MYEFO: South Australia puts bungle aside to join NDIS

A bureaucratic bungle has forced the federal and South Australian governments to spend an extra $100m on NDIS.

A bureaucratic bungle that underestimated by half the number of participants in the National Disability Insurance Scheme in South Australia has forced the federal and state governments to spend an extra $100 million to enable a full rollout.

Wrangling between the state and the commonwealth over the error, which Canberra insisted was entirely due to poor advice provided by the Weatherill government, saw a bilateral agreement delayed. A sticking point was who would pick up extra costs in overblown budgets.

South Australia now joins NSW, Victoria, the ACT and Tasmania in signing agreements for the full rollout of the NDIS, with negotiations continuing with Western Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory.

A spokesman for South Australia’s Disabilities Minister Tony Piccolo told The Australian yesterday that about an extra $50m each from the state and the commonwealth had been agreed under newly negotiated transition rules to finalise a full scheme and ensure a full rollout remained on track.

Federal Social Services Minister Christian Porter said the extra funding meant children aged up to 14 in South Australia who had not yet accessed the NDIS would be able to do so from February.

The South Australian trial of the scheme originally was funded for 5085 places despite evidence that about 10,000 children would be eligible, with that figure reached by September. The NDIS agency had been processing new applicants but had held off on the planning meetings because of the funding shortfall.

The NDIS is designed to help 460,000 people across the country with the most profound disabilities by 2019-20.

Mr Piccolo said South Australia’s staged rollout would begin based on age for young people, followed by adults on a regional basis.

Yesterday, South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill, saddled with the worst unemployment rate of all the states at 7.3 per cent, claimed that 6300 new jobs would be created in the disability sector when the NDIS was fully operational from July 2018.

He also claimed about 1700 of the new jobs would go to people in the northern suburbs who would be hit hard by the slated closure of carmaker Holden in 2017.

Uniting Communities chief executive Simon Schrapel said the full rollout of the NDIS would deliver much-needed certainty for those living with a disability.

Novita Children’s Service chief executive Glenn Rappensberg said the NDIS had resulted in staff numbers growing by a third since the start of the trial. “The NDIS is triggering wide-scale change across the disability support and service sector.”

The federal budget update on Wednesday showed that almost $880m would be paid to the NDIS by state and territory governments as they closed down their disability service programs.

Mr Porter said “constructive discussions with other jurisdictions are continuing”.