After six days of public hearings, the Senate inquiry into the NDIS amendments tabled its final report on Friday. Most of the critical findings are likely to be ignored by the Albanese government, which has been negotiating behind closed doors with the opposition and seems likely to push its changes through parliament as early as this week.
With hundreds of thousands of vulnerable Australians set to lose their NDIS safety net in the name of cost savings, it’s worth having a closer look at what’s on the table.
Established under PM Julia Gillard in 2013 and championed by Bill Shorten, the National Disability Insurance Scheme has been a flagship Labor achievement, which has undoubtedly transformed many lives. With costs ballooning, the government’s stated intention in its latest reform bill has been to slow the scheme’s rate of growth (supposedly in order to preserve the NDIS in the long term), along the way saving as much as $37 billion over forward estimates.
While the recent Senate inquiry came down broadly in support of the government’s legislative changes, agreeing that it’s in everyone’s interests to have a sustainable NDIS, big question marks remain over eligibility and definitions of disability. Where is the line between disability and medical treatment? If treatments are withdrawn at an early stage, is that going to cost more later in terms of money and quality of life?
Opponents say the government appears to be working backwards from a desired financial target, which relates to a smaller number of NDIS participants (perhaps 300,000 less than now), rather than starting at the correct end of the problem and looking at need.
Despite the government’s claims, it’s not at all clear that other schemes and services are going to fill the breach, particularly in rural and regional Australia.
Social, civic and community participation
Community participation programs are set to be heavily cut, although everyone living with a disability knows that these things are not luxuries. What will it mean if disabled people are no longer properly supported to work, pay taxes, study, volunteer, maintain relationships and live independently?
The philosophical heart of the NDIS was supposed to be about going beyond the old model of doing the bare minimum to keep people alive, instead enabling people with disability to participate in ordinary Australian life on an equal basis. That grand aspirational idea now seems to be sailing towards the too-hard basket, along with the defining mantra of the modern disability movement: ‘nothing about us, without us.’
Another major concern around the government’s NDIS reforms is about much greater ministerial discretion over who does and doesn’t get supported, along with a heavier reliance on Robodebt style automated decision making. So far, algorithms have not exactly covered themselves in glory when it comes to decisions about Australia’s most vulnerable people.
Although the Senate inquiry was set up quickly with little fanfare, over 4,000 submissions from the public were received, including many from people with lived experience of disability.
Greens senator Jordon Steele-John, who uses a wheelchair, described the government’s bill simply as ‘cruel’, but was ultimately outnumbered in his call for the legislation to be withdrawn.
Noting that the NDIS was now costing taxpayers as much as the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme each year, NDIS Minister Jenny McAllister said on the weekend that the government is adamant it can move at high speed to transform the NDIS, even though complementary schemes such as Thriving Kids have not yet been agreed to by all states.
The government claims that alternative systems of support will be in place to catch anyone who falls by the wayside in the NDIS cuts, but the Greens and independents such as David Pocock have suggested that the changes are happening far too quickly.
While supporting system-wide improvements to prevent fraud, Pocock has called for other disability support changes to be assessed on an individual basis rather than imposed blanket style, and has said that if the bill passes parliament he will continue to fight for improvements to disability policy.
As Pocock and the Australia Institute’s Richard Denniss continue to point out, a much more generous NDIS, and more besides, could easily be paid for if Australia had a gas export tax like other energy rich countries, but of course Labor isn’t considering anything as radical or sensible as that. The support of 80 per cent of Australians for this idea is irrelevant compared to the opposition of a few scary multinational companies.
With the support of Angus Taylor’s opposition, the government is expected to push through its cuts to the NDIS later this week.
Originally from Canberra, David Lowe is an award-winning filmmaker, writer and photographer with particular interests in the environment and politics. He’s known for his campaigning work with Cloudcatcher Media.
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