NDIS Minister Bill Shorten outlines new vision for disability scheme after release of landmark review

An entire new disability support system that sits outside the NDIS is set to be established after a landmark review warned it was essential to saving the scheme from budget ruin. The process for assessing participants for taxpayer-funded supports and the criteria for joining the NDIS are also set to be shaken up under a five-year blueprint to transform the scheme. NDIS Minister Bill Shorten has assured participants and their families “nothing will happen overnight” as he promised there would be no return to “the bad old days” that pre-dated the Commonwealth-run system. But key questions remain unanswered, with Mr Shorten admitting no modelling had been done on the number of participants that could be shifted from NDIS to the new second-tier support system. The independent review was released on Thursday morning — a day after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese brokered a breakthrough funding deal with premiers and chiefs ministers to reset the scheme. The NDIS has surged out of control in recent years, prompting the Federal Government to commit to an 8 per cent spending growth target to avoid the scheme’s cost ballooning to $100 billion per year in a decade’s time. The 338-page review found one of the major factors underpinning the scheme’s rapid growth was that it had become an “oasis in the desert” — the only option for disabled people seeking support. The review recommended governments establish a new tiered system to support not just the 630,000 participants in the scheme but also the roughly 2.5 million disabled people under 65 outside it. Those who meet the NDIS criteria would still receive individualised taxpayer-funded budgets. Under the proposed new model, “foundational supports” would be available to everyone else. Supports should be targeted at children with autism and developmental delay at schools and child care, as well as people with psychosocial disabilities such as bipolar. Exactly what the supports would be remains unclear, but the review suggests it could range from basic information to things like assistance with cooking and cleaning. “These supports would create a continuum so there would not be such a focus on being ‘in’ or ‘out’ of the NDIS,” Mr Shorten said. National Cabinet this week agreed to design and fund the new system, with the costs to be split 50:50 between the States and the Commonwealth. Alongside foundational supports, the review recommends better screening and early intervention to pick up children showing signs of autism or developmental delay — reducing their reliance on the NDIS in the future. Children aged 7 to 14 account for almost 30 of all scheme participants. Entry to the scheme should be based on the level of a person’s impairment rather than a medical diagnosis, the panel concluded. It recommends scrapping automatic access to the NDIS just on the basis of a diagnosis. Once on the scheme, participants would be put through a “comprehensive” assessment from an NDIS employee to determine their specific funding needs. So-called “navigators” would help guide them through each step. The opposition seized on the new assessments proposal, arguing it was effectively a re-heated version of the Morrison Government plan that Mr Shorten helped kill off. Mr Shorten rejected comparisons with the former Government’s so-called “independent assessments”, pointing to key differences including the length of the assessment. “The only word in common between this proposal, and perhaps what our predecessors tried to inflict, is the word assessment,” he said. The review recommends a transition period of at least two years before participants are put through the new assessment process. That timeframe means there would be a gap before the full rollout of “foundational supports”, raising the prospect that an NDIS participant could lose funding without having anything to fall back on. Asked if he could guarantee that nobody would be left behind during the transition, Mr Shorten said: “That hasn’t been my track record in the 15 years that I’ve been in politics”. Disability advocates have welcomed the review’s findings — in particular the push to establish a second tier of support. “What this independent review of the NDIS has shown us is the potential to transform what it means to be a child or a young person living with disability in Australia,” Children and Young People with Disability Australia chief executive Sky Kakoschke-Moore said. People with Disability Australia president Nicole Lee was confident that the introduction of “foundational supports” would not be used as cover to dump participants from the NDIS.