the table item. (2) Schedule 1, Part 4, page 12 (line 1) to page 14 (line 24), to be opposed. (3) Schedule 1, item 45, page 16 (line 28) to page 17 (line 2), omit subsection 38(3).
(4) Schedule 1, item 50, page 18 (lines 5 to 10), omit the note. (5) Schedule 1, item 68, page 26 (lines 1 to 26), to be opposed. (6) Schedule 3, item 11, page 95 (line 12), omit "subsections 34A(2) and 34B(4)", substitute "subsection 34B(4)".
This bill gives the Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme unchecked powers to slash people's supports—the supports that they rely on to live day to day. This ministerial power granted by this legislation is unprecedented. Let's be really clear about what is happening here: through this legislation, a minister in Canberra will take into their hands the power to slash the supports relied on by disabled people to go beyond their doorstep to buy groceries with the support of a support worker, to be able to go out and see their family members, to be able to pursue a higher education or to upskill themselves through a tertiary process.
It's about living. The official name given to these supports is 'social and community participation', but really that's just bureaucratic language. This funding enables you to live your life, to live a life with meaning.
We have heard so clearly, through the course of the inquiry into this bill, that it would be inappropriate for these powers to be held in the hands of a politician here in Canberra. But to cut these supports for disabled people by 50 per cent, as is intended by this government, will do incredible harm to disabled people and our families. It will result in so many of us being placed back within the very types of closed settings that we so desperately fought for so long to leave.
During the course of this inquiry, during the course of the community debate on this bill, the Labor senators and ministers and the Prime Minister have been told over and over again by disabled people how it feels to us when people have power over our lives while knowing nothing about what that life looks like. They've shared that that has been their experience in the past.
They've plead with the parliament not to make it their life in the future. And yet here we see a Labor Party and a Liberal opposition appearing to come together and unite in a grand act of dismissal. We've heard over and over again that the concerns that the community have about these powers are just anxieties. 'Really, these cuts won't be so big.
It won't be so bad. We'll use discretion. We'll use good judgement.' This has been the line from the government.
Let me be really clear. The inquiry heard from people who have already experienced massive cuts to the supports that they require to be able to go outside. We heard in Western Australia from a participant who had been funded for 41 hours a week of this community support—somebody to help them go and get their groceries, somebody to help them live their life and move around outside, beyond their doorstep, safely.
That person was recently subjected to a review, and that review cut her funding from 41 hours a week to four hours a week. Do you know the excuse they gave her? They said: 'Your family should be providing this informal support.
They should be able to help you do these things. You live near your family; they should help you.' Regardless of how close they live together, it's completely inappropriate for a government to suggest that an adult should have to rely on their parents to go out and live their life, to be able to do the basic, essential things that this support enables. You shouldn't have to ring up your mum and dad every time you need to buy food or go to the pharmacy.
That's not something that should be required of disabled people. It flies in the face of the independence and dignity promised when the NDIS was established. But let's put that to the side for a moment.
They said the family should do the support. They didn't take into account that the participant had moved from where she lived in Esperance in Western Australia to Perth. Her husband is a FIFO worker, and she has a child, so she's the carer for the child when he's away.
The family that the government believed should provide the support remain in Esperance, some 700 kilometres away. Yet, under the new plan she was given, they should provide the support. This woman sat before us in tears talking about the impact of this on her life.
This bill and these ministerial powers will enable a minister in Canberra to take those four hours of support and cut them down to two. Does that seem reasonable to anyone in this chamber? Does it seem necessary to make those cuts in a context where we could simply tax gas exports in this country and raise far more than the government intends to with these cuts?
I don't think it does. I think that most people would listen to that story and be horrified. That is what the agency is already doing, in a context where, currently, there are some processes for review and appeal when these kinds of nonsensical decisions are made.
What this power does is sweep all of that aside and just put the power into the hands of a minister in Canberra to make that unilateral cut, with no recourse. The amendments that we are offering to the Senate this afternoon are a response to that. They are an attempt to address an element of the danger created by that and to demonstrate to the community that the Greens members of the committee listened to the concerns given to the committee.
So I ask the minister: does this amendment have your government's support?