NDIS rollout delay to cost Queensland dearly

Fewer than 60 per cent of all ­people eligible for the NDIS are likely to be in the program by the time it reaches full rollout.

The Queensland government tried to bring forward the entire NDIS rollout knowing most of its targets had not been met.

Fewer than 60 per cent of all ­people eligible for the National Disability Insurance Scheme in Queensland are likely to be in the program by the time it reaches full rollout, but the state is locked into paying its full $2-billion-a-year commitment regardless.

The equation means the state must not only pay for its entire NDIS obligation next year but also continue funding most of the 39,000 participants who, on current trends, won’t make it into the scheme when the bilateral agreements predicted they would.

Despite the lack of progress, the state government had tried to bring forward the entire rollout knowing the National Disability Insurance Agency had failed to meet its targets in all but one of the early launch locations.

A Queensland Audit Office ­report insisted the state must try to renegotiate its funding for the early years of the scheme but ­acknowledged this was unlikely as it required federal agreement.

“If Queensland is unable to ­renegotiate its current commitment to contribute $2.03bn come full scheme this would see (the state’s) contribution to each participant’s plan increase on average from the planed $22,500 to $39,700,” it says.

The report found that the NDIA was required to have local area co-­ordinators in place six months ­before rollout began in different locations around the state but that it had managed to do so in only one.

There had also been a litany of failings, with no whole-of-government update to cabinet since July 2015 ­despite the scheme spanning multiple departments and statutory agencies. Also, only 7 per cent of the total projected number of Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait ­Islander participants for 2019 were in the scheme so far.

The audit office said that ­because of “the ongoing uncertainty about responsibilities during transition” funding pressures had emerged for some agencies.

For instance, Queensland was “bearing the full cost” of reintroducing its taxi subsidy scheme that it believed would be covered by the NDIS as part of a “temporary” agreement.

Other disagreements between the state and the national disability scheme had left some patients in state-funded hospitals in those beds up to a year beyond the date they were deemed to be “clinically fit to discharge”.

The audit office analysed 13 such cases and concluded the cost to the state of these patients alone was $3.7m when it would have been $145,000 if the NDIS participants had somewhere to go other than hospital.

Queensland Disability Services Minister Coralee O’Rourke was “supportive of the report’s proposed recommendations” and noted that those who had moved to the NDIS were experiencing improved outcomes.