I begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we meet, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation.
Two weeks ago, in the Senate we celebrated the 50-year anniversary of the Whitlam Government's passing of the Racial Discrimination Act.
Noel Pearson put it best in his eulogy for Whitlam when he said:
"Without this old man the land and human rights of our people would never have seen the light of day.
"There would never have been Mabo and its importance to the history of Australia would have been lost without the Whitlam program."
Today we are here on another momentous occasion. The 50th anniversary of the Dismissal of the Whitlam Government.
Today there will be a great deal of discussion about the events of November 11 itself, and about the political choices made by Whitlam, Kerr and Fraser.
There will be a fair bit of maintaining the rage - and just as importantly - maintaining the enthusiasm.
Some people will rightly wonder what could have been accomplished had the dismissal been thwarted.
But 50 years on there is little we can do to change the past. What we can do is celebrate and, much more importantly, learn from the Whitlam Government's vision.
I am, of course, particularly interested in the foundations laid by that government for Australia's unique health and disability insurance framework.
By the 60s, a growing movement of people across Labor's political spectrum were working for the modernisation of both the party and the program. As leader, Whitlam recognised that we needed to meet the expectations of our increasingly diverse and confident nation - a community which increasingly sought to remedy injustices and inequities not just for working people, but also for women, for aboriginal and torres strait islander people, for so-called New Australians.
When it came to healthcare, the last Labor government's health policies had been frustrated by the British Medical Association and its conservative allies. At the centre of this was a High Court challenge to Ben Chifley's first attempt to establish the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.
Labor's new approach in health would mirror its wider approach to government.
Less focused on the principle of top down state control, and more focused on building something that could withstand the constitutional and political challenges that frustrated the Chifley Labor Government's agenda.
Enter Medibank, the forerunner of Medicare.
In a break with the past - where access to healthcare was based on a complicated system of means testing and insurance arrangements with big differences across the states and territories - the basis of Medibank was something very simple.
Whitlam's policy speech at the 1969 election firmly grounded universal access to healthcare in the rights of equal citizenship:
"In a very profound sense, the cause of Labor is the cause of national unity. Equality and quality of opportunity, equality of life and more quality in life, go together. Our opponents by contrast seek to divide and thereby to rule…they resist reform of a ramshackle health system by dividing those wealthy enough to be content with it from the great majority for whom it is a burden or a despair."
And three years later he was more succinct. The Whitlam program of 1972 set out its objectives:
- To promote equality,
- To involve the people of Australia in the decision-making processes of our land,
- And to liberate the talents and uplift the horizons of the Australian people.
They echo today. Including in the words our Prime Minister uses:
No one held back, and no one left behind.
The 1972 program should be understood as the first serious program of the modern, Australian Labor Party.
And it sets in motion the reforming logic for every Labor government - and for every major social policy innovation - that came after.
Its my great honour to be asked to work with Mark Butler to steward a more recent Labor addition to Australia's social policy framework - the NDIS.
Like Medibank and Medicare, the National Disability Insurance Scheme is also grounded in the framework of equality.
Just as the social changes of the late 60s and 70s had opened up a conversation about the fundamental rights and aspirations of diverse communities, the period after the new millennium opened up a new conversation about the fundamental rights of people with a disability.
As the Australian Government became a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with a Disability in 2007, the disability community was gearing up to deliver a campaign across the nation.
Every Australian Counts was an amazing exercise in building solidarity, in telling the stories of disabled people, and affirming that people with a disability were entitled - not just to formal equality - but, to echo Whitlam - to be involved in decision making and obtain the practical means to develop and use their talents.
It mirrors the history of all the great social reforms in this country - a well organised and strategic social movement, co-operation with the trade union movement, and combined with a reforming Labor government.
And the legacy of that movement - and that moment - is the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
It is lifechanging for people with a disability.
Because for people with disability and their families, the era before the NDIS was implemented was like a different world.
I well recall attending a meeting of families of people with disability in 2001 as a candidate in that election. It was held, as so many meetings are, in a pretty functional room in the local shopping centre.
Everybody settled into the plastic chairs, and we had a very long and frankly quite emotional conversation.
I remember how tired, how frustrated and how alone everyone in that room felt.
There was a feeling that they had been abandoned by governments of all sizes, and of all political persuasions.
There was justified anger too. The people in that room felt like they were invisible to the rest of society, and that things would never get better.
I remember thinking, "This is totally unacceptable. If we are elected, we have to do something."
Of course Labor was not successful in 2001, but six years later we were. The work then began to build a new social policy that would translate the principles in the UN Declaration into a genuine lifechanging social policy for people with a disability.
This is the key point.
While universal health insurance and universal disability insurance are both grounded in a framework of universal rights - rights on their own are rarely enough.
The Whitlam Government, and Labor governments that came after have always recognised that it is not enough to have formal equality under the law without the means to enjoy it.
Its worth reflecting on the design principles that govern the implementation of both health and disability systems.
Every Australian can be covered under Medicare, and every eligible Australian can be covered under the NDIS.
Everyone in Australia contributes to Medicare and the NDIS through the Medicare Levy and the progressive tax system.
Everyone makes a contribution, and it makes both schemes affordable for everyone.
No one is denied healthcare and disability care because they are unable to afford it.
And for both schemes there is a single government payer checking eligibility, paying out claims and setting prices.
Both Medicare and the NDIS are uniquely Australian innovations.
Our approach recognises that markets can be powerful instruments to mobilise resources, while recognising that these markets are underwritten by public investment in people and in infrastructure, and by the payment systems that support them.
Accessible to all, contributed to by all, affordable for all, coverage for all.
These systems deliver genuine choice.
Over who you want as your GP, or over who delivers your NDIS support.
But if it is up to Labor Governments to create these social programs, it is also the responsibility of Labor Governments to tend to them and shape them.
The Hawke Government had moved quickly to re-establish universal healthcare after Fraser sought to dismantle Medibank. However in the years that followed, the Cabinet systematically reviewed and strengthened the operational and administrative arrangements for Medicare, conscious that continuing public support was dependent on thorough, robust governance.
Since the Gillard government introduced the NDIS, it has totally changed how people with a disability in Australia live their lives.
The level of care has dramatically improved, people are much more independent and have genuine choice and control over their supports, and their lives.
But in the years since the NDIS began, under successive Coalition governments, little attention was applied to the practical operation of the scheme.
As Hawke and his ministers tended to Medicare, it is now up to us to reassert the NDIS's core purpose and secure the practical arrangements for the scheme's operations.
The NDIS must be sustainable, effective and must operate with integrity.
When Labor came to Government in 2022, spending on National Disability Insurance Scheme was growing by 22 per cent a year.
A rate of spending growth that was totally unsustainable. National Cabinet has acknowledged this and my colleague Mark Butler is leading work with the states and territories to reduce growth in scheme expenditure.
More troublingly, the former Coalition Government's lack of oversight of the scheme gave fraudsters the opportunity to infiltrate the provider market and steal from the NDIS and more importantly, steal from people with disability.
Until the implementation of Labor's NDIS Bill Number 1 in 2024, the Australian National Audit Office has said that the NDIS lacked basic prevention controls for fraud and non-compliance.
It said that the "NDIA was implemented with catastrophically weak prevention controls."
Under the Coalition, NDIS claims were barely being checked. In 2020-21, there were less than 30 employees within the NDIA directly working on fraud and integrity activities.
The system had blind spots. Claims submitted between 4.30pm and 6pm on a weekday couldn't be reviewed in NDIS systems before they were paid.
Claims made every second weekend couldn't be reviewed in NDIS systems before they were paid.
Now, all claims are visible in NDIS systems and can be analysed prior to payment.
Previously, NDIS systems did not require participants to provide evidence for claims. They could claim tens of thousands of dollars per claim, without any description or evidence.
Now, NDIS systems require an ABN and a text description, with evidence (such as an invoice) required for all claims over a certain threshold.
In financial year 22-23, with $35 billion in claims made, only $4 million worth of claims were reviewed.
In just the last month, October 2025, the NDIA reviewed ten times the amount that was reviewed in a whole year during 2022-23.
Consider this - there will be more NDIS claims reviewed today - in a single day - than were reviewed over the course of a year under the system set up by the previous Government.
That is the scale of the previous Government's negligence.
Whistleblowers went on the public record.
In 2020, a senior fraud investigator, John Higgins, resigned and told the media that:
"It's simply too much fraud for too few people,"
And;
"The management of the fraud department was almost dysfunctional."
This was not a situation that our Government could stomach.
Our Government acted quickly, investing over $550 million in tackling fraud and non-compliance, setting up the Fraud Fusion Task Force, and passing NDIS Bill Number 1 to place it on a sustainable footing.
But there is much more work to do to get rid of the bad actors that threaten the NDIS's integrity.
We need to get cracking on measures that are ready to go.
I can announce today that at the next opportunity I will introduce a bill that strengthens the NDIA and the NDIS Commission's hand in improving the integrity and safety of the scheme.
We will introduce a stronger penalty framework to reflect the seriousness of the offending conduct and ensure there is a credible deterrence against contraventions of the NDIS Act.
We will expand the NDIS Commission's power to issue banning orders against auditors and consultants.
We will give the NDIS Commission the power to issue anti-promotion orders to restrict unscrupulous providers from promoting products or services that undermine the integrity of the NDIS.
These are common sense measures that are ready to go.
I know there is more that will need to be done.
Our goal, over time, is to create an integrated system where compliance is easy and non-compliance is hard.
We want to identify and prevent fraud at the source - when payments are made.
We want to ensure our agencies have the powers to investigate the worst offences.
We want to strengthen deterrence so providers doing the wrong thing know they will face consequences.
It means stopping the rorts.
It means cracking down on kick-backs, coaching and collusion.
It means making sure the NDIS is a disability support scheme; not a get rich quick scheme.
Where we see fraud, too often we see violence, abuse and neglect.
We are determined to clean up the sector and protect people with disability.
Because the NDIS is worth the candle.
It is a unique scheme that operates in the great spirit of the Whitlam program of 1972.
It delivers the promises of that program to the disability community.
To equality, to involvement in decision making and to recognise, nurture and -yes - liberate their talents.
The Whitlam legacy teaches us that delivering lasting social and economic change is not easy.
It also teaches us that Australia's unique framework of health and disability insurance, based on the principles of accessibility to all, contribution by all, affordability for all, coverage for all, is worth fighting for.
It means that the NDIS is worth fighting for.
And that 50 years on from the dismissal of his Government, Whitlam's social policy legacy - one that set down those principles - is worth fighting for.
