Hollie Hughes (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention) Share this | Hansard source

I will stick with needs assessments. Following on from Senator Steele-John, I want to clarify some points. Let's start with needs assessments versus functional assessments. I don't know if anyone really understands the difference, but, for the sake of argument, Senator Steele-John and I have been working on needs assessments being more around accessing the scheme and functional assessments being once you are in the scheme. I'm looking at the advisers as well. Maybe it is the other way around? Okay, so there is a functional assessment to get access to the scheme and a needs assessment once you're in the scheme.

You would think that functional assessments would be undertaken in the majority of instances by people with younger children who have been born with a disability. They would be a majority over those who have acquired disabilities later in life. So, when it comes to functional assessments, I guess the first question to clarify is whether there has been any progression on who is going to fund functional assessments, because throughout the inquiry process that we had—all 5½ days of inquiries that we had on this significant piece of legislation—it was never mentioned that participants or aspiring participants would be paying for these assessments. It was actually put to us by the agency, by the department and by many people who appeared before us that the whole idea behind them was equity of access so that people would not be required to obtain significant numbers of reports—not only paediatric reports but psychology reports, OT reports, speech reports et cetera. Access to the scheme would be around functionality and needs. Is there scope, when it comes to the needs assessments of people who are in the scheme, for that to be covered by part of their NDIS plan, since these people would already have NDIS plans? That's part 1. When it comes to the functional assessments, if that cost is to be borne by the aspiring participant or their family, is there any modelling or anything being done to ascertain what the cost of those assessments would be?

The ABC is not a big fan of mine and normally doesn't say nice things about me, so it's exciting when the ABC writes something positive about me. I take a bit of notice. They have spoken to a number of disability groups who are calling for a pause on this legislation because not once were they advised about the costs possibly being passed on to participants or aspiring participants. So my questions are: Are those who are already participants and are receiving needs assessments able to have their needs assessments covered as part of their plan and their ongoing plan? For aspiring participants and their families, what sorts of costs are they expected to have to pay in a bid to apply to access the scheme?