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

Senator STEELE-JOHN (Western Australia) (12:53): Given the minister has indicated that the government will not be supporting our amendments, which would strip from the bill this unjustifiable concentration of power being taken from people with disability and our families to advocate for individualised supports that reflect their actual needs and being placed in the hands of ministers and bureaucrats in Canberra—we heard from the minister, in their contribution there, that they will not be listening to the community, who have raised such serious concerns about this element of the bill.

So it falls on this chamber to consider what safeguards might be put in place to ensure that, if and when a participant's safety is impacted by these unilateral cuts made by politicians, the person impacted can appeal it, raise it or flag it and potentially see if they can get some kind of action or recourse—something—to protect their safety. Surely we owe disabled people, as well as their families, who will now be subject to this unprecedented political control over their lives and ability to live—never knowing, day to day, whether the minister of the moment or the government of the day may seek to cut it further.

The government have said, 'We will cut this funding by 50 per cent.' The bill says nothing in relation to limiting it to 50 per cent. In fact, it's really clear that this legislation gives the power to the government of the day, the minister of the day, to cut up to 99.99 per cent of the funding that you might rely on to get your shopping or to go to the pharmacist.

But there you go. Labor say, 'We need those powers,' and they've said really clearly that they will not support the amendments put up by the Greens to strip those powers out of the bill. I think, if the dirty deal is anything to go by, the Liberal Party are going to back them in on that, so we turn to safeguards.

I don't know about you, but I don't trust politicians in Canberra to make the right call 100 per cent of the time. I don't trust this government's ability to see the impacts that its cuts might have on every single one of the participants, the people, impacted by this. I don't trust them to know whether or not these cuts will do harm or risk safety.

The proposal that we will put forward includes amendments which would create an avenue for a participant whose safety is impacted to be able to appeal or flag the impact and safety risk of the cut that the government has just made to their vital funding and create a chance, through a process of review, to have that vital funding restored. The government has previously said, and I want to go directly to what it has said in relation to this, that if a support determination affects a person's safety or wellbeing they can apply for a plan variation or plan reassessment.

I read this and I had to stifle a bark of callous laughter, because this is the kind of statement that makes you think that this government doesn't really believe that disabled people do the work or that advocates and experts have read the act forwards and backwards and understand the legislation better than anybody in government probably ever will. We live and die on this stuff.

We know that the legislation brought by the government cuts down on the already very narrow circumstances under which a participant can request either a variation or a reassessment and puts in place a certain number of criteria for when you can and cannot request a variation or reassessment. And who would have thunk it—being impacted by a ministerial support determination in a way that adversely impacts your safety is not currently one of the criteria upon which you can request either a variation or a reassessment.

So we will be bringing an amendment to offer an escalation pathway to address this risk to the safety of disabled people. I will put this question to the minister: is it true that the bill, as written, means that people cannot request an unscheduled reassessment if they have been affected by a support determination?