No bailout for NDIS blowouts, Jay Weatherill warned by Liberals

The commonwealth will not honour an agreement to fund cost blowouts in the South Australian trial of the NDIS.

The commonwealth will not honour an agreement to fund cost blowouts in the South Australian trial of the National Disability ­Insurance Scheme because it was misled by the state, which it ­ac­cuses of trying to “fudge its responsibilities”.

But the stalemate over the bungled trial of the $22 billion scheme continues with the state government accusing the Abbott government of “playing politics”.

Assistant Social Services Minister Mitch Fifield said the Weatherill government was not “behaving responsibly” after The Australian revealed yesterday it had convinced the former Gillard government to accept vastly lower participant numbers for the NDIS trial. The state said 5085 places were needed, despite previously concealed actuary analysis from the then government estimating 11,000 children would be eligible for the trial.

Eager for a deal, the two governments agreed, but the false projections are causing havoc as the trial is delayed by a year and is seriously underfunded. The delays are likely to hobble plans for the full rollout from next July.

“South Australia has not been fulfilling its funding responsibilities for disability for years, which is why the NDIS is required in the first place,” Mr Fifield said.

“Now South Australia wants to fudge its own responsibilities in transition to the NDIS, the most basic of which was to provide accurate information on participant numbers for the trial. The commonwealth will cover natural cost overruns, but where a state makes massive, fundamental and avoidable errors in areas within their control then they have to come to the party.

“The commonwealth is already putting the lion’s share of new money into the NDIS. South Australia needs to start co-­operating, accept its responsibilities and step up.”

The state’s Disabilities Minister Tony Piccolo said his government continued to fund children who should have moved to the NDIS, but funding was under the old, piecemeal system.

He said the Abbott government had not committed enough money for the trial for the agreed numbers, even before the cost blowout. “The federal government needs to stop playing politics with the lives of some of our most vulnerable people and simply fund the scheme, as the agreement clearly states,” he said.

Disability Speaks chairman David Holst said while the standoff continued, children were missing out.

“You know this is a massive, all-consuming, labour-intensive problem that is just going from bad to worse,” he told Radio 5AA in Adelaide yesterday. “Playing politics with seven, eight, 10-year-old kids with a disability and their families and then putting on hold the rest of the programs that should be being rolled out for other people ... with older children who are in crisis and need desperate help. It is a fixable problem.”

Mr Fifield said those not accessing services now would be “fast-tracked” on to the NDIS, but the state government would be forced to continue funding disability services outside the NDIS.