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

Senator STEELE-JOHN (Western Australia) (19:42): I think, again, this just points to the disconnect here, because one of the things that's being missed, of course, is the horrible and unjustifiable nature of requiring somebody to undertake a treatment as part of a process of demonstrating that they have a permanent disability. For the ease of explaining the problem to the MPs who will soon take a vote on this, I will use myself as an example.

I have cerebral palsy. And, as somebody with cerebral palsy of the kind and type that I have, as a child growing up there were a number of different treatment options available. One of the treatment options—at least, it was an option when I was a kid—is to undergo a course of Botox therapy.

That involves the injection of the substance into relevant muscles to induce looser muscular structures. The foot is then set at an elevated angle within a plaster cast mould, which remains on the foot and lower leg for a period of six to eight weeks. I should say that this is how it was done when I was a kid in WA.

In fact, we take pride, as a state, in being a pioneer in this particular process and treatment. I underwent that treatment for five or six years, if not more, and I did regain functional capacity in that time. My range improved, and I was able to weight bear more.

But, at around the age of 11 or 12, I had a bad reaction to the substance. Quite frankly, I got sick of spending three or four months of the year, often in the summer, with my legs encased in plaster cast—for eight weeks or more—all to slow a decline in my range, which, increasingly, was not that necessary for me as I transitioned from using a Kaye walker into a manual chair.

Now, as this bill is written and, without doubt, in line with the culture that has been set in the agency, they would look at my example and see somebody whose functional capacity had declined because he'd made the decision to stop a medical treatment that was available under Medicare. It was not a restrictive practice and I should have re-engaged with that treatment to regain my capacity and function before applying for the NDIS.

But what is missed there is my choice and the choice of disabled people. What's been said in this debate is nonsense. The delegate will decide based on evidence from somebody's doctor, for the cohort—for the person, as far as the person fits within the cohort.

These rules will not be written at a person-to-person level, taking on board their individual circumstances and whether they choose to undergo a procedure. They can't be. The closest law can get to that kind of specificity is crafting a series of legislative principles to guide individual delegated decisions.

Oh, wait, that's the NDIS we're scrapping tonight, folks. That's what it was. That's what guided 'reasonable and necessary'.

That's what guided 'choice and control'—distinct principles. Rules for cohorts cannot reflect individual personalised circumstances, and we heard that again and again from the inquiry, so many times. The government might think I'm wrong.

The government might think I've not read the policy or read the act. I'm a politician, but are you telling me every organisation that made a submission has also got it wrong? Some of the finest legal minds in the country have got this wrong, have they?

People that have been looking at administrative law and fighting it out with participants in the ART day after day have got it wrong, have they? You've rocked up here with a piece of legislation that hasn't got a single friend apart from some questionable service providers that coughed up at the last second, and that's all because we've all collectively read it wrong, is it?

Or is it more likely that your government was in need of money and in need of savings? Rather than taking on and taxing the gas exporters and threatening the bottom line of the very corporations that so many of the members of the government and of the opposition have integrated into their post-parliamentary career plans—rather than take those people on—you've decided to cut the supports of disabled people and stick your metaphorical fingers in your ears, as expert after expert warned you what this bill could do and is likely to do.

We had a lesson from the government through the course of this inquiry—a masterclass they gave us all, I think—in just saying things with no factual basis, with confidence, in an attempt to spook experts and media into not believing what was written before their very eyes when they looked at this bill. But I think that, deep down inside, many members know the truth of this law and what it will do.

The only way I believe many members of this government and certain members of this parliament have been able to justify this legislation to themselves is to believe: 'Well, we would never do that. We could—the bill lets us do that—but we wouldn't. We're not those kind of people.' But you won't always be there, folks.

These people over there—they'll be there again at some point. What will they do with these powers, I wonder? Little by little, decision by decision, what might you end up doing under pressure the next time there's a global shock you didn't expect, that you couldn't have predicted?

Will you, potentially, be asked to reach for just another little order to cut just a little bit more—just five per cent this time out of social and community participation, just another 15 per cent out of capacity building? At the end of the day, anything's justifiable if the dichotomy of thought is between the NDIS existing or not existing at all. Who pays the price of that concession?

We do. Disabled people do. We pay with our lives and with our liberties.

As I said at the beginning of this hour or more of debate, and as I said at the beginning of the day, you will pay an electoral price.