NDIS a good idea, but it’s a shame it doesn’t exist

AUSTRALIANS, particularly people in the disability community, should be angry.

They have been sold a solution to decades of woeful support, a solution that does not yet exist.

From a distance, the national disability insurance scheme is the very model of good public policy: a huge reform designed to overhaul the delivery of disability support to 460,000 people who languished in a patchy, underfunded sector.

The problem with grand ideas is they rarely live up to the hype. Dragging the Platonic form of the NDIS from the ether and into reality was always going to result in something less than perfect.

The most unsettling thing about this process, however, is that it was rushed unnecessarily and, as The Australian reveals today, was conducted without the full public account of the cost.

Let’s be clear. This isn’t a matter of quibbling over dollars. There are two problems with being misled in such a way: it serves to mire planning in falsehoods, and it erodes much-needed trust of the wider public in the NDIS.

Had the former government had made the case for a $30 billion NDIS instead of a $22bn one, the public very likely would have joined the cause with similar gusto. It was time.

That case was never made, however.

Nor has the current Coalition team bothered to correct the record. It suits its purposes to let the $22bn figure linger.

Labor should be lauded for its vision but this was handled clumsily from the start. Legacies must be built, not simply imagined.

If the NDIS ever works as it was intended, the delivery will be credited entirely to staff at the agency. They know all too well the detail, rigour and sweat required to actually keep promises.