2GB Nights with John Stanley - 10 June 2026

Melissa McIntosh MP
Shadow Minister for Families and Social Services
Shadow Minister for the NDIS
Shadow Minister for Women
Federal Member for Lindsay

10 June 2026

Transcript

2GB Nights with John Stanley

Topics: NDIS Senate inquiry, One Nation preferences

E&EO

 

John Stanley 

Melissa McIntosh, now she's the member for Lindsay, foot of the mountains in outer Sydney. She's a Liberal MP who's managed to hold out against the tide, certainly at the last couple of elections. She's the Shadow Minister for the NDIS, and it did occur to me that if I was going to go to One Nation, they don't actually have shadow ministers for any of these issues, and so this is something they'll have to do. But Melissa McIntosh is the Shadow Minister for the NDIS, and she's also one of the Liberal MPs that will obviously be under threat if this One Nation wave continues. So I caught up with her. She's been very busy, there's been two days of hearings into the NDIS, which she's been keeping across, as well as her duties in her electorate. I'll come up with her about all of this earlier this evening.

 

Melissa McIntosh 

Hello to you and your listeners.

 

John Stanley 

Let's just start off with the NDIS, because the hearings have now been going for two days. I think everyone agrees now that this has got to be pared back. The spending is huge, but do you worry that in trying to get rid of the rorting and the waste, there may be people, vulnerable people, that might actually be caught up in it?

 

Melissa McIntosh 

You're right on both fronts, the $50 billion a year scheme, and that can't continue. It has to be sustainable, but you have to have compassion towards people as well, and I've been saying this since the very beginning, and perhaps not being the most popular person, but I think it was right. We're hearing it now, and it's almost coming to "well, what's the value of a human life?" The Government's rushing to get this legislation through Parliament, but like what it does, there's no, this happens with heaps of legislation that the Government tries to push through quickly. There's no transparency, and there's a lot of pages, a lot of information, but very little detail. And my concern now, hearing from participants over these last couple of days, that around what happens to them if their supports are cut, particularly in one area, which is the community and social support, and people interpret this as people going off to the beach and surfing lessons, all these sorts of things, but fundamentally, it is about somebody coming in, to a person with a disability's home, to check in on them. There was one example, a gentleman said his friend has to be showered. Already, his showering days have been cut, and he only gets two showering days a week. He's on a catheter as well. So, under this new legislation, he's only going to have one day a week where he gets showered. One day. Where is the dignity in that? This is where it comes to life and death stuff - in the rush of cutting expenditure, there's human lives at the other end of this.

 

John Stanley 

And of course, the difficulty again, because we have this federation, is that the NDIS covers that. If then someone finds it too difficult to stay at home and get that assistance, they then have to go into care, sometimes they end up in hospitals where there isn't anywhere for them to go, so there's no easy solution for those people, if those cuts mean they can't stay in their homes.

 

Melissa McIntosh 

Well, you're right, and what's going, who's going to pick them up on the other end? So, if the NDIS, and this is another area that I've been warning about, if not the NDIS, it can't be a cost shifting exercise to the health budget, where somebody ends up in hospital or the state's picking it up, and taxpayers still have to pay for that. The issue here is the states don't want to pick this up, they were happy to get rid of all these services years ago and give it to the Commonwealth. Now the Commonwealth is saying, no, we need you to take some of this load, and they haven't come on board with this, so I hope that the Government and the Minister himself, because he will have the power, quite extraordinary power that he's granted himself, says nobody's going to get pushed off the NDIS until there's something in place at the other end, otherwise we will have serious consequences for people that have their plans cut and they actually have proper health needs. So this is the balance between the fraud and the rorting and corruption in the system, which none of us want, and this is how the Government did frame the cuts to the NDIS, was around fraud, yet this legislation does very little to address that, so you've got that, that we all want to address that issue, and then on the other end, you've got people with profound disability, and that's the whole reason why this scheme was set up in the first place. We need to ensure that they're protected.

 

John Stanley 

Looking at it from my point of view, I haven't looked, because none of us, I think, understand the intricacies of the scheme, that's part of the problem, but you then talk about these payments for people, for instance, to go, to be taken to the supermarket to do simple things that we all take for granted. The assumption is that there are people who probably don't need it, and there are these unregistered providers, perhaps providing services and taking people places, and then charging the NDIS for stuff that isn't really needed. The trick is to pare that off and not take it away from someone that desperately needs some help just to go to the shop or whatever it might be.

 

Melissa McIntosh 

Well, that, and that's where we don't have the detail, so all of that, what you just said, is lumped together in social and community support, so the Government's not saying, okay, if you need somebody to come to your house and you've got these requirements, like keeping you alive, sort of stuff, versus going out, and you know, having a coffee, or going out, which is still important. Some people, that's the only outlet to have some sort of contact with other people you know, in society. So you also can't have people locked away, like the dark old days, but it's finding out the details of what these services are, and I think that needs to, we need to take some time on that, because we don't want the unintended consequences. I think that the stories of the Bali trips and all those sorts of things, people just, you know, can't stand that sort of thing, that's why we've had enough, but fundamentally, looking after people with severe disability, we can't have those cuts happen. And if the cuts are coming, the Government's got the growth targets, they want to reduce growth by, they said 8%, and then 5%, and then 2%, which is quite a lot, but they haven't actually achieved their original target, so there's question marks across this whole thing. The thing is, they've spent their savings already. The Government's already admitted that they've spent their savings, so they're desperate to get this through Parliament.

 

John Stanley 

They've spent the savings that they're going to make, so they need to make the cuts. And so, something like the other one I saw, and again, this is the idea that parents have to provide the substantial care and support for children that you'd reasonably expect of a parent of a child of similar age, regardless of disability - that makes sense. And then you provide the support on top of that, but some of these people who've got kids that require 24 hour care are saying, well, does that mean I lose all my support and I'm expected to essentially do things that I'm not going to be able to do on my own?

 

Melissa McIntosh 

Yes, and that's again we're talking about Thriving Kids here, where the Government wants to move children with low levels of autism off the Scheme, to a state-run scheme, but again, there's no detail. I can't find a single person in the country that knows what Thriving Kids actually is. It's all well and good not having them be on the NDIS, but those foundational supports out in communities - well, what does that look like, and how's that going to operate? First, you know, parents, like you said, are looking after children with profound disability. The Minister said, you know he tried to make it very clear that anyone that should be on the NDIS won't be kicked off, but we're already hearing the stories. My office is overrun, absolutely overrun, with scared, anxious people that are already seeing cuts happening to their plan, almost in anticipation of what's coming. So this is why I'm pretty like, I'm pretty revved up about this. I want the Scheme to be sustainable as much as all your listeners do. Absolutely. But as I said to you in the opening, what's the value of a life? When we are hearing these testimonies from people who need this to live, need these supports to live? Well, we can't rush this thing, we've got to get it right. We've got to pressure the Government to make the right decisions, because I think this is a good one shot on this. I don't think we're going to be able to circle back and go, okay, let's revisit this issue again in a couple years' time.

 

John Stanley 

I'm speaking to Melissa McIntosh, member for Lindsay, Liberal member for Lindsay, who's the Shadow Minister of the NDIS, alongside a lot of other responsibilities, but just on this, because we hear of unregistered providers, the fact that they don't have to be registered. We hear of the charging of the NDIS for things that you could buy for even 1/40 of the price. Is that being dealt with here? Do we know?

 

Melissa McIntosh 

The pricing structures? No, it's like the wedding tax, when you call up and get, and people say this, they call up for a cleaner, and once they say, "I'll use my NDIS plan", they get charged quadruple the price. No, this is the thing, the fraud is barely being touched in this legislation, the pricing structures are barely being touched, so all the things that we hate about the NDIS, it's not really, it's not really addressing, you know, to the extent that it should be addressing, so I'd like to see, you know, some perhaps some amendments going through the legislation about tightening the fraud components of it to get waters and the schemers of the criminals out. The one thing that is in it that I completely support is around registration. Right now, you can be an NDIS provider, and you don't even need a first aid certificate. You don't have to have a working with vulnerable people check, none of that. So, of course, people should be registered, because that's how the rortings happen. 96% of the providers aren't registered, and there's no checks and balances there. So, that has to happen, and that is in this legislation, and I absolutely support that one. My concerns are around these people that do have profound disability, and ensuring that they're protected.

 

John Stanley 

Yeah, and you said at the outset of this, oh, this is maybe unpopular in advocating for people who are going to be hurt because you're then looking like someone who's standing in the way of a significant reform. We can be better than that in terms of the detail of a conversation, can't we?

 

Melissa McIntosh 

I hope so. I'm all for compassionate conservatism. You can be conservative in your views, but you have to be compassionate, otherwise, what's the point of doing this job? I didn't sign myself up and my family, and our whole life, and you know, got my community's backing to not have compassion for people who really need us, that's what we're here for. So, yes, we should be able to have a grown-up conversation, and it can't just be about the balance sheet, not when lives are at stake.

 

John Stanley 

You always get good reviews when I talk to you, from people who talk about your work as a local MP. You must be being approached by people in your electorate who are reluctantly telling you they're thinking about voting for One Nation. What do you say to them?

 

Melissa McIntosh 

You're right. Thank you for that feedback. I've always been a community MP, and took the seat off Labor, and then held the seat twice against the tide. It's usually a seat of government, and I'll be honest with you, people have said to me they've had enough, they want the country that they love back, they feel like they're losing Australia. And then I'll talk to them, they say, "Oh, yeah, I'm considering voting One Nation," and I'll talk to them, "so well you know that I can't be your MP if you do that, and I lose the seat," and they're like, "oh yeah." Like it's sort of an interesting thing that there hasn't been a complete linking of the two, like the concept of One Nation versus the reality of who will be the local member of Parliament, so I've settled in to doing what I always do, and be out there for the people, and you know, walk around the river nearly every day, just to chat to people, and see how they're going. I'm always at the shop, I'll just continue what I'm doing, and as long as people want me there, I'm very much up for the fight, Labor, or fight whoever wants to take the seat.

 

John Stanley 

Do they have a presence there? Because they are trying to build branches up, so normally in this situation, say, if you had an independent challenging you, kind of a Dai Le style or a Teal style, a Lindsay version of an independent, a community independent, they'd already be out there with an office and they'd be campaigning. Is there a presence? Is there anyone you can point to there? So, yeah, that's who we'd be voting for if we voted for One Nation.

 

Melissa McIntosh 

Well, there's always been a One Nation candidate since I've come in, so I imagine there is. And even talking about preferences last night, doing a preference deal with One Nation has never been a big issue for me, because we've already always done it. It's just last election, I don't think One Nation held up their end of the bargain, so it would have to be done properly. So, although this is not unusual territory for a seat like mine in Western Sydney, so I'm not particularly concerned, but I'm concerned about the way people are feeling, and we need to be listening to that and doing something about that. When people say I'm losing the country I love, well, that matters, and what are we going to do?

 

John Stanley 

Yeah. The question of immigration comes up in terms of, so many of the people in your area would have, would have come to Australia, well, but if you go back far enough, everyone but the indigenous population are migrants, but what's the framing of how people are raising immigration with you?

 

Melissa McIntosh 

There's two issues that I surveyed my community on long before it became like a One Nation versus everyone else issue, and that one was Net Zero. My community was very against Net Zero, and so I pushed that hard in my Liberal Party room for us to drop it, and we did, and I was a very vocal voice on that, and the other is immigration, and it's framed in my seat in terms of pressure points and the way people are pressured when it comes to infrastructure, and not being able to - infrastructure that's not fit for purpose, our hospitals, and the pressures on our hospitals. So it's population growth as well, linked to immigration and our schools, so it's very much around, again, back to people talking about the country they love. Well, it never used to be so pressured, like our roads aren't coping, the pot holes, we've got an international airport coming online this year that borders my electorate, and the freight roads around that have got massive potholes in them. So I think when you speak in those terms, it doesn't become an issue of migration, as in a race issue, it purely becomes the way people are feeling strained in our communities.

 

John Stanley 

All right. Just a final one, because we did catch up a little earlier, and I'm playing this back during our news hour. I'm sure there are people saying, well, this is the common message that I get it from when I'm talking to Keith Wolahan, you, others I'm sure, that you're in government for years, you're part of the problem, we want to go a completely new direction. How do you respond when people say that to you?

 

Melissa McIntosh 

I think, and I think everyone should be thinking this now, be a community-minded member of Parliament. Be out with your people, and listen to what they're saying, and that's what I have always been committed to do, and that's what I'll continue to do. Just be there for people every day, and be willing to fight for them, and not always, as I said to you, I might not have had the most popular view on the NDIS, but I know people need someone like me on their side, and I'll be on the side of my community every single day for as long as I'm there.

 

John Stanley 

Melissa McIntosh, great to talk to you. Thank you for your time this evening. Good luck.

 

Melissa McIntosh 

Thank you.