ALP conference: NDIS ‘the next cab on state funds rank’

Bill Shorten has foreshadowed a fight with the states over disability funding at the next national cabinet meeting in November.

NDIS Minister Bill Shorten flagged a fight with the states over disability funding, at the next national cabinet meeting in November. Picture: Liam Kidston

The next national cabinet will challenge the states to take more responsibility for disability care, National Disability Insurance Scheme Minister Bill Shorten has revealed.

Mr Shorten said state-run hospitals handballed too many pro­cedures to the NDIS, and had wrongly stopped performing some procedures by insisting the national scheme was responsible.

“Not everything is an NDIS matter,” he told a Labor Enabled event on the sidelines of the ALP national conference in Brisbane.

He gave an example of a child born without an eye who would previously have been fitted with a cosmetic eye at a state hospital, with the procedure funded by the state government.

“We need to restart the debate (about) what does disability inclusion look like (for) people with a disability who don’t qualify for the NDIS,” he said.

Mr Shorten said the next national cabinet meeting, in November, would deal with federal and state funding of the NDIS.

“This is a commonwealth-state project … the NDIS can’t be the only lifeboat in the ocean,” he said. “We need to build that working with our colleagues in state government.”

Mr Shorten reassured people living with a disability that the ongoing review of the NDIS – due to report later this year – would consider eligibility but “that does not mean wholesale people evicted from the scheme”.

He also slammed “pirates and shonks … and criminal gangs” for ripping off the program, as well as unethical service providers who jacked up prices for NDIS clients.

“We want to make sure every dollar gets through to the people for which the scheme was designed,” he said.

Mr Shorten gave an example of physios who charged a 25 per cent cancellation fee to people who couldn’t make their appointments, but hiked the fee to 90 per cent when the patient was an NDIS participant. “It drives me wild … I hate that,” he said.

Mr Shorten said more than 610,000 Australians received support through the NDIS and the NDIS industry employed 300,000 people, compared to the coal industry, which employed 40,000.