Disability policy ignores millions of people outside NDIS

Government policy thinking was too ‘compartmentalised’, leaving people with disability too often on the outside, Disability Discrimination Commissioner Ben Gauntlett warns

Disability Discrimination Commissioner Ben Gauntlett. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

Australia’s disability strategy has been too focused on the National Disability Insurance Scheme, and the millions of people living with disability have too often been left out of broader policy development in the areas of health, housing, education, employment and transport, the nation’s leading disability advocate warns.

In a major speech to a disability conference on Tuesday, Disability Discrimination Commissioner Ben Gauntlett will say the NDIS has become synonymous with disability policy over the past 10 years, at a significant cost to all people living with disability now and in the future.

“What has been lost in societal debate is that 4.4 million people presently live with disability, 80 per cent of which is acquired and 80 per cent is invisible,” Mr Gauntlett will say.

“In a sense, almost every policy touches upon disability – education, health, employment, transport, housing, justice – but disability is often an afterthought.

“We compartmentalise the issue so people with disability need to argue each time for ­support, which is not a healthy ­approach.”

Mr Gauntlett, who has a disability due to a spinal injury suffered as a teenager when playing rugby, argues it is time to broaden the thinking around disability ­policy formulation.

“Only 10-15 per cent of people who live with disability were ever intended to be on the NDIS, but it has become the only potential source of support for too many,” he will say. “What has been missing for the past decade was a focus on building ‘Tier 2’ supports – all those community-based services for all people with disability. This needs to urgently change.”

Mr Gauntlett’s challenge to the Albanese government comes as it commits to cracking down on organised criminal fraud being perpetrated on the NDIS, which Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission chief Michael Phelan has said could be siphoning off as much as 20 per cent of its current $30bn cost.

Mr Phelan told Nine news­papers that those behind the rorting were “fair dinkum, serious and organised crime crooks otherwise involved in serious drug trafficking (and) extortion”.

NDIS Minister Bill Shorten said the government would move to set up a multi-agency task force, including police and NDIS investigators, to crack down on the criminals.

“I’m hugely concerned that there is a fraud epidemic of people skimming money, and (the money) is not getting to where it was meant to go,” he said.

Mr Shorten said the rorting had been allowed to grow under the previous government, which he said took its eye off the ball.

NDIS Minister Bill Shorten. Picture: Alison Wynd

“I think the fraud squads, the investigation teams in the NDIS, were underfunded. I think the Safeguards Commission didn’t receive sufficient funding until very late in the piece.

“I don’t think there was enough co-operation between the National Disability Insurance Agency and other parts of government. Essentially, the left hand didn’t know what the right hand was doing. And in all of these loopholes, the crooks and opportunists were able to sneak through,” Mr Shorten said.