WA disability advocates push Barnett government to sign up with NDIS

Disability advocates in WA warn they could end up with the worst disability funding system in Australia.

Disability Services Minister Donna Faragher has not ruled out WA taking the best aspects of both schemes.

Disability advocates in Western Australia say they could end up with the worst disability funding system in Australia if the Barnett government fails to sign up with the National Disability Insurance Scheme, the last state to do so.

On the eve of a promised announcement by the WA government this month about whether it will sign a bilateral agreement and join the national scheme, it is persisting with its own WA NDIS trial, formerly called My Way. Currently 2284 individuals are signed up for the WA trial, with over 1000 more individuals to be signed up in three outer Perth suburbs in coming months.

In April, both WA and federal disability ministers announced an extension of existing federal NDIS and My Way trial sites, aimed at comparing cost and efficacy of both schemes, for another 12 months until July next year.

Disability Services Minister Donna Faragher has not ruled out WA adopting its own pick-and-reject model, taking the best aspects of both schemes. In July she said the NDIS scheme in WA “will be nationally consistent in relation to eligibility, portability and reasonable and necessary supports.”

Prominent advocate Samantha Connor, a former member of the ministerial advisory council on disability, says disabled people in WA may be deprived of control and choice of service if WA decides to stick largely with elements of its own funding model.

A major sticking point has been the WA scheme’s heavy reliance on local area co-ordinators, or LACs, to act as a contractual bridge between disabled people and the services they need.

Disability consultant Zel Iscel, who is visually impaired, said local groups had fought hard for choice and control “and that’s what the national scheme offers.” She said a major difference lay in the NDIS offering a choice of planner to help select services, while LACs were allocated and could not be changed.

“With the NDIS the final contract is between the individual and the service,” she said. “If you’re not happy, you can stop paying them. With the WA scheme, you have to go back to your LAC if you’re not happy. A lot of people I know have to wait a long time to get what they want.”

“I don’t see the point of having two systems, it seems superfluous,” she said.

The WA group Nodisadvantage has posted ‘Ten Reasons WA Might End Up With the Worst Disability System in Australia.’

“There are reports that budget holders are directly advising existing clients what they can and can’t ask for, and evidence of gatekeeping,” it says on its website. “Who holds the power and who will hold it in the future?”

Ms Connor said Premier Colin Barnett had sought to reassure advocacy groups. “He told us the state government would pick the best bits of both schemes, but we say ‘show us what those best bits will be’,” Ms Connor said.

“There is no indication that disabled people will be able to look at what is proposed and decide what is best for us,” she said. “We are now at risk of having the worst system in Australia if it is not as good as the Federal system.”