Political fight intensifies as another NDIS tragedy emerges

The Adelaide-based sister of a man who was left to die in shocking conditions after he was kicked off the NDIS says no one would listen to her warnings that more tragedy was coming.

David Harris and his sister Dr Leanne Longfellow.

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Only weeks after the death of Adelaide cerebral palsy sufferer Ann Marie Smith, 54, another harrowing case of NDIS-linked care neglect has emerged in a coronial hearing in NSW.

David Harris, 55, died alone in his public housing flat’s kitchen in Parramatta in Sydney’s west last year and his body was not found until police broke in.

His devastated sister, Dr Leanne Longfellow, who lives in Adelaide, is still trying to get answers about how he was left alone to die.

Ann Marie Smith, 54.

His NDIS funding had been cut off because he missed an annual review so cleaners and other support people stopped calling.

Dr Longfellow said there are distressing parallels between his death in last July and that of Ms Smith, 54, who died last month after she spent the last year of her life confined to a cane chair in her Kensington Park home while under NDIS care.

“After David died, I tried to warn that this would happen again but no one was listening to me,” said Dr Longfellow, who teaches students with disabilities. “It is just absolutely horrendous.

“How could these deaths happen? It is the policies and procedures of the NDIS that allow these tragedies to occur.”

Dr Longfellow has lobbied for case workers to monitor people under NDIS-funded care.

Revelations of Mr Harris’s death, which is being reviewed by the NSW Coroner, come as the political fighting over the tragic death of Ms Smith grows.

Opposition human services spokeswoman Nat Cook has linked the death to the closure of Disability SA and issues with the Community Visitor Scheme (CVS).

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However, Ms Lensink said the CVS never had the legal right to visit people in private homes and Labor had signed the deal to replace Disability SA with the NDIS.

“It is clear Labor does not understand the NDIS or the CVS scheme and how it operated under them,” she said yesterday.

“It was the former state Labor government who signed the NDIS bilateral agreement with the Commonwealth, which has led to Disability SA no longer serving NDIS clients.

“When South Australians living disability transitioned to the NDIS, they became Commonwealth clients. It was understood by consecutive state governments, clients would no longer be state clients when they transitioned to the federal scheme.”