Introduction by Croakey: People with Disability Australia has expressed disappointment over the lack of targeted investment in today’s NSW state budget to deliver on recommendations from the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability.
While welcoming the NSW Government’s investment in housing and cost-of-living relief, PWDA President Marayke Jonkers said it is important to ensure the 6,200 new homes promised are fully accessible.
“When you build for people with disability you build for everyone. The failure to commit NSW to the Livable Housing Design Standards means we are denying disabled people the right to safe and affordable homes,” Jonkers said.
Meanwhile, the Community Affairs Legislation Committee will report back to the Senate on its Inquiry into the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Getting the NDIS Back on Track No. 1) Bill 2024 on Thursday, 20 June.
Below, Muriel Cummins, occupational therapist and disability advocate, discusses concerns that the Amendment Bill will change the “NDIS very substantially, and that more time, consideration and co-design is required prior to progressing legislative change”.
Muriel Cummins writes:
Disability advocates, allied health professionals and legal experts call for a pause on the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) Amendment Bill, due to be voted on in Federal Parliament in the coming weeks.
Submissions to the Senate Inquiry on the NDIS Amendment Bill urged caution in making significant amendments to the NDIS without sufficient time for co-design, groundwork and implementation planning.
Voices from across the disability sector are concerned about the risk of further unintended and significant consequences due to rapid change implementation.
One advocate described – in conversation – the request that the disability community accept this Bill as “…like asking NDIS participants to jump off a cliff, while promising to co-design the landing on the way down”.
Despite a very tight timeframe, the Senate Inquiry on the NDIS Amendment Bill (2024) received almost 200 submissions from across the disability sector, spanning disability advocacy organisations, disabled people and carers, allied health professionals, academics, legal experts, and more.
The Community Affairs Legislation Committee is due to publish its report on the NDIS Bill later this week – Thursday, 20 June – ahead of a parliamentary vote, which is likely to follow in coming weeks. The NDIS Bill has already been passed by the House of Representatives.
About the Amendment Bill
The NDIS Amendment Bill was introduced to Parliament on 27 March 2024, with the stated aim of creating scaffolding to progress key recommendations of the NDIS Review report. The NDIS Review report was published in December 2023 and aimed to examine the design, operations and sustainability of the NDIS.
It followed the publication of the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability report in October 2023.
The Government has not yet formally responded to the findings of the NDIS Review report or the Disability Royal Commission report.
Scale and pace
The NDIS Bill was unexpected and took the disability sector by surprise. It signals an extraordinary degree of change across core NDIS functions, from the definition of the supports that constitute NDIS supports, to support needs assessments and budget-setting methods.
There are concerns that the Bill changes the NDIS very substantially, and that more time, consideration and co-design is required prior to progressing legislative change.
There are calls for the implementation plans to be shared urgently, transparently and as a priority, so that the community, and indeed, the Parliament, can understand the vision and intention of the Bill.
Dwindling safety net
A strong media focus on NDIS cost unsustainability has heightened disability sector concerns that cost-containment is a key driver for the rushed legislation, and that this driver may result in hurried administrative reform that bypasses the nuance required to build a NDIS that can effectively respond to the needs of some of Australia’s most high needs groups.
Governmental budget revision aims to ‘save’ $14.4 billion from the NDIS over the next four years, which will be enabled through legislative reform.
The absence of both publicly available economic modelling and implementation detail has raised questions around if and how the cost-targets will be achieved.
Advocates are concerned regarding the social and safety implications of a dwindling disability safety net.
Changes to supports
The NDIS Bill aims to redefine the nature of supports that will fall under the jurisdiction of the NDIS. While the Bill doesn’t cover ‘foundational supports’ (lower intensity disability supports falling outside the remit of the NDIS), it does set up new powers that can divert groups of people with disabilities, to foundational supports.
Negotiations with state and territory governments are ongoing, and as yet there is no clear consensus regarding responsibilities for changes to the provision of broader disability support and service infrastructure.
Shared understanding and clear consensus would appear essential to establish clarity on designated responsibilities, prior to dismantling the current legislative framework.
Mandatory assessments
The NDIS Bill introduces mandatory assessments for all NDIS participants. Current participants are likely to be re-assessed for eligibility for the newly defined NDIS supports.
Occupational therapists, key professionals with expertise in functional assessment, have expressed concern at the lack of detail contained in the NDIS Bill regarding assessment process and how the assessment scores will inform the funding in participant plans.
While the NDIS Review recommended comprehensive, valid and fair assessment processes, the Bill does not provide adequate scaffolding to guarantee this calibre of assessment.
There are concerns that the vague nature of the Bill could lead to ‘tick and flick’ pseudo-assessment or a return of the highly critiqued ‘Independent Assessments’ of 2021. As yet, there are no clear processes for participants to appeal an assessment.
The Bill would enable assessment scores to be fed into an algorithm to generate a budget – an approach previously dubbed ‘robo-planning’.
Potential risks
While a reform emphasis on preventing fraud is strongly merited, the singular media focus on this issue has overshadowed community debate on the range of safeguarding implications that rapid change to the NDIS could bring.
Forty thousand participants were due to transfer to the new NDIS online ‘PACE’ administration system between October 2023 and June 2024, which is approximately six percent of participants.
The introduction of the new ‘PACE’ system has led to service disruption, to the extent that the legislated decision-making timeframes around access to disability support contained in the NDIS Participant Service Guarantee have been formally paused.
The remaining 94 percent of participants are forecast to transition to this system over the next 10 months, which would align with the timeframe to implement the substantial changes the NDIS Bill will enable.
More groundwork needed
Over 650,000 disabled Australians currently participate in the NDIS – when we consider carer groups, and the broader disability and provider sectors, it is clear that over a million Australians engage with the NDIS on a daily basis.
A balanced approach is needed by the Senators who will vote on the NDIS Bill in coming weeks. Decision making must be informed by deep consideration of the perspectives offered and amendments recommended by the disability sector through the Senate Inquiry on the NDIS Bill.
A pause on the NDIS Bill could facilitate co-design of the key features of the NDIS 2.0, allow the development of critical reform implementation detail, and enable negotiation around responsibilities for disability support provision with state and territory government counterparts.
About the author
Muriel Cummins is an occupational therapist and holds a Master of Public Health. She was awarded the Australian Allied Health Awards Occupational Therapist of the Year Award in 2022. She graduated in Dublin 2001 and has worked in mental health and disability in Australia since 2005. She is passionate about working in close partnership with those with lived experience, and promoting co-design in service development.
Previously at Croakey: The road ahead for psychosocial disability and the NDIS
See Croakey’s archive of articles on the NDIS.
