‘Coalition vandalism puts NDIS at risk’, says Bill Shorten

The National Disability Insurance scheme has reached the point of existential risk, opposition NDIS spokesman Bill Shorten warns.

Opposition NDIS spokesman Bill Shorten. Picture: Sarah Matray

The National Disability Insurance scheme has reached the point of existential risk, opposition NDIS spokesman Bill Shorten warns.

He says the NDIS, the “last volley from the era of big public ideas”, had been vandalised by Liberal governments since 2013 under cover of keeping the scheme sustainable.

In an address to the National Press Club on Wednesday, Mr Shorten will say the Morrison government’s plan to introduce mandatory independent assessments by a panel of health professionals to determine an applicant’s eligibility for an NDIS package and its value should be immediately scrapped.

“The NDIS has been chaperoned by the cavalier vandalism of successive Liberal governments. After eight years of vandalism, I’m sorry to say, the ongoing existence of the scheme as we know it is at risk,” Mr Shorten will say. “Under the Morrison government, it is presently at risk from gross neglect and, worse, direct attack,’’ he says.

“Those currently in charge of the scheme see people with a disability as numbers on a page, data in a system. We see a thriving and resilient community who know their experience better than anyone.”

The $21bn a year cost of the NDIS, which provides “reasonable and necessary” disability support for 430,000 Australians, a number expected to rise to 530,000 in two years, has increased by 23 per cent annually for the past two years, raising concerns about its sustainability.

Proposed legislation to change the way NDIS participants are assessed, which would require an independent assessment from health professionals contracted by the government rather than the applicant’s own clinician or health team, has incensed the sector.

Disability advocates say it is little more than a cover for cutting costs from the NDIS. They also say the proposed application process, which would take an average three hours to complete, would be less likely to capture all the needs of an applicant than an application made in conjunction with a health professional who has an ongoing relationship with them.

And they say it is daunting for applicants and their families to go through the process, with concerns they may be unable to articulate all the supports they need.

New NDIS Minister Linda Reynolds has committed to pausing the passage of the legislation until a trial of the system is finalised and has undertaken a full round of consultations with the sector.

Yet several witnesses to a parliamentary inquiry into the NDIS have called for the trial itself to be abandoned, saying participants had been left confused and shaken by the process.

Mr Shorten said a Labor government would return people with lived disability experience to the board and senior management of the National Disability Insurance Agency, which runs the scheme.