NDIS empowers recipients with the gift of choice

Kenneth Wiltshire’s comment on this page on Monday is a classic example of “ablesplaining”. His arguments are refuted not only by the people he seeks to diminish but also by the actions and beliefs of the whole Australian community.

Ablesplaining dismisses the lived experience of people with disabilities and their knowledge of what is best for them. The professor’s article is a classic example of the art. And that is about the only value it has, because its arguments are fallacious and out of touch with the lives of 20 per cent of Australians.

Let me count the ways.

People with disability and our families have experienced under-servicing for decades. We knew we deserved better, so began a campaign to establish a national insurance scheme to provide certainty for people with disabilities throughout their lives.

People with disabilities wanted support towards an equal opportunity in Australian society. Parents in their 70s and 80s still supporting their adult children with disabilities were concerned for the future. Service providers who supported us to the extent of their resources wanted an increased capacity to do so. The campaign for the National Disability Insurance Scheme succeeded because it gained overwhelming support across the Australian community.

We know our politicians and community continue to support the scheme. Direct funding has been given to the scheme in this year’s budget, to be passed on to people with disabilities. This allows us to devise our own plans within the reasonable and necessary requirements of the scheme. We have sought and compared service providers who might deliver their plans, and we have entered into contracts with the government. We have done this. No one else.

The NDIS is not a mess. Any social reform rolled out nationally will have challenges. There clearly are issues needing to be fixed. It isn’t yet working for everyone, but for a project as big as this the scheme is doing quite well. At least that is what is indicated by the surveys of participants, whose percentage support is in the 80s.

The NDIS has given us this choice. Our own choice. We are not forced to succumb to the decisions of those who “know” what is “best” for us. No longer are choices being made on our behalf. The NDIS is fundamentally about being treated as equals, something it appears that some people, somehow, have forgotten.

I wonder how Wiltshire’s argument that the concepts of user choice and competition is not appropriate would play in the education sector, where parents choose which school their children will attend? Try telling them they do not have the knowledge, confidence, performance data or capacity to make that choice.

Like parents, our community does not feel at all insulted to be asked to “go and shop around”. I feel empowered. And so are the many other people, with all types of disabilities, who are doing it, some with appropriate supports.

The solution is clear. And that solution is the NDIS.

We need to properly fund and fix the NDIS so that it can continue to deliver a better quality of life to the scheme’s participants and deliver a boost to the Australian economy. It is an investment in the future. Your ablesplaining is a thing of the past.

Graeme Innes is a person with a disability and former disability discrimination commissioner with the Australian Human Rights Commission.