E&OE TRANSCRIPT
SUBJECTS: National Disability Insurance Scheme spending targets
LUCY LOKAN: Dave and I have been joined in studio by our guest. We'd like to welcome the Federal Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme, Bill Shorten. Good morning to you, Minister.
BILL SHORTEN, MINISTER FOR THE NDIS AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES: Hi, Lucy. Hi, David.
DAVID PENBERTHY: Yeah, well I just said on air after the 8:00 news, Minister, that I only just remembered that you're a Collingwood fan.
SHORTEN: Yeah.
PENBERTHY: And then if I'd remembered this yesterday when your office contacted us to say that you were in town, I might have told you to get stuffed.
SHORTEN: Well…
PENBERTHY: It’s good for [indistinct], and I say that with respect.
SHORTEN: Oh no, I say it- I know you are lovers of the sport. It was good for football, close football, isn't it?
[Laughter]
Exciting, it's exciting.
PENBERTHY: It was certainly exciting at our house. The remote control flying across the room.
SHORTEN: Lordy, lordy, lordy.
PENBERTHY: Does the federal government have the power to hold like royal commissions into umpiring and Victorian bias and scheduling games and things like that?
LOKAN: [Laughs]
SHORTEN: Oh yeah, let's chuck in a fair bit of whingeing and dummy spitting.
PENBERTHY: [Laughs]
SHORTEN: We can put you all in jail eventually. It's good for football though, David.
PENBERTHY: I did…
SHORTEN: Isn’t it good for football? It's good for the viewer experience.
PENBERTHY: I’ll lead with my chin there. Hey, we should talk about much more serious things…
SHORTEN: Yeah, that’s serious.
PENBERTHY: ...obviously the NDIS, which is something that- you sort of championed it.
SHORTEN: Yeah, absolutely.
PENBERTHY: You were the big guy behind it. Has the NDIS sort of spun out of control though? Because it feels to me that there are so many things now on the margins, and some of this I say as a parent. Even things like the genetic predisposition in my family towards something as minor as bad handwriting and fine motor skill issues. I know I’ve found it jaw-dropping in dealing with some of the sort of occupational therapy type people around town, getting an NDIS diagnosis for stuff that I regard as sort of first world problems. When you consider what families of kids with Down’s syndrome, cerebral palsy, things like that have to go through, do we need to rein it back in?
SHORTEN: Well, let's go to that very last part of your observation first. It was people with kids with Down’s syndrome and cerebral palsy – the scheme is changing lives. So I don't think the scheme is out of control, but I do think it's been neglected. Understand though, David, when we have these conversations about the NDIS, and I do want to go to your questions of waste and what's happening at the margins. For people who have profound disability, this scheme has been changing their lives. For the people who love them, it's changing their lives. So when we talk about the scheme and say it's out of control, there's a whole lot of legitimate people who panic and say: Oh my god, we're going to lose what we've got, and it's been so hard to get what we've got. So I just want to say the listeners the scheme’s here to stay, but we want to make sure that every dollar gets through to the people for whom the scheme was originally designed.
So I think the scheme shouldn't be put in the too hard basket and saying it's out of control, it's a disaster, we'll all be ruined. But on the other hand, I think we need to make sure that the initial decisions that are being made are correct. We need to make sure that we have a longer term view rather than just giving people annual plans that just becomes a hamster wheel chasing the next annual payment. We need to make sure that there's not price overcharging. I mean, allied health professionals are excellent. They do a brilliant job. But it's fair to say that when it comes to some assistive and adaptive technology, some are services. There's two prices available in this town. There's the non-NDIS price, and then for the same service or product then there's an NDIS price. It's like a wedding tax.
PENBERTHY: Yeah, yeah.
SHORTEN: And we want to stop that.
PENBERTHY: But- because it feels to me that in some sectors it's almost become like a taxpayer subsidised business model for some businesses to sort of try to encourage parents, well, maybe this is the path you could go down and it's a win-win for both of us. And I think, well, it's not a win for the taxpayer, is it?
BILL SHORTEN: Well, I've got to make clear that I think most of what's going on is actually okay, it is legit. But you're pointing to sort of the stories which say that it's some people are having a lend of the scheme. I think some service providers are having a lend of the scheme. There's been no checking of invoices by the agency, or insufficient checking, and we want to sort that out.
We've got to make sure that the services which are being used actually have a benefit for the participant. We've got to make sure there's not an over-servicing where you get more and more hours of service, but it's not making any difference at all. The difficult issue of talking about reforming this scheme is we've got to remember that there are hundreds of thousands of Australians who do live with severe and profound disability, and we want to support them with modest packages of individual support and they can control the resource rather than it being a bureaucracy or a big organisation. But what's happened is that there is unethical conduct going on, and by that I mean there's fraud. There is some fraud. We've got to clamp down on that. There's price overcharging. But another dilemma we have is that because the NDIS now exists, it's like a giant tree. Nothing grows in its shadow. And so I've said in plenty of places that one of the challenges to make sure it's not the only lifeboat in the ocean. If you've got- if you’re parents and you've got a beautiful little child who's three years old, and the child doesn't seem to be taking the developmental journey which you expected, you go to someone and say: Well, what's going on? The problem is there's only the NDIS. So what's happening is that people are referring kids to the NDIS to try and get some OT and speech therapy. So what's happened is that states and other health departments – and by the way, I have to say the South Australian Minister for Disability, Nat Cooke, and the Autism Minister, Emily Bourke, they're actually world class ministers so I'm not blaming them – but there is an issue that the states have retreated from the field of general disability services more than was expected. But I’d pick a hospital, it's not just the states. Once upon a time, people with profound disability would go to the outpatients’ ward of a hospital if they needed a podiatrist. Now I have stories of hospitals saying: Oh, that's an NDIS matter, go and see them. So there's a lot of cost shifting and so the NDIS is in danger of being the only life raft in the ocean.
PENBERTHY: Did you have a bit of a clunky week as Minister with your language around the 8 per cent target, whether it's a hard target or not in terms of cost overruns? Did you need to sort of clarify some of those remarks? Because…
SHORTEN: I accept that not everyone understands the NDIS. We've proposed a target. We're doing two stages of reform, and we've announced in the Budget that we want to have longer term planning, get better decision making in the agency. We want to crack down on the crooks, we want to crack down on the overcharging. We want to have look what's happening in the supported independent living sector and we want the states to do more. But we think with those reforms we can get to an 8 per cent growth rate rather than the growth rate which is about 14 per cent.
PENBERTHY: But is it something you…
SHORTEN: Yeah, I'm coming to it.
PENBERTHY: …you're bound to hit?
SHORTEN: It’s important. But see, the problem in the modern media is everyone wants an answer in three seconds and sometimes life's more complicated than…
PENBERTHY: We give you better than three seconds.
SHORTEN: Well, that's it. But you guys are charming company, so it makes one more garrulous.
LOKAN: [Laughs] Thank you.
SHORTEN: Yeah, it's more about Lucy.
PENBERTHY: But it did seem that you…
LOKAN: [Laughs]
SHORTEN: No, listen. It’s a simple as…
PENBERTHY: But it did seem that you were saying it doesn't matter if we don't hit the target.
SHORTEN: No, it's as simple as this. What I was trying to do is explain the difference between a cap and a target. The reality is that we've got a target of 8 per cent and that is what we're absolutely determined to get to with our reforms. But what also happens is people on the scheme of profoundly disabled say: Oh, does that mean that every year if the scheme uses up all its money by May and not June, that we have to wait for anything till July? It is a target, not a cap. So sure, I am more than happy to pick the words which satisfy the media. But also I've got a bigger audience than just the media. Dare I say it? It's people with disability. And for me, the conversation for reform is about this: We can run the NDIS and make it the world's best scheme for disability so long as all our decisions are made in the best interests of the participants on the scheme. So sure we will get the language right.
PENBERTHY: Just finally, Bill Shorten, I reckon the last time we spoke to you in the studio was when you were running for Prime Minister. Do you still yearn to do that one day?
SHORTEN: No.
PENBERTHY: It's all done in the past?
SHORTEN: No, that's right. It's done in the past. It was a great privilege. It was an unbelievable privilege. My English grandma was a cleaner and a barmaid. She- I had a relative from England who said she just wouldn't believe you were even in Parliament, you know, in our family. And my Aussie family came here as convicts and gold miners, so it is an unbelievable privilege to have put myself forward for the leadership of this nation. We got close, but no cigar.
Now I've got a really unbelievable privilege of helping fix the NDIS. I don't want to- I do not waste a minute of my time thinking about what could have been, but I just want to spend every second of every minute trying to get the NDIS right and government services. And we've got the Robodebt Royal Commission coming down very soon, so that should make interesting reading.
PENBERTHY: Yeah, well I know our former Mornings host, Leon Byner, did a hell of a lot of work on Robodebt.
SHORTEN: He was real- he was a champion for that.
PENBERTHY: It was an absolute disgrace the way those people were treated, so…
SHORTEN: Leon was a champion for the underdog. How is he getting on?
PENBERTHY: He's doing well. Yeah, I spoke to him. He won- he was honoured, deservedly so, a couple of weeks ago in the Australia Day honours.
SHORTEN: Oh, fantastic. I missed that. I must drop him a line.
PENBERTHY: I had a chat to him about it. So it was a well-deserved honour. Bill Shorten, thank you so much for joining us this morning.
SHORTEN: Great to catch up with both of you. Thank you. Cheers.
LOKAN: Thank you, Bill.