NDIS ‘no longer a political football’: Shorten gets deal done for scheme reboot

Bill Shorten’s reforms to the National Disability Insurance Scheme will clear the parliament after he won the support of the Coalition and state premiers, kick-starting major changes to rein in ballooning costs in the $42 billion scheme.

The new laws will greenlight an “in-and-out” list about what qualifies as NDIS supports while introducing an assessment process for participants that scraps the current diagnosis list. People will start receiving longer plans, of up to five years, with capped budgets that release money in intervals.

NDIS Minister Bill Shorten.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Shorten on Wednesday issued a joint statement with South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas, on behalf of all states and territories, in which the leaders said they agreed to several amendments about their shared governance of the scheme.

He said the agreement guaranteed “that the states and the federal government are getting their act together, and people with disability and participants are not a political football”.

“It will allow us to resolve our consultation with people with disability about a list of what you can spend money on, and a list of what you can’t spend money on,” Shorten said.

“This will always be a work in progress, but we’re committed to making sure the scheme’s here for the future.”

The laws respond to last year’s NDIS review, which called for the scheme to return to its original purpose of providing for Australians with permanent disabilities, and demanded state and territories improve their offerings for people with less intense needs. The scheme is one of the government’s biggest budget pressures and, without reform, has been on track to cost $100 billion within a decade.

The premiers had agreed last December to a national cabinet deal that set up with a system of “foundational supports”, which would help people outside the scheme and limit its growth trajectory to 8 per cent a year. But they soon accused Shorten of making hasty changes that went far beyond what was agreed and pushed back against his bill.

But that ended on Wednesday.

The joint statement from the federal and state governments said several amendments to the bill had been made, including “faster timeframes for approving NDIS rules” and “a new dispute resolution approach”.

The Coalition also said it would support the bill, guaranteeing it will pass through the parliament as soon as this week, but opposition assistant NDIS spokeswoman Hollie Hughes said she was not confident Shorten would fulfil his promises.

“When in government, and now, the opposition believes that there needs to be significant reform to the NDIS and the whole disability and allied health landscape,” Hughes said.

“I sincerely hope this is not the end of further sensible reforms, ensuring those for whom the scheme was designed - those with significant permanent and lifelong impairment – will be supported appropriately.

“We look to the states and territories to fully recommit and fund the provision of services meaning that the NDIS is not the only lifeboat in the ocean”

All 661,000 NDIS participants will move to new framework plans under the rebooted NDIS within five years, and Shorten said the foundational support scheme, which will be designed to support the large number of children joining the scheme, should launch in July next year.

The “in-and-out” list of NDIS supports is currently open for public consultation and clarifies that daily living costs such as rent, household items, insurance costs, petrol and groceries should not be funded by the scheme. Lifestyle purchases such as alcohol, gambling, cigarettes, toys, sex work, clothing, beauty services and holidays will also be ruled out.

The laws will also empower the National Disability Insurance Agency to take over someone’s plan if it suspects they are mismanaging their spending, while in a separate reform, participants will be issued a written note when they enter the NDIS which specifies why they are receiving support: for a disability, early intervention, or both.

This will have no immediate effect on how participants get support, but creates a structure to funnel children with developmental difficulties out of the NDIS and into separate early intervention programs when the system being worked out with the states is ready.

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