Anasina GRAY-BARBERIO (Northern Metropolitan) (09:55): $36 billion – that is what the federal Labor government has committed to cutting from the NDIS, stripping lifeline support from the most vulnerable Australians and Victorians while dressing it up as responsible budgeting. The message is loud and clear: people with disabilities are a budget problem that needs controlling, that needs resetting, that needs to be dealt with. Isn’t that what the federal health minister was selling to the media in the last couple of weeks? ‘We care about people with disabilities, but this scheme is too unregulated, filled with fraudulent providers.’ But whose job is it to regulate the sector? The government’s. These gutless cuts will force disabled people into segregation, isolation, institutional settings and dependency, reducing the independence and choice they have fought so hard and so long for. Meanwhile, Labor refuses to confront powerful vested interests. They refuse to tax gas companies, they refuse to tax corporations, they refuse to tax billionaires. They refuse to hang multinational corporations out to dry in the same way they do for vulnerable members of our society. This federal Labor government, just like the state Labor government, has shown it will not stand up for ordinary people when powerful corporate interests are on the line. Instead of making big corporations and gas giants pay their fair share of tax, they are asking vulnerable Australians to bear that cost. We, the Greens, will continue to protect the NDIS.