Sue Boyce (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to speak tonight about a landmark report that was released this week—the draft report of the Productivity Commission into longterm disability care and support. I would like to start by noting the death last week of the famous and outstanding disability theorist and advocate, Dr Wolf Wolfensberger. I noted in one of the many obituaries within the disability community that have been published for him today the comment that some people:

… may not know his name but I would be confident in assuming that, if you believe it is possible for people with disabilities to have a good life in the community, then you have felt his impact.

This man, who developed the principles of normalisation, was in many ways the starting point for where we have gotten to now in looking at a national disability insurance scheme. Dr Wolfensberger, when it was not fashionable or popular, developed the idea that people with disabilities should live in the community and, as far as possible, they should live the same normal lives that a person without a disability did. It was a revolutionary idea at the time, but it is an idea that has grown and has become accepted. Unfortunately, what has not become accepted along with it is the need to fund the care and support that people with disabilities require. Deinstitutionalisation was seen in many cases simply as a cost-saving measure by governments, both state and federal. It was not seen as a way of diverting resources into the community. NDIS Queensland probably speak for everyone in the disability community when they say:

Hard work lies ahead to ensure the public, politicians of all persuasions and the media understand the need for and benefits of social and economic progress for people with disabilities, their families and carers that the National Disability Insurance Scheme would represent.

The scheme itself suggests probably nothing less than a revolution in funding of disability care and support services. The Productivity Commission’s first finding in all their material is:

The current disability support system is underfunded, unfair, fragmented, and inefficient, and gives people with a disability little choice and no certainty of access to appropriate supports.

It is not a ‘system’. This is the beginning of the very voluminous and very detailed report that the Productivity Commission has done. I would like to acknowledge the extraordinarily hard work done by the commission, including Associate Commissioner John Walsh, who was appointed to the commission—he is an actuary; he is a person with a disability—to assist them in undertaking this inquiry.

One of the key findings of the report is that we need to develop two schemes: a national disability insurance scheme, which would probably service about 80,000 people right now but, in the long term, about 360,00 people; and also a scheme to address what is referred to in the report as ‘catastrophic injury’—from all causes: motor vehicle accidents, medical accidents, criminal injury and general accidents that occur in the community and at home—because, as many people would know, right now, depending on which state you have your accident in, and depending on what sort of accident you have, you may receive adequate funding to support you while in other states you will not.

The cost that the Productivity Commission have put on this scheme is, as they point out, quite wide. They say that right now $6.3 billion is spent by the federal and the state governments on disability support. They believe that the real cost in the long term, to do a proper job, will be $12.5 billion—an extra $6.2 billion. As they point out, the costs are going to increase radically anyway, so using an insurance scheme that looks at simplifying the system and making it more efficient will be cost-saving in the long term. Right now we really have no idea what the savings will be in having carers who are able to have jobs and in having people with sufficient support to live decent, healthy and basically normal lives. It will make a huge difference, not just to the individuals, their carers and those around them; but it will also have an impact on the budget if we have people who are able to perform to the best of their abilities because they have the support there.

Another key point that the Productivity Commission makes is that current funding for disability comes from two levels of government, the state and the federal, both of which have different annual budget cycles. It is therefore very hard to give people with disabilities any certainty about whether they will get reasonable care and support over the long run. Currently, supports might be good one year but insufficient the next. One other aspect of the majority of the funding for disability services coming from state governments is that, in the main, disability support systems are not portable. I recently saw a family who live on the Gold Coast but are not game to move their son from his accommodation in Northern New South Wales because there is no guarantee that he would get the same level of support and funding in Queensland that he currently gets in New South Wales. The commission produces dozens of cases around what seems to be a very bizarre situation in modern Australia, where moving states can mean you will get a lower level of help than you have in the past.

The way that the commission suggests that this would be done is by reducing state and territory taxes by the amount of revenue that the states and territories currently provide to disability services. They set out numerous other ways of doing it, but they say that this in their view would be the preferable option because it would lead to more efficient funding of a national disability insurance scheme, with greater certainty for long-run funding and with no greater level of Australia-wide taxes than any of the other options. Compared with most of the alternatives, it would also have a lower risk that jurisdictions would not meet their ongoing commitments. I am very pleased that this is where they have come to.

I would also like to spend a little bit of time looking at the timing that is being suggested. In the view of the Productivity Commission, the NDIS should begin a full-scale rollout in one region of Australia in 2014, with that being extended to cover those in the whole of Australia most in need in 2015 and then progressively expanded to cover everyone with a significant disability by 2018. I appreciate very much the points that they make about the fact that we must not hasten too quickly in this area; that we need to get this right; that we need to fix the dysfunctional system that we have. But I would also like to urge this government to not simply think that having this draft report—which will go to consultation and then become finalised in mid-year—is enough right now. I urge the government to open their hearts and look at the many examples that are given throughout the report of what carers are suffering now. The government needs to look at providing an emergency package of funding that will assist parents, carers and people with disabilities until we can get a scheme like this properly implemented.

I would also like to point out that the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee will be concluding in mid April its inquiry into the planning needs of ageing parents and carers of people with disabilities and I hope that this will be seen as a complement to the Productivity Commission report.