NDIS must remain sustainable

The National Disability Insurance Scheme, which this newspaper has supported from its inception, is too important to be undone. It helps Australians with severe permanent disabilities live the best lives they can, and it affords them and their loved ones peace of mind. That is why it must be sustainable financially in the post-Covid world, when budgets will be constrained and will come under heavy pressure for increased aged-care and health services as our population ages.

On Saturday’s front page, NDIS Minister Linda Reynolds confirmed that a plan to tighten eligibility and packages for the scheme using an independent assessments process had been dumped. Senator Reynolds admitted after a meeting with her state counterparts that the proposals had frightened disabled Australians. Earlier this year, former National Disability Insurance Agency chairman and architect of the scheme, Bruce Bonyhady, said the proposed assessments had created stress among participants.

Senator Reynolds has foreshadowed a redraft to produce a new model to rein in costs. It will take the views of the disabled into account. Fair enough. But we hope the backflip does not prove a Pyrrhic victory for the disabled. The stark fact, Senator Reynolds wrote last week, is that the scheme “is on track in the latest federal budget to overtake the cost of Medicare, from $28.1bn this year to $33.3bn in 2024-25”.

Cutting NDIS costs will not be easy. For months the government backed the idea of independent assessments, which would have used contracted allied professionals to assess whether an applicant should be on the NDIS. Under the current system, that assessment is based on evidence provided by participants’ own specialists.

NDIA chief executive Martin Hoffman and chairwoman Helen Nugent have backed independent assessments, which prompted opposition NDIS spokesman Bill Shorten to argue that they should consider their positions: “How do they stay when they say this is needed to fix a $60bn blowout and the minister has backed away from it?’’ But supporting a reasonable way of containing costs is hardly a sacking offence.

It now remains to be seen if Senator Reynolds and state ministers produce a better system for NDIS reform and whether it is accepted by the disability sector. In May, social affairs editor Stephen Lunn reported that the NDIS was set to cost more than $40bn a year within three years – a $10bn blowout on federal budget projections released just a fortnight earlier. According to a report to federal and state governments by the ­NDIA, the blowout would occur “if recent rates of growth in average payments and new entrants are extrapolated, without mitigating actions”. According to the NDIA report, average payments to participants have increased by 42 per cent across three years to $53,200. The scheme cost taxpayers about $23bn last financial year.

There are no simple solutions. Curtailing some services, tightening eligibility (21,000 people joined in the final quarter of last year) or means-testing some benefits for some recipients would provoke major arguments. Services provided to the scheme’s 450,000 participants are comprehensive, high-quality and therefore not cheap. Depending on need, the services cover physio and occupational therapy, transport, home modifications, equipment, support dogs, respite care and facilitating participation in social and cultural activities. The NDIS is expected to grow to the point it will assist 530,000 disabled Australians in two years.

Carried out with common sense and compassion, independent assessments could have added transparency and accountability. That said, it should never be ruined by bean counters to the scheme. It is an insurance scheme, open to all Australians in the event of being severely and permanently disabled in a bad accident. But taxpayers are not a bottomless pit. They are entitled to know the NDIS is being run efficiently. Expectations need to be reasonable and well-managed.