Federal Greens spokesperson for Health and Disability Rights and Services Western Australia Greens Senator Jordon Steele-John has slammed Labor’s failure to act on the Disability Royal Commission’s key recommendations, thereby betraying the disability community.
Heavily criticising the more than $14 billion in funding cuts to the scheme, along with other retrograde changes in the NDIS Amendment Bill (2024), Steele-John said it is the “exact opposite” of Labor’s promise.
Labor agreed before the 2007 election to reform the unfit-for-purpose Disability Agreements, with the states and territories, under a new National Disability Strategy.
The Senate Committee on Community Affairs sought to address the chronic funding shortfalls and ongoing service failures suffered by disabled people, their families and carers.
The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) was introduced under Julia Gillard’s Labor government in 2013. Labor under Kevin Rudd lost the 2013 election and Bill Shorten lost in 2019.
During the 2019 campaign Shorten promised “person-centred reform” and to “get the NDIS back on track". He pushed a return to a “long-term investment model” instead of the punitive welfare state framework favoured by the Coalition.
When Labor won in 2022, Shorten as the Minister for NDIS and Government Services promised again to “put participants first”, repair the NDIS and National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) and restore trust.
The NDIS Review Final Report, tabled last December, made 26 recommendations and listed 139 actions, only some of which are addressed in the current NDIS Amendment Bill.
Royal commission betrayed
The five-year $600 million Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability was established in 2019.
The Final Report, tabled on September 29 last year made 222 recommendations to change the outdated, segregated system that fostered exclusion, discrimination and abuse.
Senator Steele-John told Green Left: “It remains one of the biggest royal commissions in Australian history, where disabled people yet again gave so much of themselves.”
For decades the disability community had fought for recognition of the outrageous abuse and lack of supports they suffered.
Steele-John said “both Labor and Liberal had fought us every step of the way” as neither wanted to be held responsible for the disability sector’s problems.
“Some of us,” he said, “told our stories for the second, third and even fourth time … because we were promised that under Labor, this time would be different”.
So it should have been.
The royal commission along with an experienced minister and prominent disabled people appointed to NDIA leadership, for once the pathway seemed clear. All the new Labor government had to do was implement it.
But “Labor reverted to type”, Steele-John said, cherry picking the recommendations in favour of the budget over purpose while gifting billions to fossil fuel companies.
Labor only accepted 13 of the recommendations in full, the remainder marked accepted “in principle” (translation: no action) or being “considered” (also no action).
Even the Australian Human Rights Commissioner has urged “stronger government commitment”.
Some of the most basic reforms have been ignored.
With bipartisan support for trampling the reproductive and abortion rights of disabled women and girls, forced sterilisations will remain legal despite the United Nations demanding, since 2005, that Australia outlaw it.
There will be no review of the Disability Support Pension, despite the major parties knowing about the employment and housing discrimination disabled people face.
The underperforming, overcharging and discriminatory disability employment services will also remain. They dovetail with the retention of the sheltered workshop model of slave disabled labour, under the guise of “workforce access”.
There will be no end to segregation and no minimum wage protection.
Perhaps, worst of all, there will be no end to segregated schools, where the discrimination, hate, abuse and vitriol disabled people live with every day is first incubated.
Steele-John said all the commissioners with lived experience of a disability agreed that educational and systemic segregation must end.
NDIS Amendment Bill
The NDIS Amendment Bill (described as “getting the NDIS back on track”), which passed the Senate on August 22, is far from what Labor had promised.
Steele-John said before it passed that it is “a gut-wrenching betrayal” which will cause real harm in the disability community.
Like many, he is angry about Shorten’s joint media conference with Pauline Hanson of the One Nation party, who is notorious for her discriminatory remarks against the disabled community.
“How bad does a bill have to be when the only party that will vote for it is One Nation?” he asked.
Labor’s bill is bad. It includes more than $14 billion in funding cuts of support plans for NDIS participants. It proposes a debt collection function, in which a debt can be raised against the participant even if the debt is incurred incorrectly by the provider and not the participant.
“So, you never had the money; you never got the service; yet now you’re expected to pay the debt!”
Steele-John said the bill is “worse than Robodebt” because there is no right of appeal. “They don’t even have to take into account whether the person’s disability contributed to the expense being incorrectly raised in the first place!”
He is apprehensive about the future and believes Labor will pay for its back-flip at the next election. In an election year “disabled people will look back on it and take stock of its failures”.
He said Labor’s decision to spend $368 billion on the AUKUS nuclear-powered submarines and to defund the NDIS is a “betrayed of the trust placed in the government by disabled people and their families”.