Page 2880 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 14 August 2019
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equipment et cetera. This sought to bring them all under one nationally consistent scheme. In the past, very few people actually got the support that they needed, and it was not portable. If they left a provider, they risked losing services and funding.
The NDIS was and is an aspirational reform underpinned by the principles of choice and control. It has given us a nationally consistent social support scheme. As with many aspirational and enormously worthwhile schemes, the problems have been in the operationalisation, the implementation of the scheme.
I would like to put on record my thanks to Bill Shorten and Jenny Macklin, who appointed me to the National People with Disabilities and Carer Council, which ran a series of workshops which led to a report called Shut Out, which led to the national disability insurance scheme legislation. I well remember going to federal parliament and sitting in the gallery when then Prime Minister Julia Gillard tabled the National Disability Insurance Scheme Act 2013. It was a really emotional and powerful moment for those people who had been involved in the development of the scheme and the legislation, because we all had such high hopes for the NDIS. It was based on an explicit commitment to give effect to equal rights to social, economic, political et cetera participation of people with disability and included recognition of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
There is a lot of work still to be done in the implementation of the NDIS. That work is going on all the time. As we saw in the recommendations from the health and community services committee that Ms Cody was the chair of at that time, many of the recommendations were for the ACT Minister for Disability to work with the federal minister and the NDIA on the implementation of the scheme. This remains true to this day. There are meetings regularly to progress the content of the NDIS, through the ACT minister, other state and territory ministers and the federal minister.
This, today, is not the place for grandstanding and adding to batty and loopy headlines by using people with disability to try to get a few sound bites on the radio and a few lines in the newspaper. This is a serious issue and it should not be used for cheap political gain. I am really disappointed that Ms Cody has seen fit not just to fly close to the wind with respect to the sub judice rule but also to use people with disability in the ACT for her own personal benefit.
MS STEPHEN-SMITH (Kurrajong—Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, Minister for Children, Youth and Families, Minister for Disability, Minister for Employment and Workplace Safety, Minister for Health and Minister for Urban Renewal) (11.49): I thank Ms Cody very much for bringing this motion to the Assembly. I have to say that I am disappointed with Ms Lawder’s contribution. I am quite stunned, actually. I note that, while Ms Cody has brought forward this motion, the ACT government has also expressed a very clear position on this matter. It has not been done on the basis of grabbing headlines; it has been done on the basis of our conversations with people with disability, our understanding of the human rights of people with disability, and the fundamental purpose of the NDIS to ensure that people with disability receive the necessary supports to lead an ordinary life.
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