National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Senator STEELE-JOHN (Western Australia) (19:13): I want to pay tribute to the allied health professionals who have worked with such determination and showed such awesome solidarity alongside disabled people and our families in the fight against this bill. The allied health workforce is critical to delivering the supports that disabled people need. There's no better evidence of that than the testimony given by the peak bodies for allied health to the inquiry into this legislation.
They spoke eloquently, professionally, from a place of deep expertise, and illuminated for the inquiry the risks and dangers of this bill. They pointed us to the fact that a piece of legislation—a key plank of which is the implementation of a functional capacity assessment for access to the scheme—in fact goes on to describe a functional capacity assessment which is not at all in line with what we have ever understood such an assessment to be or, indeed, even understood those words to mean.
I think it was Occupational Therapy Australia that put it quite bluntly. Their profession, they said, feels a deep sense of ownership over the very concept of a functional capacity assessment. In their view, it is their profession who, in the aftermath of the First World War, developed the very first theories and tools of occupational therapy, with the functional capacity assessment at the centre.
They were trying to figure out how to enable returned soldiers to live well. This profession very rapidly came to the conclusion—the understanding, as so many disabled people inherently understand—that someone's function and capacity is a result of the interaction between their impairment or their difference and the environment in which they live, the social context in which they exist and the choices that they wish to make.
These are the elements which make up a functional capacity assessment by its very definition—environment and social context. Yet, what do we see in this legislation? Again, they pointed us straight at it.
This is a functional capacity assessment which will not be required to take into consideration environment and social context. As Speech Pathology Australia said, 'What are we assessing in speech?' Speech is, by its nature, the result of social context. What would we be doing?
The answer seems pretty clear: we would be co-opting the name 'functional capacity assessment' to mask what is actually a process by which a government assesses someone in the narrowest possible terms, attempting to create silos between their co-occurring disabilities, the environment in which they live and the social context in which they exist or may seek to exist for the purpose of reducing the funding they're able to access.
It didn't just end there. Of course, there are tens of thousands of allied health professionals across this country, and many of them are small and medium sized businesses. What government does—what the National Disability Insurance Agency does—in relation to the rates at which these professionals are compensated matters hugely to them.
If it isn't done properly, their businesses go bust, their employees are out of jobs and the services they provide communities are unable to be provided. They warned us. This is something that the Liberal Party should really open their ears to.
They warned us that this bill puts too much power in the hands of government to set pricing. Government setting pricing, in some contexts, are things that the Greens have no problem with. But it does surprise me that we're about to see a piece of legislation rammed through that will let a minister in Canberra set the pricing that decides whether or not an Australian small business is able to survive, with the Liberal Party's support.
Wow. There is a better way to do this. One of the amendments we'll vote on later will set out the pathway forward.
Pricing should be set by an independent arbiter, by an independent body. The kicker is that the government knows this because Minister Shorten commissioned a piece of research into NDIS pricing, and it came back and it sat on his desk and gathered dust. Everybody knows, though nobody has ever really been able to confirm, that what that report recommended was that there be an independent price-setting entity.
Yet this government says no. They want to set pricing in line with their budget expectations, their bean counting, so that they can decide what the prices are, regardless of what that impact might be on the ability for allied health professionals to provide their services to NDIS participants. It is such a risk to give these powers to government in this way and in this sector.
I want to particularly acknowledge that there is a type of courage required by professional peak bodies and organisations when the time comes to confront government and say, 'No, wrong way, go back.' So many of these organisations have found and shown that courage. The result of your work is that we together won additional time for scrutiny of this legislation and some improvements through amendments.
But also so many disabled people came to find common cause and share political action with the people who enable us to sit in the wheelchair that works for us, to get the modifications to our home that allow us to move around within it, to communicate with each other, our friends and our families, to live free of pain and to regain function where we choose. That coming together and joining of those communities is something that now has been forged into a permanent bond by this fight, and I thank every organisation for their effort and energy.
I will put this question to the minister. Minister, what is your government's response to an allied health professional who tonight watches the passage of this bill and fears for the people that they support, for the business that they run and for the community they serve?