Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

The answer to that question is, in short, that the needs assessment tool or tools will be developed through an extensive consultation and co-design process, which will involve deep engagement with the disability community and relevant experts. There will be an iterative process of design and testing with people with disability as well as with health and allied health professionals and people with technical expertise in the development of needs assessments.

One of the major changes, of course, proposed by the NDIS review was to create a new budget based planning framework, which will be based on an assessment of need at a whole-of-person level rather than for individual support items. The review also recommended what it called a trust based approach, where participants are provided with a flexible budget and there is a focus on providing guidance and support to participants to spend their budget appropriately. The new needs assessment set out in the bill is consistent with the recommendations of the NDIS review about how a participant's support needs should be assessed. It will result in a budget being allocated to each participant on the basis of their assessed needs, with participants having the flexibility to purchase a range of supports rather than a prescriptive line-by-line plan.

The needs assessment will be conducted in accordance with an assessment tool or tools, as I indicated before, that will be carefully co-designed—not in a hurry—with people with a disability and a range of relevant experts. The tools will be the subject of extensive consultation and discussion to ensure that they can assess every participant's needs to take into account, of course, many participants' multifaceted and diverse experiences of disability. Once that process has occurred, the assessment will be made transparent, and the process will be made transparent through a legislative instrument. These steps ensure it is an entirely different process to the previously proposed independent assessments. I hope that assists.