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

Senator STEELE-JOHN (Western Australia) (18:13): I thank the minister for her contribution. As we're short on time and I don't wish to waste the time that we do have on divisions, with the indulgence of the chamber, I will speak to some of my other amendments beyond the one that I have already moved if that is okay. Thank you.

It is important during this debate for me to name something, and that is that disabled people are not a burden. Let me say that again. Disabled people are not a burden.

We should never, ever be made to feel as though we are a burden by our government or by the society that we live in. I say that because many people, during the course of this debate, while the government has been trying to push this legislation through, have shared with me that they have felt as though they are being talked about in a way that leaves them feeling like a burden, and that is just not okay.

I've had people come up to me and say: 'I have been abused in the street. Somebody came up to me and said, "You're those people that are ripping off the NDIS."' People have been left traumatised and in tears, and that's not okay. Regardless of what might live in the heart of any particular MP, we have to acknowledge that this legislation, the focus of this Labor government in pushing this legislation and the way that disabled people and our families have been talked about have contributed to discrimination and a feeling of burden in the community.

This conversation about this legislation has been focused on financial burden. How many times have disabled people had to listen to politicians talk about how financially unsustainable the NDIS is? Again and again—while watching the parliament, at the behest of the government and supported by the opposition, not only letting the gas exporters off the hook but also continuing to sign us up to the AUKUS military agreement—some $368 billion on nuclear submarines—and bind us to the United States.

Yet where is the conversation among the government or the opposition about the sustainability of that? It's not there, and it bloody hurts. It hurts when you live your life feeling beholden to the goodwill of the government of the day.

God, it's hard. And a lot of us had just begun to let a bit of that tension from our bodies go. When you require the support of somebody to do a thing that many people around you can do on their own, that requires a lot of vulnerability from you.

When you require the support of a service to develop a skill or when you are in need of support, God, it takes a long time to be able and willing to accept that support, let alone to come to rely on it. Every time you need help and every time you can't do something yourself, many of us have a voice that says: 'You bloody burden. You broken thing.' It's a personal thing and it's a personal journey for all of us to get out of it.

But, for God's sake, the role of government should always be being the bugle calling out to that part of us that rejects those ideas. It should be calling up society to drive out those ideas and building systems that support people to come into their power and their independence and know that they are not a burden, that they matter and that they are equal. Nobody should be sitting in judgement of their support needs, that they need to try harder, do more, take the pain or the ache, or internalise the fear.

That should be the role of government in this place. Disability services are complicated, sure. They are complicated because we live complicated lives.

But it would have been really good during the course of this debate if we could have also acknowledged that there is so much good that comes from creating a more inclusive society—moral good, social good and, yes, economic good. I will say it again: for every dollar that is invested in the NDIS, $2.25 is returned to the Australian economy in the form of economic activity.

Cutting this scheme in the way the government plans to will cost 56,000 jobs. It will place them upon the shoulders of those family members already near burnout. There will be 94 million hours of additional unpaid care work.

That will have huge social and economic impacts. It just will. The Greens will always continue to champion disability rights in this place and push back against any policy that seeks to treat a disabled person or a family member as a financial burden or to frame them in that way.

It's a practice that both parties have engaged with, and it's disgusting. There should be no place for it. One of the most tangible things we can do is ensure that, when people in positions of power speak about these issues, they speak from a place of informed knowledge of the topic area and don't entrench ideas around mild and moderate types of disability when no such thing exists, talk about conditions in ways that are offensive or suggest that disabled people should be reduced to a budgetary equation.

When people speak in this place, it has an impact, so I want to ask the minister, on behalf of the government, what she would say to a disabled person that has been left feeling not like a person but an inconvenient budget line item by this debate.