Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Cunningham for moving this motion. It is something that so many of us deal with on a day-to-day basis in our offices, working hard to support people for whom the NDIS is still not the perfect system, although we all acknowledge what a difference it makes to people when it works well. It's been a priority for the Albanese government, in the last six months, to really try and get to the bottom of what the barriers have been in the NDIS that have made it one of the biggest challenges that my office has experienced in the six years I've been in parliament. There are many things we have done. One of them is install new leadership. Really, it is not just the leaders but what you task them to do—that is, to put people at the heart of the system. People with disability are reason that we are here, and the systems are designed to work around them.

Another key priority has been around reducing the number of people with disability who are essentially trapped in hospitals. They are medically fit but have been unable to get out of hospital. For example, there were 1,400 people with a disability stuck in hospitals in August instead of being discharged once they were fit. We all know that that time in hospital results in care being delivered in completely the wrong setting at a higher cost, and it blocks other people from being able to use those beds. It costs the health system hundreds of millions of dollars each year and that is just the Commonwealth cost, let alone what the states pay.

The NDIA has been implementing our initial plan with some early successes. In October the NDIS minister announced that 50 hospital liaison officers nationally are now working with states and territories to, as he describes it, wrangle support and accommodation teams so that things are moving. In addition, there are 54 dedicated specialist hospital discharge planners and they have greater powers to be able to get things done at a local level. The consequence of this is we have reduced the average wait time for an NDIS participant to leave hospital from 160 days to just 39. There are also more than 300 people not on that list that we had in August, that 1,400 kind of stuck-there list. So we are getting better outcomes for patients. That is one area we have focused on.

Another area is the backlog of cases before the AAT. It is horrific how people have had to go through massive legal hoops just to get a package they deserve. The AAT work has also made a difference to the backlog. Under the previous government there had been a 400 per cent increase in the number of cases being referred to the AAT, leaving a legacy of 4,500 cases in the backlog, people who were waiting for their day in court. We commenced an independent expert review process to address the poor experience of the NDIS participants who had a dispute and we are getting on top of that backlog. Over 2,000 inherited legacy cases have now been resolved. That will be 2,000 families whose lives will be a whole lot better. We have also funded 380 new positions in the NDIA to get better and faster planning decisions for people with a disability, which supports their families, their carers, their providers and all the workers. So there are a number of things we have done but there is clearly more to do.

Our root-and-branch review will make a difference. I commend groups like the group I work with very closely, Kindship, who did a survey of their members to tell me all the things that were still needing to be done. We know there is still a long list of issues that have not been resolved in our first six months, things that have been plaguing the system for nearly a decade. I look forward to working through those issues with my constituents.

I have a huge belief in the ability of the National Disability Insurance Scheme to transform people's lives, to allow older parents of people with a disability to sleep at night knowing that there is a plan in place for their child's future. There is so much we can do, and I know there is goodwill in this place to get it done and to support the workers who make this system a viable system.

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