Senator WATT (Queensland) (15:02): I move: That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Families and Social Services (Senator Ruston) to questions without notice asked by Senators Bilyk and Gallagher today. What a shameful performance we saw today from government ministers, in particular Senator Cormann as the Minister for Finance and Leader of the Government in the Senate. We saw Senator Cormann, backed in by many of his ministers, including Senator Seselja, come in here and crow about a budget deficit that is 100 per cent built on a gross underspending on the NDIS. Rather than using those sorts of jargonistic terms, let us think about what that really means to people out there in the real world. It means that government ministers came in here today crowing about a budget result—a budget that remains in deficit, years after they were elected—that is built on denying people with a disability wheelchairs, therapy support and other services that they are entitled to under the NDIS. It is shameful enough that this government has denied people with a disability things like wheelchairs and other kinds of aids and therapy, whether it be speech therapy or other types of support such as psychological support—it is shameful enough that this minister and this government have denied that type of support to people—but for them to then have the hide to come in here and crow about that budget result shows what a mean, nasty government this is, one completely lacking in empathy for people with a disability. They have deliberately slowed down the rollout of the NDIS and forced people to wait to get a meeting to develop an NDIS plan, which sets out the kind of support they need. The average waiting time for these plans just continues to blow out and is now running at more than four months. So not only are they making people wait to get a meeting and to get a plan, which determines the support that they need, but, even once people finally get a plan months down the track, they then have to wait months and months and months to get the support that the government has agreed to provide them. The neat little accounting trick that this provides for this government is that it helps them cover up their budget failures and ends up delivering a budget result that masks this terrible cruelty—a cruelty which is being metered out by this government by making people wait for months upon months to get the disability support that they need, that they have been promised and that has actually been funded in the government's budget. If only they would decide to follow through and spend the money that they put aside. In preparing to speak today, I asked my office to give me an update on constituents that we have assisted to deal with the NDIS and deal with the delays that they are experiencing. This is not something that is unique to me. I'm sure that even government senators, in their more honest moments, would concede that complaints from people who are waiting for disability packages under the NDIS are now by far the greater source of complaint brought by people to senators' and members' offices right around the country. Certainly every other member of parliament and senator I speak to says that the No.1 complaint that they receive from constituents is the delays that people are experiencing in getting the NDIS support that they need and that they have been promised. It didn't take long to get some examples back from my office. I will give one. Natasha, from Central Queensland, has a seven-year-old daughter—I won't give the name of her daughter—with autism. They applied for their NDIS package in March last year. By the end of July, she still hadn't heard anything more. She only ended up getting a plan after my office intervened on her behalf, and that caused her seven-year-old daughter to lose months of time-critical speech therapy. And it was only because of the actions of a generous psychologist that her daughter was able to continue receiving behaviour therapy. I could give a number of other examples that my office has come up with within an hour today of people out there in the community who continue to wait for the NDIS services that they were promised by this government. The fact is that this government is relying on hundreds and thousands of—in fact, I think we calculated it's about 71,000—people who are waiting for NDIS packages. It is that denial of services, it is the fact that people are waiting for wheelchairs and therapy services, that is propping up this government's budget. That is a disgrace, and the fact that they come in here and crow about it is even worse.