The removal of at least one in five of the 760,000 people on the National Disability Insurance Scheme will regrettably leave some out in the cold and cause heartache for many autistic people and their carers.
But the NDIS has become so expensive and vulnerable to rorting by providers that heavy pruning is necessary to ensure its continuing sustainability.
The Albanese government proposes to tighten eligibility to reduce total numbers to 600,000 and impose new oversight and controls that it claims will cut the scheme’s 10 per cent a year growth to 2 per cent, on average, for the next four years. The overhaul will recoup $35 billion in next month’s budget and save federal coffers up to $150 billion in the coming decade.
The NDIS was established with the best of intentions; to look after our most vulnerable citizens. The goodwill with which it was welcomed is a testament to Australia’s decency. And it has transformed lives. However, its cost has spiralled well beyond predictions and endangered its future.
Following a Productivity Commission report on disability, then-prime minister Julia Gillard in 2012 announced an NDIS designed to support approximately 410,000 people and cost $13 billion a year. The numbers have nearly doubled, and this year cost $52 billion. Without government intervention, the NDIS clientele was projected to top 900,000 by decade’s end.
Both sides of politics wear the blame for the continuing corruption that helped turned the NDIS into a financial black hole and caused part of the Australian public to conclude it had become a fraud and rort.
Governments have a knack for combining good intentions and shysters.
The Rudd government’s 2009 “pink batts” scheme to improve energy efficiency and create jobs notoriously resulted in the deaths of four young installers. A subsequent royal commission found the roll-out was rushed, badly designed and not properly regulated.
The NDIS, too, was plagued by design and implementation failures.
Health Minister Mark Butler said the government had benchmarked eight recurring design failures in long-standing programs and seven fundamental building blocks necessary for high-integrity programs: the NDIS had failed to measure up on both scores.
Other significant changes include clamping down on the NDIS’s rollcall of 93 per cent unregistered service providers, a regulation oversight that was catnip to the rorters and criminals who rushed to cash in on the scheme.
The NDIS should have never become a cash cow for the unscrupulous, but the changes ensure the survival and longevity of the scheme.
Supports outside the NDIS, which dried up as the Commonwealth scheme expanded, will place a strain on the states and territories for people with milder needs who will become ineligible for the scheme.
Butler has called on the states to step up and provide services for people who will be removed courtesy of the new NDIS changes. State leaders have signed up to a $10 billion funding deal but sound less than enthusiastic; that’s understandable, their own budgets are under pressure. As Premier Chris Minns said, “it’s not because we’re mean or we’re stingy or we’re trying to push people away. It’s because we’re flat out providing basic healthcare.”
This is something the state and federal government must work on together.
If the NDIS program is to achieve any substantive and sustainable budget containment, change is necessary. This will be difficult for many, and the transformation should involve support, sensitivity and consultation. However, it is better to have a sustainable NDIS than no scheme at all.
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