A lot is at stake in Bill Shorten’s plan to reform the NDIS

NDIS Minister Bill Shorten at the National Press Club in Canberra on Tuesday. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Bill Shorten has much to do to restore trust in the National Disability Insurance Scheme, which he accepts has “lost its way”. His six-point reform plan to reboot the scheme shows intent, and also what’s at stake.

There is a perception among taxpayers who are forking out $34bn a year on the scheme that it is a “bottomless pit”, ripe for the picking by nefarious types or even those just thinking they can pad out invoices because it’s a government scheme.

There is also a concern that a significant proportion of its 585,000 participants – about a third – don’t consider the plan is improving their lives. And there is little improvement in the employment levels of scheme participants.

In his plan, Shorten rightly spotlights reducing fraud, overcharging and dodgy practices. He also wants to focus on delivering only “reasonable and necessary” supports under the scheme to address spiralling costs, amid stories of “predatory” providers pushing expensive and non-evidence-based services on to participants. And he wants to improve the experience of scheme participants who currently have to justify their plan on an annual basis, noting it is beyond strange that amputees must prove they’re still missing a limb or the blind again showing they can’t see.

Shorten, a known deal-maker, has a challenge in getting the states to re-engage in supports for people with disability outside the NDIS, including in areas like education and community recreation and sports programs. The states have essentially vacated the field in providing services for people with disability, leaving the minister to describe the NDIS as “the only lifeboat in the ocean”.

Despite projected scheme numbers tracking to more than a million in a decade, Shorten says he won’t be altering the NDIS eligibility requirements.

The original design projected numbers would max out at about 410,000. But the minister does need to bring a focus to the number of children with autism finding their way on to the scheme. One in 10 boys in Australia aged 5-7 are NDIS participants. Around half the 20,000 people who joined the NDIS in the December quarter were children under seven. And once people are on the scheme, they tend not to leave.

Shorten does say he is concerned about relying solely on a diagnosis of autism for eligibility to the scheme, and some children with developmental delay should be using other supports.

In reiterating that the NDIS has had a profoundly positive impact on hundreds of thousands of people with disability and their families, Shorten is right. Yet the job is ahead to reset the scheme and bring rigour to the spending.

Doing so will make it sustainable for those who really need it.