Rebooting the NDIS a necessity

National Disability Insurance Scheme Minister Bill Shorten’s promised reboot of the program is welcome. In a preview of his speech to the National Press Club on Tuesday, he says: “The NDIS is not what it should be.” Mr Shorten will cite important examples. The Fraud Fusion Taskforce, created in October, has 38 investigations under way involving more than $300m in payments. It has uncovered and is investigating criminal syndicates.

The taskforce is receiving more than 1700 tip-offs a month about people trying to rip off the NDIS, Mr Shorten will reveal. Another problem, which he will blame on the Coalition, was delays of 160 days for NDIS participants being discharged from hospital when they were ready to go home. “We’ve already reduced discharge delays from 160 days to 29 days, and saved the hospital system around $550m a year,” he will say. That is a big achievement. He also is set to brand the system as “too rigid” and throwing up “Kafkaesque barriers to access”. It lacks empathy, gouges on price, is too complex and often traumatising to deal with, his preview says. Untrustworthy providers have tainted the reputations of quality service providers, who work hard to support participants and meet their obligations.

At the press club and in the lead-up to the budget next month, Mr Shorten, Anthony Albanese, Jim Chalmers and the government need to tackle the overall cost of the $34bn-a-year scheme, which is expected to overtake Medicare spending by 2024-25. The NDIS is one of Labor’s signature achievements. Mr Shorten is proud that it has outlived the Rudd-Gillard-Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison governments. But it needs to be sustainable.

In February, social affairs editor Stephen Lunn revealed children were being diagnosed with more severe autism than their characteristics warranted to give them a greater chance of ­securing a place on the scheme, adding further ­financial pressure. Andrew Whitehouse, professor of autism research at the Telethon Kids Institute and the University of Western Australia, told The Australian: “It is without question that clinical behaviour has become biased towards making certain levels of an autism diagnosis in order to provide families a better chance at receiving the support they need through the NDIS.”

Autism spectrum disorder ranges from people who need minimal support to those requiring 24-hour care. Its place in the NDIS is one of the issues the government needs to resolve if the scheme is to fulfil its purpose of supporting people with severe disabilities.