PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS
Mr BATT (Hinkler—Deputy Nationals Whip) (11:55): I rise to second the motion moved by the member for Cowper. This motion calls for the desperate need to fix the National Disability Insurance Agency and find a better deal for the Australians who depend on it. In Hinkler, we have 6½ thousand NDIS participants, placing us among the top 25 electorates in the country.
That's 6½ thousand people whose independence, support and wellbeing depend on timely decisions that are right for them. Yet every day my offices in Bundaberg and Hervey Bay receive complaints from people struggling to get answers. Participants are waiting for reviews, carers are chasing decisions, and providers are delivering essential services without certainty they will be paid.
Behind each complaint is a person. Behind each delay is a family trying to hold things together. Take Simone.
Her internal review remains unresolved, while essential supports continue despite insufficient funding to pay the providers. Those supports are needed now. The bills do not stop arriving while the NDIA considers her case.
Aaron has had his support hours reduced and is seeking a review of the decision to cut his funding. He needs assistance but is now trying to manage with less support while he waits for answers. Then there's Dean, who has severe agoraphobia, complex PTSD and level 2 autism, with significant sensory processing needs.
After spending time in a Hervey Bay facility, Dean was released into homelessness. He is concerned the assessors have not given appropriate weight to his medical, functional and risk evidence. These cases show why timely decisions matter.
We're talking about essential supports, participant safety and whether someone has a secure place to live. Across Australia, electorate offices are dealing with increasingly urgent matters, including housing insecurity, delayed hospital discharges, exhausted funding and risks to health and wellbeing. The burden falls on participants, carers, providers and support workers.
It also falls on parliamentary officers trying to resolve matters that should be addressed promptly by the agency itself. Labor has more than doubled the NDIA workforce since 2022. Staff numbers rose from around 5,300 to over 11,000 in 2025, an increase of about 110 per cent.
In 2025 alone, the agency added another 1,900 staff, including more than 400 executive-level employees. With that increase, Australians should expect faster decisions, clearer answers and fewer disputes. The government must explain why, even with the more than doubling of the workforce in the past four years, so many existing participants are still left waiting.
The reporting shows that 96 per cent of access decisions and more than 97 per cent of first plans were completed within the required timeframe. In contrast, only 48 per cent of internal reviews were completed within 60 days, and only 32 per cent of some participant requested reassessments and 44 per cent of scheduled reassessments were completed on time. The agency is doing better at processing entry into the scheme than resolving complex problems for people already relying on it.
These delays have real consequences for families in Hinkler. Even contacting the agency can become another hurdle. Its enhanced identity authentication process requires identity, authority and consent to be rechecked for each phone contact.
Safeguards do matter, but the process must allow authorised representatives to help people resolve urgent problems. People should not have to turn to their local MP simply to find out where a review stands. My staff will continue helping our community, but the agency must take responsibility for its own decisions and delays.
Families already managing disability should not have to spend their time repeatedly explaining their circumstances, chasing paperwork and wondering whether the support they rely on will still be available. This motion sets out what the government needs to do—publish the size and age of review, reassessment and decision backlogs; show how many additional staff are working directly with participants and what improvements they have delivered; make service standards for decisions, reviews and complaints transparent and report publicly; and do not remove or reduce supports before viable alternatives are funded, staffed and operating.
The government cannot measure success by staff numbers, announcements or claimed savings. It must answer for the services Australians receive. The test is whether people get the right support from a viable provider without months of delay.
Simone, Aaron and Dean and thousands of others like them deserve answers. They deserve certainty and a fairer go, and I commend the motion to the House.