Kate Chaney
Curtin · Independent · Australia
“Digital platforms will have a legal responsibility to prevent harm, but the design of this commitment matters enormously, and I want to flag three things that the government must get right. First, there must be a single overarching duty.”
“The government gave stakeholders representing millions of Australians affected by gambling harm a single 45-minute consultation session on the exposure draft, with written submissions due the next day. Emeritus Professor Mike Daube, who took part in that session, described it afterwards as a charade.”
“A doctor who uses the phone, internet, fax, email or video conferencing to provide lawful VAD care risks prosecution and fines greater than $300,000. This means seriously ill patients must attend every consultation in person, travelling long distances while gravely unwell, often more than once, to make and confirm their request.”
“I rise to present a petition signed by more than 13,000 Australians. The petition has been considered by the Petitions Committee and found to be in order. It calls on this House to amend the Criminal Code Act so that it no longer applies to voluntary assisted dying, VAD.”
“She lived in one half of a single house divided into two separate dwellings. She got on well with the quiet single working man next door. This particular morning she was devastated and in shock. The man had hung himself in the shed where she found him, and left a note listing all the people he owed money to including the amounts.”
“No avenue to call up customer service at these companies and request this person be denied an account. Our nightmare never ends. There's nowhere to help us. The only option presented seems to dissolve the marriage and the family.”
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“The announcement yesterday of a review into Australia's private sector whistleblower regime is welcome and is something I've urged the government to progress, but while that review begins there's still silence on promised reforms to public sector protections. The Public Interest Disclosure Act has applied to Commonwealth whistleblowers since 2013. It's outdated and overdue for reform. Public consultation on draft legislation, including a proposal for a new whistleblower ombudsman, concluded on 1 October 2025. That was eight months ago, with no bill, no timeline and no explanation since. People who speak up about wrongdoing in the public sector deserve better than a government that consults and then goes quiet. Minister, when can parliament expect for the bill to protect Commonwealth public sector whistleblowers to be introduced?”
“The problem isn't automation itself; the problem is automation without transparency, proper human oversight or meaningful avenues for people to challenge the decisions made about them. People have a right to know when an automated system has made a decision about them and a right to have a real person review it. The Attorney-General's Department has a central role in ensuring our legal frameworks keep pace with these emerging risks. Minister, will you legislate mandatory safeguards for automated government decisions? Australia urgently needs whistleblowing law reform that delivers accessible, consistent and comprehensive protections across both public and private sectors.”
“They normalise abuse, overwhelm law enforcement and make it harder to identify actual victims. The government acknowledged in 2023 that existing laws likely do not adequately prevent AI facilitated harms. My bill offers a ready solution. Minister, will the government commit to legislating against AI child sexual abuse material generators before the end of the year? Governments are increasingly using automated systems to make decisions that affect people's lives—welfare payments, visa applications, tax assessments, child protection and the NDIS. Robodebt showed us exactly what can go wrong when automated decisions are made at scale, and the robodebt royal commission recommended a mandatory legislative framework for government decision-making.”
“I want to raise a number of issues that are within the Attorney-General's portfolio and require urgent attention. The first is child sexual abuse material. Last year I introduced a private member's bill to make it an offence to download AI tools designed specifically to generate child sexual abuse material. These tools are available on websites, app stores and the dark web. Intelligence company Graphika reported in late 2023 that they had moved from niche internet forums into a scaled, monetised business, with more than 24 million unique visits recorded to 34 of those websites in a single month. Possessing a single image is already illegal, but these tools let perpetrators generate, delete and regenerate material endlessly, evading existing laws. Every AI generated abuse image starts with photos of a real child.”
“The easiest carve-out at this stage would be for all non-housing assets, and the best way to build the public's trust that this is part of a plan to ensure our tax system is fit for purpose in the longer term would be to include meaningful personal income tax cuts in this package, not $250 per person with ministerial discretion. We need to take the time and get it right, otherwise future tax reform will only be harder.”
“The government should not bring a bill to the House that it knows requires immediate amendment. I came to this parliament calling for exactly the kind of housing tax reform contained in this package. I welcome it. I support the negative gearing changes. I support the WATO as a first step towards reducing the tax burden on working Australians. I support the standard deduction, but I cannot support the extension of CGT changes beyond housing at this point. If the government wants to undertake tax reform that will last, it must build the case for it through a proper consultation process. It recognises that carve-outs are needed for startups. Eligibility will be complicated. The case has been made for CGT reform on housing, but beyond that the case has not been made.”
“The Treasurer and Assistant Treasurer are consulting on a carve-out for early-stage businesses, and I welcome that, but commitments are not legislation. The bills before us today contain no carve-outs for founders, investors or early employees with near-zero cost bases. They contain no mechanism for spreading gains over multiple years. The government is consulting, but there is no answer yet, and the 25-day Senate inquiry will close before that consultation is complete. Asking parliament to pass these bills now on the promise that the hard design questions will be resolved later is asking us to legislate to create a known problem and fix it afterwards. On a question with this much consequence for Australia's innovation economy and our productivity challenge, that's not good enough.”
“The government has acknowledged that there's a problem here but is asking the House to wave through this legislation and trust it to sort it out later. Unfortunately, that trust has not been earned. The proposed CGT reforms will have the most immediate and material impact on startups. These businesses will be taxed on almost all their gains because the inflationary proportion of their gain is calculated on a very low base. Australia cannot afford to discourage the investment that drives innovation and jobs. Early-stage high-growth businesses must not become collateral damage in a reform aimed at a very different problem. I've pressed the government on this since budget night, writing to the Treasurer and raising it directly in this House at the first opportunity and on several occasions.”
“Now it seems to be legislation by stealth. It takes confidence to genuinely seek feedback, and there are lots of unanswered questions. What will these changes mean for ordinary Australians building wealth through the share market? The only analysis that exists has come from industry bodies with an obvious interest in the outcome. Does the 30 per cent minimum tax, combined with indexation, produce fair outcomes across different asset classes and different investor profiles? Should capital losses be indexed to inflation? These are questions that need to be answered, and a 25-day inquiry will not be sufficient. There are particularly difficult questions about the impact of these reforms on startups and high-growth assets.”
“It's how you build the public legitimacy that makes reform durable. It's how you surface unintended consequences before they're locked into law. It's how the government gets the opportunity to justify the choices it's making. This reform needs that justification. The government seems to think that crashing through is the best approach—that consultation will just give the haters time to build their campaigns—but this is the hard work of developing policy: actually listening and recognising that you might not always have the right answers upfront and that legislation can always be improved. We used to have a process of green papers and white papers, where governments opened up discussion by publicly identifying an issue, signalled their approach, published exposure drafts, listened to feedback, made improvements and then passed legislation.”
“Twenty-five days from referral to report will not be enough time to receive meaningful public submissions, conduct expert hearings, examine the interaction effects with superannuation and business investment or probe the unanswered design questions that the government itself has acknowledged remain open. Compare this to the 1999 CGT reforms, which were reforms of comparable significance. That process involved an independent review body, in the Ralph review; two public discussion papers; more than 300 public submissions; seminars in every state capital; 31 focus groups; draft legislation released for consultation; and then a Senate committee inquiry on top of all that. From establishment to legislation, the process ran approximately 12 to 14 months, not 25 days. Good process is not procedural tidiness.”
“If the government is not yet in a position to agree to this amendment, then the least it could do is to slow the process down to understand the implications of these broad CGT changes. There's been very little consideration of reforming CGT beyond property, either in the community or amongst economists and civil society. The media have reported that the decision to extend the CGT reforms beyond property was made on the basis of Treasury advice less than one month before the budget. There's a short Senate inquiry, but legislation of this significance warrants a far more public and rigorous process.”
“This amendment limits the indexing approach to the CGT discount to housing so the current CGT discount settings remain in relation to other investment classes. With this amendment, I believe the government will have a mandate to make a difficult long-term change that's needed to level the playing field on housing without a broad range of unintended consequences, particularly for productivity. Yes, there may be some complexities. I can see that residential properties might be purchased through a company structure to circumvent the CGT changes for housing. There will always be loopholes that need to be addressed, but it would be better to deal with those loopholes head on than to create a huge raft of new problems.”
“I move: That all words after "House" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words: "does not decline to give the bill a second reading but: (1) notes that: (a) while there is community support for reforming the capital gains tax (CGT) discount for property, the Government has not made a strong case as to why the reforms should extend beyond property to other assets; (b) the proposed CGT reforms beyond property will discourage investment in the most productive and high-growth assets, like successful start-ups, businesses and shares; and (c) while the Government's aim to build an even tax landscape is sensible, it must not come at the cost of a productive and dynamic economy, nor our ecosystem of start-ups and small businesses; and (2) calls on the government to restrict the CGT reforms to property, or, at minimum, ensure there is a comprehensive public consultation and inquiry process to assess the impacts of the broader CGT reforms on our economy, productivity and business community".”
“It's not coherent to index capital gains while simultaneously allowing bracket creep to push wage earners into higher marginal rates year after year through the same inflationary mechanism. Both problems have the same cause. A comprehensive approach to tax reform would address both. I've raised this with the Treasurer, but this principle has not been addressed in these bills.”
“If we were seeing significant cuts to personal income tax, there would be more of a case for extending this CGT reform to other asset classes. We do need to shift more tax burden from workers to wealth over the long term. Passive wealth should not be taxed more favourably than the income of working Australians. But the WATO is hardly a meaningful reduction in the personal tax burden. The government has hinted at future tax cuts, but a future promise is not reasonable justification to pass flawed legislation today. The best way to shift some of the tax burden from active to passive income would be through the proper indexation of tax brackets, something I've argued for since I was elected in 2022.”
“Extending CGT changes to shares, private businesses and other productive assets risks penalising exactly the behaviour we should be encouraging: Australians taking genuine economic risk to build something. At a time when productivity is a huge concern, we must drive more investment in productive, high-growth assets—ambitious businesses and startups—and risk-taking that can deliver returns for the economy. With the proposed indexing model for CGT, lower growth assets will be relatively more attractive than higher growth assets. That will not incentivise behaviours that contribute to getting us out of our productivity rut. Is this a distortion? Well, maybe it is, but it could also be called a lever to encourage the type of investment we need to protect our future prosperity.”
“I understand and support this aim in principle. Ideally, investment decisions are made because of economic factors, not tax regimes. There is always a risk that we replace one tax distortion with another. But the tax landscape already has a range of distortions, including for new properties and small businesses, and most are there for a reason. I support the changes announced in the budget to support small businesses—the loss carry back and loss refundability and instant asset write-off—which will help small businesses with cash flow in the early years, and I back the industry proposal to increase the turnover threshold for small businesses. But I share the concern of my constituent Angus. He told me: my concern is the breadth of the application.”
“I support the $1,000 standard deduction for work related expenses. It reduces the compliance burden for millions of Australians, frees up ATO audit resources and is the kind of sensible simplification that should have happened years ago. But I cannot support these bills in their current form, because the government has chosen to extend the CGT reforms beyond housing to all other assets like businesses and shares. Changes to the CGT regime for housing have been socialised. I and others have been talking about this for years, and most of the concerned feedback I've had from constituents since the budget has not been about housing; the case has been made. But the case has not been made for changes to CGT for other asset classes. The government argues that this is needed to create an even taxation landscape.”
“In two community consultations over the last two years, I've found that those in my community of Curtin who've participated are strongly supportive of reforming these tax concessions for housing, despite being amongst some of the greatest beneficiaries of the current system. This is why I've fought for reform to the tax concessions for housing investors and why I'm so pleased to see this reflected in the budget and in these bills. I support the working Australian tax offset. To be clear, at $250 a year, it doesn't come close to addressing bracket creep—the steady, invisible process by which inflation pushes wage earners into higher marginal tax rates year after year—but it moves in the right direction, towards reducing income taxes, and workers will welcome it. It should go further, but it's directionally correct.”
“Together they address the same underlying distortion—tax settings that have channelled investment into existing housing at the expense of new supply and first home buyers. The CGT discount, in the context of residential property, has not been building broad prosperity; it's been concentrating advantage among high-income investors at the expense of those trying to buy their first home. More than 80 per cent of the benefit of the current CGT discount goes to the top 10 per cent of income earners, and it's right to correct that specific distortion. I think that there's community support for reforming negative gearing and CGT for property. There's a broad consensus that we need to move away from being a country where housing is an investment to accumulate wealth and towards a country where housing is available and affordable for everyone.”
“For too long, these settings have tilted the playing field in favour of investors and against first home buyers, subsidising those who already own property at the expense of those trying to get their foot in the door. This reform corrects that. It's prospective and it grandfathers existing investments. Some might say the grandfathering is too generous, but, given that more than half of investment properties are only negatively geared for four to five years, it will taper off. I support the CGT changes as they apply to housing. That is the decision to retain the 50 per cent CGT discount for investment in new residential builds, while replacing the discount with an indexed model so only real gains are taxed for existing residential property. This is the right companion measure to the negative gearing changes.”
“I've called for income tax cuts, but I do not support the proposed CGT reforms beyond property. I want to support this bill, but I cannot in its current form. It's vital that we get these bills right. If this reform is rushed or legislated with known design flaws, it will make the next round of reform harder. It will hand ammunition to those who want to wind it back. Reforms that aren't properly debated and don't carry public legitimacy tend not to survive. There's a lot of good in this package. I support limiting negative gearing changes to new builds to incentivise housing supply. This addresses a structural distortion that economists and housing researchers have consistently identified.”
“I rise to speak on the Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Reform No. 1) Bill 2026 and the Income Tax Rates Amendment (Tax Reform No. 1) Bill 2026. These two bills do four things. They reform capital gains tax, replacing the 50 per cent CGT discount with cost base indexation and introducing a 30 per cent minimum tax, which will apply from 1 July 2027. They limit negative gearing for residential property to new builds from July 2027, grandfathering existing investments. They introduce the working Australian tax offset, which will provide all working Australians with $250 a year from 1 July 2027, and they provide a $1,000 standard deduction for work related expenses for all wage earners. I support 3½ out of these four measures. I've called for reforms to tax concessions granted to property investors since I was elected in 2022.”
“The paper contains 18 policy recommendations across five areas, setting up the structures to govern AI, actively capturing the opportunities, dealing with current harms, preparing for emerging risks and sharing the benefits of AI with all Australians. The policy recommendations are practical, no-regrets steps that should be taken now. They deal with issues like deepfakes, unhealthy relationships between children and AI chatbots, improving research and productivity and taxing AI companies so we can all share in the economic benefits. It's time to move from talk to action—from being passive to proactive. The risks of AI won't manage themselves, and the benefits won't just magically appear either. This is about shaping a future that works for Australia and Australians, not international tech companies.”
“AI is already reshaping our economy, our labour markets and our information environment. The scale of potential change is enormous, but Australia has done remarkably little to prepare. The government has identified broad goals for AI while implementing very little actual policy to achieve them. In the absence of this leadership, our future is being shaped by overseas tech companies and the billionaires who run them. This is why we're seeing a backlash against AI. I'm releasing an AI discussion paper. In it, I address one simple question: what should we be doing now to build a future with AI that works for us?”
“We have committee processes for a reason, and the government should use the committee processes that we have to ensure that we have the best version possible of this aspect of tax reform and that the public understands the implications and the trade-offs that are being made. So I commend this motion to the House.”
“On negative gearing, the committee could look at what evidence there is that limiting negative gearing to new homes will meaningfully increase housing supply, rather than simply shifting investment patterns. It could also look at how the grandfathering of existing arrangements might impact the market. Additional time will allow more consultation. The government has said that it is undertaking consultation on the CGT changes and that that will happen in due course. But if this goes to a committee and there is additional time, then a complete, considered legislative package could come back to the House, not bills that will require immediate amendment. We really need to get this right.”
“It could look at how the government might protect founders, employees and investors in startups, given that startups typically have a low cost base, meaning almost all future gains will be taxed as real gains, and given how vital they are to meeting our productivity challenge. It could look at what the impact would be on productivity and fairness if the small business CGT exemption threshold were raised. It could look at how we could allow founders to spread capital gains over multiple years and look at whether that's a workable solution and whether it has been modelled. It could look at how the changes would affect ordinary Australians investing in high-growth shares and ETFs as a means of building wealth and what the implications of that are.”
“The Economics Committee exists precisely to scrutinise legislation and policy with broad economic implications, and these bills have implications for a broad range of economic issues, including housing affordability and supply, investment incentives and capital allocation, revenue and fiscal settings, distributional outcomes across income groups, and productivity. There are a range of unanswered questions that a committee inquiry could help to answer. On capital gains tax reform, it could look at what the pros and cons of the CGT changes extending to all asset classes are, rather than limiting it to housing, which is where the market distortion was identified.”
“Committee processes can also surface new information that the government doesn't have, and governments can't be expected to know everything and get everything right immediately without that broad consultation. A committee process will build legitimacy and trust. It will increase the likelihood that the drafting actually matches the policy intent, and it will provide an opportunity for government to clearly justify and explain the choices that are being made. It will make the legislation better. Rushing this through without adequate scrutiny makes it more likely that the legislation will require amendment, so it's actually lower cost to have proper scrutiny now too. These bills are within the Economics Committee remit.”
“Some of those concerns are based on misunderstanding, but some raise legitimate concerns, and both types need to be addressed so that we can maintain trust in undertaking tax reform, so a 'crash or crash through' approach shouldn't be the right approach when we're making big changes like this. It's really important that the public understand the why and the how, and we are not there yet. If this isn't done well and with public understanding, it will make it much harder to do other reform—the reform that we need for intergenerational equity and to make sure we have a tax system that's fit for the demographic changes that we're seeing. We have committee processes for a reason. Committees are there to receive public submissions, to hold expert hearings and to apply scrutiny to unintended consequences.”
“They will affect millions of Australians and have significant interactional effects with superannuation, housing supply and business investment, so the stakes are really high if we get this wrong. The potential unintended consequences are significant for productivity, our other major challenge, and also for fairness. I recognise there will always be winners and losers in tax reform. We have to accept that, but we need to understand these trade-offs, and the community needs to understand why these are the right trade-offs to make. I've had a lot of correspondence from constituents who are concerned about these changes.”
“I second the motion. I agree with the stated intent of the tax reform bills, and that is to level the playing field on property. I think there is appetite for that and I commend the government for finally tackling the tough issues after decades of inaction from both sides. I've advocated for tax reform since I first started in this place, for the sake of intergenerational fairness and to shift more of the tax burden from active to passive income, and this is a start, but there's more to do. It is so important that we get this right. These bills, the Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Reform No. 1) Bill 2026 and Income Tax Rates Amendment (Tax Reform No. 1) Bill 2026, will fundamentally change investment behaviour across our economy.”
“Prime Minister, my constituents are concerned that the government is increasingly using automated tools to make decisions without proper safeguards. Nearly 1,000 Australians have had their income support payments unlawfully cancelled by an automated tool, automated aged-care support decisions are opaque and eroding trust, and more automation is expected under the NDIS changes. We need to keep the human in our human services. Why has your government still not actioned the robodebt royal commission recommendation to legislate safeguards and oversight for automated decision-making in government?”
“Taken together, these amendments represent what responsible crossbench engagement looks like—not blocking a reform this scheme needs but insisting it be done in a way that does not harm the people it is meant to serve. The people from my community will be watching—the woman in Churchlands in her late 60s who is caring for her non-verbal son alongside a husband with cancer, who told me that, without his funding for community outings, he would simply sit at home becoming agitated and distressed; the mother in Wembley Downs whose son masks exceptionally well, appearing articulate and compliant but dysregulated at home; and the parent of a non-verbal son with complex behaviours. I urge the government to engage seriously with the 22 detailed recommendations put forward in my community submission to the Senate committee.”
“The amendment requiring ministerial reporting on foundational supports readiness before the relevant parts commence addresses my recommendation that cuts not proceed before replacement services are demonstrably operational. The amendments making support determinations reviewable decisions, requiring parliamentary approval for material funding reductions and strengthening safeguards in section 34A, address my community's concerns about accountability and appeal rights. The amendment requiring genuine consultation before significant NDIS rules commence and an independent statutory review after 12 months reflect my recommendations on co-design and governance.”
“Automated decision-making done well can make government faster and more consistent, but it needs guardrails. Right now, the government is expanding automation across the lives of some of Australia's most vulnerable people without them. Australians with disability deserve decisions made with care, not decisions made by algorithms with no-one accountable for the outcome. In consideration in detail, I'll be supporting a number of amendments from members of the crossbench that relate directly to other concerns raised by my community. The amendment requiring functional capacity assessments to have regard to environmental, social and personal circumstances restores the contextual dimension to the bill that current drafting would remove, directly addressing concerns about masking episodic conditions and the limits of standardised tools.”
“In July 2023, the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme recommended that the government legislate a consistent legal framework and oversight mechanism for automated decision-making in government services. The government accepted those recommendations. Consultation followed. Nothing has been legislated. Meanwhile, the use of automation expands. Robodebt was unlawful. It harmed hundreds of thousands of Australians, and it persisted because there was no independent body with the power and resources to identify and stop it. My amendment calls on the government to legislate that framework with transparency requirements, decision-level safeguards, genuine human oversight for high-risk decisions, meaningful review rights and an empowered independent watchdog.”
“The Commonwealth Ombudsman found last year that automated processes in the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations illegally cancelled the income support of nearly a thousand Australians. In aged care, automated assessment tools are generating incorrect support outcomes, and the lack of transparency about how those tools operate is making it nearly impossible to identify and fix systemic errors. This is a government that's expanding automated decision-making across portfolios—the NDIS, aged care, social security, environmental approvals—without having implemented the consistent legislative framework that its own royal commission said was necessary.”
“Standard operating procedure instruments must be published on the federal register, and the CEO must disclose which provisions have been automated and report annually on cases where automated decisions were overridden. These are steps in the right direction, but the safeguards are not adequate to the risk. We've been told that NDIA staff will have no authority to modify a computer generated budget, even where they identify an error, and, if a participant appeals to the Administrative Review Tribunal, the tribunal cannot remake the decision. It can only return the participant to the same automated system that got it wrong in the first place. This is not a hypothetical risk.”
“This amendment addresses the specific concerns raised by my community about the risks of automated decision-making proposed in this bill. Schedule 3 gives the NDIA CEO explicit legal authority to automate a wide range of administrative decisions about what goes into a participant's plan, whether a claim gets paid and whether the payment falls within the pricing limit. The bill allows the minister to extend the scope of automation further through legislative instrument. In other words, this bill gives the government the power to automate almost any administrative NDIS decision, including, as the explanatory memorandum tells us, the new framework planning process, which will determine every participant's total support budget. The bill does include some transparency measures.”
“I now move the amendment circulated in my name: That all words after "notes that" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words: "(a) the bill enables the use of automated decision-making in determining a wide range of matters affecting NDIS participants; (b) it is reported that neither human decision-makers nor the Administrative Review Tribunal will be authorised to modify or override the automated decisions made about the support needs of NDIS participants; (c) when used well, automated decision-making can deliver faster, more consistent and more efficient government services, and that agencies like the NDIA need digital tools to operate at the scale required; (d) the Government has failed to implement the recommendations of the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme, handed down in July 2023, which called for the introduction of a consistent legal framework and oversight for automated decision-making in government services; (e) the consequences of poorly implemented automation for high-risk decisions are already being seen in widespread concern around automated aged care assessments and the unlawful cancellation of income supports for Australians under the Targeted Compliance Framework; and (2) calls on the Government to bring forward a legislative and mandatory framework for automated decision-making in government services, incorporating transparency requirements, decision-level safeguards, human accountability and oversight for high-risk decisions, meaningful review rights, and independent oversight, in order to prevent a repeat of the failures of the Robodebt scheme".”
“I've submitted the detailed feedback I received from my community, together with 22 formal recommendations for improving this bill, to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee inquiry, and I urge that committee to consider these asks carefully.”
“Additional NDIS registration can cost upwards of $10,000 and may drive small, high-quality independent providers out of the scheme entirely, leaving participants with only large corporate providers. My community supports a risk tiered approach: higher requirements for closed, high-risk settings, and proportionate, lighter requirements for professionals already subject to rigorous professional regulation. The next concerns were around plan management and pricing. The proposal to commission a panel of plan management providers, replacing the current open market of over 1,400 plan managers, was contested. I received feedback that the panel model risks eliminating choice and control, consolidating the market in favour of large providers and removing the small, specialist plan managers most valued by participants with complex needs.”
“A constituent, Bianca, told me she's worried the proposed inclusive communities program will result in corralling disabled people together into groups where they can only mix amongst themselves. My constituents have also noted with alarm the sequencing. Cuts are scheduled from October 2026, while foundational supports are not yet operational, not yet funded in many jurisdictions and not yet demonstrated to deliver genuine community inclusion. That's not a transition plan. That's a gap. On fraud and integrity, my community strongly supports action on fraud. There was no ambiguity on this point. The frustration I heard was not with the goal of fraud prevention but with whether the measures are appropriately targeted. Allied health professionals are already regulated through APRA.”
“The proposed ministerial determination to reduce social, civic and community participation funding generated a strong response from my constituents. This funding is not discretionary spending in any meaningful sense. For many participants, it's what makes the difference between a full life and an isolated one. It funds the sporting activities, outdoor experiences and community engagement that allow people with disability to be members of their community, to build skills and independence and to experience the ordinary dignity of participation in public life. The $200 million Inclusive Communities Fund, proposed as a partial replacement, was widely viewed as a step backwards towards the segregated, group based models that the NDIS was specifically designed to move beyond.”
“Underqualified assessment risks systematically underidentifying need, with potentially serious consequences for some of the most vulnerable people in our community. The concern I heard about most consistently, raised with explicit historical justification, was around the new opportunities for automated decision-making proposed in this bill. Alan, a disability advocate, told me he'd already seen in robodebt what happens when inadequate human oversight of algorithmically driven processes is in place, and he's worried we're about to see a repeat in disability. The community has specific, recent, evidence based reasons to be alarmed, and I'll address this directly in my second reading amendment. Second, I will look at social and community participation funding.”
“My constituents raised serious, well-grounded concerns about whether a standardised assessment tool can adequately capture the full diversity and complexity of disability, including episodic and fluctuating conditions where a snapshot assessment may not reflect genuine support needs; including masking, particularly for autistic individuals who appear more capable in an assessment setting than they are in daily life; including rare and complex conditions where assessors may lack the specialised knowledge to correctly identify need; and including children, where different tools and developmental frameworks are required. Allied health professionals raised specific concerns about assessor training. Occupational therapists complete four years of professional training.”
“The third is that the critical details, including the thresholds that will determine eligibility under the new functional assessment framework, are yet to be set by subordinate legislation that does not yet exist. Community engagement will happen after the legislative architecture is already in place, and that seems to be in the wrong order. I will go through the key concerns schedule by schedule. First is the functional capacity assessment. Of all the elements of this bill, the new functional capacity assessment framework generated the most concern and the most detailed feedback from my community. I want to convey the depth and sophistication of what I heard, because it goes well beyond 'we don't want change'.”