One of the biggest challenges facing Australia’s National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) is that it has become the primary go-to option for disabled individuals across the country, according to new NDIS Minister Bill Shorten, who said the system was only supposed to help those who were “profoundly impaired and severely disabled.”
The Labor minister is calling for state and territory governments to step up and provide a second-tier of services to take pressure off the system, which is currently seeing costs spiral every year.
“The problem for the NDIS in a nutshell, leaving aside the waste, incompetence, overpayment of consultants, and the fraud, is that this scheme is the only lifeboat in the ocean for Australians who live with disabilities,” he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on June 13.
“What I am saying is that one of the contributing factors is people are doing whatever they can to get into the scheme because it’s a wasteland outside of it.”
Shorten said the new Labor government would be meeting with state and territory leaders to discuss what supports are in place in the education system for children with special needs.
“We do need to talk to the states about what’s happening when a child turns six or seven and goes to the school system. Are there enough supports in the mainstream school system? Are special schools well enough funded?” he said.
Shorten will also begin implementing proposed changes to the NDIS, including bringing disabled individuals onto the National Disability Insurance Agency board, increasing staff levels, removing “barriers” to new entrants, and targeting rooting, particularly from criminal syndicates.
“The same people in organised crime who were taking money out of the family daycare scheme are now moving across into NDIS, obtaining people’s personal information, false invoices, over-padding of bills, ghost payments, and I absolutely want to see all options on the table to make sure we protect taxpayer money.”
NDIS, which former Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard founded, now services around 518,000 individuals, with numbers likely to reach 860,000 by 2030.
However, the increasing participant numbers and a wide array of services eligible for payments under the scheme have contributed to spiralling costs, estimated to reach $60 billion a year (US$42.7 billion) by 2029-30, according to actuarial firm Taylor Fry.
“The most basic activities—like someone coming in to visit and make a cup of tea—you can ask NDIS for funding for that, and if you make a half-decent case, you’re likely to get it,” according to clinical psychiatrist Tanveer Ahmed. “
“A lot of people with a chronic disease that should be largely managed through the public health system—there’s an incentive to put everything on NDIS and get them off their books,” he previously told The Epoch Times.
