Unspent NDIS $1.6bn to bolster Shorten push

Bill Shorten is making the National Disability Insurance Scheme a new focus of the election campaign.

Tanya Plibersek and Bill Shorten with 18mth old Harvey Cresswell while on the campaign trail in Carrick, Tasmania. Picture: Kym Smith

Bill Shorten will attempt to sideline questions over his climate change policy by capitalising on a $1.6 billion underspend in the ­National Disability Insurance Scheme, announcing a secure fund for all future unspent cash and locking in a showdown with states and territories over services if he wins government.

The Opposition Leader will today announce an NDIS Future Fund to hold unspent money at a Melbourne rally planned as part of a grassroots “national day of ­action” in major cities.

Scott Morrison moved days before the budget to ensure an extra $800 million each year was paid to providers of disability services from the NDIS, which, due to delays in the rollout and people using less of their support packages than granted, would have booked a $5bn underspend. Instead, that came in at $1.6bn, which helped prop up the budget bottom line as the Coalition declared the books were “back in black”.

Mr Shorten’s announcement, however, is a concession that delays in the scheme will persist by promising potential future underspends will be quarantined and later spent on the NDIS. “Because of the Liberals’ delays, the caps and the lack of services, more than 77,000 Australians with disability are missing out on the NDIS, and the average recipient is being short-changed by $13,000 a year,” Mr Shorten said.

“And instead of putting their underspend into making sure Australians with disability get the support they need, the Liberals are using it to prop up tax handouts to the top end of town.”

Labor previously voted against a move by then social services minister Christian Porter to legislate an “NDIS special savings account” because it was partly funded by welfare cuts. Its MPs also torpedoed a plan to transfer more than $3bn from the Building Australia Fund to the special account. When the federal government last year announced that money would instead go to a drought fund, Labor MPs claimed it was being taken from the NDIS.

Some of the key issues affecting the scheme are remnants of bilateral agreements signed between states and the commonwealth when Julia Gillard was prime minister. For example, clear responsibilities about who funds what were meant to be worked out just 10 weeks before the first launch sites came online.

Almost six years later, senior bureaucrats at two levels of government are still sorting out what the NDIS should fund.

As part of Labor’s strategy to fix the scheme’s troubles, it says it will “seek agreement from the states and territories for a new National Disability Agreement that sets out the responsibilities of governments in the context of the NDIS”.

“These will include clear and reported targets for employment, education, housing, transport, justice, health and reducing young people in nursing homes,” the platform says.

Mr Shorten will also instruct the National Disability Insurance Agency in charge of the rollout to launch an independent review of decision-making across the country following a litany of accounts of people of similar ages and functional abilities receiving wildly varying support packages.

“Labor will ensure the NDIS has the resources it needs to ­improve the lives of people with disability now and into the future,” Mr Shorten said.