660 000 Australians are participants in the National Disability Insurance Scheme, and 400 000 work in NDIS-related jobs. Our country needs the NDIS, but it’s expanded too quickly in recent years, as state-based services have withered on the vine. 11% of five- to seven-year-old Australian boys, and 5% of five- to seven-year-old girls, are now NDIS participants. At the current rate of growth, its cost could increase to as much as $100 billion a year by 2032. This is simply unsustainable. The Disability Royal Commission, the recent NDIS Review, and the Parliamentary Joint Standing Committee into the NDIS (of which I’m a proud member), have been clear that the NDIS needs significant reform.

The legislation passed yesterday by the House of Representatives is a step towards that reform; it significantly revises the Scheme’s design and delivery. It moves us in the right direction, but much remains to be done to ensure that we ensure choice, control, and access to the reasonable and necessary supports that Australia’s NDIS recipients want and deserve.

In my previous professional life as a paediatric neurologist, I had a lot of experience with the NDIS. I saw its promise and its pitfalls. I saw the young quadriplegic adults able to move out and live independently with their peers for the first time – to spread their wings, find partners, have their own families – but I also saw some providers game the system, usually at the cost of participants. There are individuals – participants and providers- who have taken advantage of the system for personal gain, but there are far more people who are deserving of support but have found the scheme unnecessarily cumbersome, unresponsive, arbitrary, and capricious.

The Bill passed yesterday is the government’s first legislative response to the landmark NDIS Review of 2023, which recommended transformative changes to the planning process and the way that participants in the NDIS receive their funding. The Review also suggested that important policy........

© Pearls and Irritations