PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS

Mr HOLZBERGER (Forde) (11:49): I've got to say, when I hear the opposition talk about the NDIS, it really is a lesson in absolute rank hypocrisy that they come into this chamber with this motion. Because it is such a huge problem that we've been left with, it's difficult to know exactly where to start. But why don't I start at the beginning?

I'd like to remind people that I had a life outside of politics. I worked on sheep and cattle stations. I ran a construction company.

I had my own small businesses, which succeeded to various degrees. I say that as preface to the fact that I also worked for Senator Murray Watt from 2018 onwards. The significance about 2018 is that that's when we really saw the NDIS begin to roll out.

The member for Cowper talks about the strain on electorate offices. What I saw from the vantage point of being an electorate officer was a system that failed from the beginning, and it failed to have the support of the government. All of the problems that existed in 2018 when the scheme was really in its infancy expanded as the scheme expanded.

What we were left with in 2022 was a scheme that was growing at about 22 per cent, something completely and utterly unsustainable. For the member for Cowper to talk about concern about administrative failures, to somehow blame the administration of the NDIA, is just a complete and utter inability of self-examination to realise it is them, their legislative failures and their policy failures that have left this government and our community with something which should be so good but for so many people has been so bad.

I know that from personal experience. My own son—Riley, 22—is autistic. I don't often talk about my family, but he's asked me to talk about this.

He is somebody that probably doesn't need supports in the NDIS. He probably needs a little bit of help around the house and a little bit of help with daily living. But at the end of the day was the NDIS really designed for somebody like my son Riley?

It is the question that we have to ask when we've got a scheme which was essentially designed for 95,000 Queenslanders. How have we ended up with a scheme with 175,000 Queenslanders? How did we end up with that?

That is because of the failure of the previous government to actually do the work of implementing it. I don't know what it was. They were too scared to touch it, completely and utterly negligent, or both.

They just let it run completely off the rails to the point where it does cause absolute heartache for parents. I spent probably half an hour yesterday talking to a mum with carer burnout, and carer burnout is real. It is to the point where she's getting up multiple times in the night to clean the bum of her 14-year-old daughter.

She has just had enough. She has had enough trying to deal with a system that actually in some way exacerbates that carer burnout. That is not because of the administrative failures of the NDIA.

It is not because of the fact that they are somehow negligent in the way that they carry out their duties. It's because they have been landed with a dog of a system. There are really two ways that you can look at it.

I think it's the job of this place. Either there are administrative failures where the legislation is not being carried out properly or there is a problem with the legislation itself. It took this government to fix that problem.

Many of the problems that we have seen, which we do see in electorate offices every day, I think are going to be solved by the fact that that we are now going to be able to take a more consistent approach to assessing people's needs, which is what should have happened back in 2018, by the way. We are going to take a more consistent approach to eligibility, and we are going to support the supports that should exist outside of the NDIS as well for people like my autistic adult son.

There are so many things in this motion that really just show a complete lack of self-reflection. One of them though, the one that I'll finish up with, is when they talk about fraud. There is one stunning figure which we know now.

This government does more reviews into claims at the NDIA every single day than the previous government did in a single year. I oppose this motion with its hypocrisy, and I urge members to vote against it.