Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm proud to have served in the government that established the National Disability Insurance Scheme. The NDIS will go down in history as one of the many great Labor reforms that have shaped Australia. It was Labor that built Medicare, it was Labor that built our social security system and it was Labor that introduced compulsory superannuation. It was Labor that undertook the important economic reforms of the 1980s that contributed so much to Australia's continued prosperity, and it was Labor that built the national broadband network.

Like all these great reforms, the NDIS has had a transformative impact. Like most Australians, I know some NDIS participants personally—in fact, some are family members—and I can see that the NDIS has made a positive and life-changing difference for them. To highlight the difference the NDIS has made for participants, it's worth reflecting on the 2011 Productivity Commission report, Disability care and support. That 2011 report found:

The current disability support system is underfunded, unfair, fragmented, and inefficient, and gives people with a disability little choice and no certainty …

The Productivity Commission report also referred to the '"lottery" of access to services' for people with disability, based on their location or the timing or origin of their disability. At the time the scheme was established, I remember speaking in this place about how people in towns situated on state borders would receive different levels of support based on which side of the street they lived on and how a person with disability waiting for a piece of essential equipment would, if they moved states, have to be shunted to the back of the queue.

Another important highlight of the Productivity Commission report was the lack of control people with disability had over their services and the lack of choice of service providers. Some of the issues raised by people with disability and their families and carers engaging with the Productivity Commission inquiry included long waiting times for equipment or therapists, the requirement to complete long-winded and unnecessary paperwork—sometimes providing the same information multiple times—and the lack of support for adults wanting to move out of home and gain independence. Parents worried about whether their adult children with disability would get the support they needed when the parents died or were no longer able to care for them. People also spoke about having to navigate a maze of supports and how some people with disability got lost in the maze, particularly if they didn't have friends, family, carers or support organisations to advocate for them.

The NDIS, now that it is in place, is not only dramatically improving the lives of people with disability but is also paying dividends in other ways. Better support for people with disability means better physical and mental health outcomes, which obviously reduces the burden on our health system. The NDIS is also improving the ability of people with disability to engage in work, which helps boost productivity and economic growth, as does taking some of the pressure off informal carers such as family members. In this way, the NDIS helps all Australians, not just those with disability.

While the NDIS has been a fantastic life-changing reform for many people with disability, we know that not everyone's NDIS experience has been ideal and that there is always room for improvement. Just like all the other great nation-building Labor reforms I mentioned, the NDIS needs to be adapted and improved over time. We also need to make sure, in the interests of all NDIS participants, their families and their carers, that it remains sustainable. The NDIS is projected to grow to more than one million participants and cost up to $1 billion a year by 2032. Making sure we get the best outcomes for people with disability is why we commissioned the independent review of the NDIS last year.

Over a period of 12 months, the review engaged with around 10,000 people from across Australia. The review's engagement was extensive and wide-ranging. Submissions were received in writing, verbally, by phone, by video, by Auslan, by artwork and even by poetry. People were invited to workshops and meetings to share their experiences and ideas. The review partnered with disability representatives and service organisations to engage, in depth, on topics of interest. Review panel members attended events and forums held by the disability community and providers, and the review also drew on the evidence from previous reviews. The review panel travelled to every state and territory and met with thousands of people, including in remote and regional areas. I commend the review panel, including co-chairs Bruce Bonyhady AM and Lisa Paul AO, PSM for their work on the review and their well-considered and comprehensive report.

After considering all the evidence provided, the review's report delivered 26 recommendations, with 139 action items. The National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Getting the NDIS Back on Track No. 1) Bill implements several priority recommendations of the independent review. The changes made by this bill are broadly categorised under three thematic groups: access, budget-setting, and quality and safeguarding. The bill will provide clarity on who can access the NDIS. It will require the National Disability Insurance Agency to provide participants with a clear statement of the basis on which they entered the NDIS by meeting either the disability requirements, the early intervention requirements, or both. The bill will also clarify and expand the NDIS rules relating to access provisions, including the methods or criteria to be applied when making decisions about the disability and early intervention criteria, and the matters which must or must not be taken into account. The bill will enable better early intervention pathways for people living with psychosocial disability and for children younger than nine years old with developmental delay and disability.

The bill will also improve how NDIS participant budgets are set, making them more flexible and providing clearer information on how they can be spent. It will create a new reasonable and necessary budget framework for the preparation of NDIS participants' plans. Participants will receive funding based on whether they access the scheme on the basis of impairments that meet the disability requirements, the early intervention requirements, or both. A new definition of NDIS supports will provide a clear definition for all participants of the authorised supports that will be funded by the NDIS and those that will not. The bill links the definition of NDIS supports to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and this is the first time parts of the convention have been incorporated into legislation—the first time.

The bill also strengthens quality and safeguards by giving the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commissioner greater flexibility to exercise compliance powers. This is not targeted at the majority of NDIS providers, who are good, honest people, trying to professionally and compassionately support people with disability, but we do have to recognise that there are a few providers who are rorting the scheme, and the government needs the tools to crack on those rorts.

As the minister outlined in his second reading speech on the bill, the government is seeking to achieve four main goals when it comes to reform of the NDIS: that the NDIS provide a better experience for participants; that the scheme be restored to its original intent—to support people with significant and permanent disability; that the scheme be equitable; and that the scheme be sustainable. I do appreciate that there is some anxiety in the community about what sustainability of the scheme means for participants. It's important to understand that under this government the NDIS will continue to grow. Participants will still get a plan based on their support needs, and 'reasonable and necessary' will continue to be the basis upon which support needs are met through the scheme. The bill creates an enabling architecture for the new rules that will give effect to those reforms, which will be developed with the states and territories. The new rules will be co-designed with the disability community, continuing to put the voices of people with disability at the heart of these reforms. This bill is also about setting a pathway towards a unified system of support for people with disability.

The review talked about the NDIS being an oasis in the desert of disability support, and this is clearly not what it is intended to be. To coin another analogy, as the minister has said on a number of occasions, he does not want the NDIS to be the only lifeboat in the ocean. There are approximately 660,000 NDIS participants, but there are estimated to be over four million people with disability in Australia. These people also need to be supported, but it is clearly not sustainable to have every one of them participate in the NDIS. The NDIS must exist alongside accessible and inclusive mainstream and foundational supports. I appreciate the important role that the information linkages and capacity-building grants have had in providing many of these supports.

Recently the government announced $90 million for the recently finalised individual capacity-building competitive grant round and $50 million to offer extensions of up to 12 months for existing grants in the national information program, economic and community participation, mainstream capacity building, economic participation, and building employer confidence and inclusion in disability program streams of the ILC program. I also appreciate the $11.6 million over two years that Minister Shorten and Minister Rishworth announced earlier this year to develop and implement the foundational supports strategy. The review proposed that foundational supports comprise both general supports and targeted supports. General supports could include, for example, community care, assistance with shopping, property maintenance, peer and family supports and early intervention support. Targeted supports should include a focus on supports for specific groups, such as: children, young people and adolescents; people with persistent mental illness; and people with hearing loss. These could include early support services, independence and transition supports, individual capacity building, and aids and equipment.

Foundational supports are an important part of the disability support ecosystem, not just because they provide people with disability the support they need outside the NDIS but also because they support early intervention. They also help to put downward pressure on the cost of the NDIS. If the NDIS is the oasis in the desert, so to speak, then it stands to reason that everyone in the desert will try to get to the oasis. But if some people eligible for the NDIS feel they are receiving sufficient support from mainstream and foundational supports, they will not have to rely on the NDIS. Having said that, the NDIS will be there for them if they need it.

We could think of these supports in a similar way to how we think about the primary healthcare system in hospitals. The hospitals are there for people who need that level of care, but they're usually not the first port of call. The more you invest in primary care services such as GPs, the less people will have to rely on hospitals. A great example of a foundational support is the national assistance card, administered nationally by the Brain Injury Association of Tasmania. I've spoken about the national assistance card in this place previously. It's a tailored card for people with disability to present while out in the community to explain how their disability affects them and what kind of assistance they may need. It's particularly helpful for people who have communication difficulties, are in distress or want to avoid continually having to explain their disability. It is available nationally for people with brain injury and, through a partnership with Autism Tasmania, is being trialled in Tasmania for people with autism.

I've spent some time advocating for BIAT and the national assistance card in particular, and I'm really pleased that this project has been granted an extension of funding which will also allow it to be made available for people with autism nationally. This is excellent news, considering that many people with autism across Australia have contacted BIAT expressing interest in having a national assistance card, even though they are not eligible. This is a great example of the kind of service that is forming a useful component of our foundational support systems and that can hopefully one day have a permanent place in it. It's BIAT's ultimate aim and my hope that this card will eventually become available to people with any psychosocial disability throughout Australia. For example, in addition to brain injury and autism, the card could be very helpful to people with depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, PTSD, anorexia, ADHD, schizophrenia or even dementia.

Labor is committed to getting the settings right to develop a system of disability care and support that works for all people with disability and their family and carers. This includes having a sustainable NDIS that meets the needs of participants and puts people at the centre, complemented by a strong system of foundational supports. Unfortunately, the previous government had very limited interest in the NDIS. They bowed to public pressure to keep it, but their only attempt at any kind of reform was their misguided and disastrous independent assessments policy. That was their only attempt at reform. The bill that is currently before the Senate is a key step in the process of getting the NDIS back on track after a wasted decade under the coalition, and I commend the bill to the Senate.