‘No longer a problem child’: Shorten says he’s shored up NDIS beyond election

Outgoing minister Bill Shorten says he trusts the Coalition to run the National Disability Insurance Scheme in parting words designed to defuse a political fight over the $47 billion program ahead of the federal election.

Shorten, who finishes at the end of the month, said the NDIS was “no longer the major problem child” for the government as he installed former disability royal commissioner Rhonda Galbally to the agency’s board in one of his final moves to shore up its future.

Outgoing NDIS Minister Bill Shorten believes the scheme will be safe with the Coalition. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

“In the last three years, we’ve done serious and substantial microeconomic reform. Even critics would acknowledge that,” he said.

“There is bipartisan agreement about the path of sustainability and making sure that the scheme is acting in the best interest of participants.

“I think a Labor government is better to run the NDIS, but I acknowledge that [Coalition spokesman] Michael Sukkar was much more constructive than the Greens. In this term [of parliament], it was one of the few areas where the Coalition were pretty constructive.”

Shorten’s comments take political heat out of the NDIS while his Labor colleagues are gearing up to fight the Coalition over its record on Medicare and to portray the opposition as unsafe hands to guard the universal healthcare system.

The NDIS has been a major budget issue for the Albanese government since it inherited the scheme from the Coalition at a 23 per cent growth curve. Projections had forecast the scheme would cost $100 billion within a decade without change.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton in 2023 signalled he would work with the government on NDIS changes, so most of the political conjecture has come from state governments that have been asked to stump up more funding. Under Shorten’s reforms, the scheme’s growth trajectory is now on track to reach 8 per cent, a target agreed to by Labor and premiers.

“States want to make sure this isn’t some sort of process to dump hundreds of thousands of kids out of the NDIS, which it’s not, but I can understand that anxiety,” Shorten said.

“We chuck on our war paint, but we always seem to get there in the end.”

As he leaves parliament after years of accusing the Coalition of mismanaging the NDIS, Shorten said he was making the scheme as “politics-proof” as possible.

“A big part of that is about getting the right people in to run the scheme, and that’s what we’ve done,” he said. Half the members of the National Disability Insurance Agency’s board are now people with lived experience.

Galbally is the board’s newest appointment, after leaving it in 2019 to join the disability royal commission. She was one of three commissioners with lived experience to call for an end to special schools, group homes and sheltered workshops in its final report from 2023.

Galbally said she retained that vision, but state systems needed to step up to make it happen.

“The NDIS gives people the package to get out there and be included. But if the infrastructure keeps pushing them out, no matter how much the NDIS does, people still won’t be included in jobs, education, transport; all the things they should be doing alongside others,” she said.

“Clearly, the move to have schools include every child with a disability [is] an evolving and developing story. Different states are along that pathway to different degrees. Some are going to take longer.”

Galbally said sustainability and self-direction – as well as inclusion in state services – were the most important issues for the NDIS as it gained a new minister to implement Shorten’s reboot. She said change would be ongoing.

“Any social policy reform has to be sustainable, otherwise it will always be under question,” she said.

“There’s going to be NDIS 3.0 and 4.0, and it’s going to continue to evolve and develop for the next 10 years. It’s really relatively short in its life, for such a major thing. Medicare was still settling down 10 years later. This will too. That’s always going to be challenging, but very important. It can’t stay the same.”

Shorten said that would be the case over decades, but this reboot would still take years: rolling out foundational supports in schools, getting pricing right, making sure people in group homes were looked after, registering NDIS providers, co-designing assessments.

“We need to make sure it’s not a two-class scheme, where if you’re well-off middle class you can get the right supports and get a child into the scheme. There needs to be equity so that kids with disability who need the scheme from regional or poorer backgrounds don’t get ignored,” he said.

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