E&OE TRANSCRIPT
SUBJECTS: NDIS Section 10 lists; NDIS reform
PAUL CULLIVER, HOST: Bill Shorten is the Minister for the NDIS and joins you on the line this afternoon. Minister, good afternoon.
BILL SHORTEN MINISTER FOR THE NDIS AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES: Good afternoon, Paul.
CULLIVER: Why did the Government need to publish a list that specifically enumerated what is a support and what is not a support for the NDIS?
SHORTEN: Because the, first of all, the list reflects most customer practice, which has been in place for a decade. But the fact of the matter is that, and most people's plans are not going to change, so, I think there's a fair bit of anxiety, which is understandable when there's any talk of any change. I think the reality is far less confronting. But having the information about what's in and what isn't in one place is long overdue, frankly.
CULLIVER: Okay. Can you give us an idea of some of the things that say you've had to rule out?
SHORTEN: Sure. When it comes to accommodation, we won't be paying rent, mortgage repayments, standard home security and maintenance costs, pools, pool heating, spa baths, saunas, steam rooms. We won't be doing the water, gas and electricity bills, council rates. What we will do in accommodation is support that helps participants find or keep appropriate accommodation, supports the design, change or modify participants house to let them live as independently as possible. We'll also be providing specialist disability accommodation for participants who are eligible. So, that's an example. Another example is probably one where there's therapies involved, where, frankly, some therapies are evidence based, but others are not. And so we're not going to do crystal therapy or clairvoyance or tarot card reading. Doesn't mean people can't use it. We're just not going to pay for it on the NDIS. We're not going to pay for people's holidays overseas.
CULLIVER: And in terms of all those things you've just listed that are now specifically ruled out, are you saying that they previously have been claimed, have been paid for using the NDIS?
SHORTEN: This list reflects the experience of a decade where people had tried to claim these things, yes. But having said that, most of the NDIS, the $41.4 billion that we invest in 660,000 people, which is achieving a lot of great results for people, pays the wages of disability carers, pays the fees for allied health professionals. One of the things which is very important here to know is that the NDIS, when I became the Minister, I realised was in danger of becoming the only lifeboat in the ocean, that a lot of other departments and agencies and levels of government would say, oh, if you're on the - that's an NDIS matter. So, we've seen this in schools all around Australia where costs that should be paid by the Education Department are being, trying to put on the NDIS tab. The NDIS was never designed to replace mainstream services in Australia. It's a personal budget which is unique to the individual. The average personal budget is tens of thousands of dollars and it's helping a lot of people get some great outcomes.
CULLIVER: I mentioned on the radio about half an hour ago, Minister, that you'd be on the radio and certainly many people on the NDIS have already been texting in questions that they have about this Scheme, 0487 991 233 and they certainly reflect a lot of the concerns that people have. Louise on Wabako country says, I don't understand why the information wasn't made available sooner to allow time for details to be communicated by support coordinators to participants? Why the two day timeline here? You announced the list on Tuesday. It's been enacted today.
SHORTEN: Now let's deal with this two day fiction, and I'm going to be very straight speaking here. We've received 7000 submissions about this list. So, the idea that it's been some sort of magic trick where we've gone, tada, you know, two days before they come into force is not true. 7000 people managed to put in their views, many of the organisations, including some who've been interviewed. Most of these items which are out, have been out for a long time. We've been consulting about the future of the Scheme every day since I became the Minister in the end of May 2022. So, listen we can hide behind process and say there's not enough time, that also the process complaint, also it ignores all the consultation that has happened. It's ignored all the debate in parliament that has happened. It's ignored - a lot of these items are just the status quo, frankly, just in one spot. What it also does is it fails to understand that we're going to give participants a transition period of twelve months. If you are getting a therapy on the Scheme now which isn't listed as something which will be a support in the future, if it's in your plan, it'll stay in your plan till your plan finishes. We also have an evidentiary committee. If people genuinely think that something should be there which isn't there, well, then we'll just put it to the evidence committee of experts. It's also a transitional instrument, so, without boring your listeners to death, if the list does have a mistake and no one's infallible, and, you know, I know El Gibbs, and no one thinks that I don't listen to people in the disability sector, except some of the most, you know, extreme critics. If there is a genuine mistake, we'll just fix it. The point about it is, though, that this Scheme, when I became Minister, in the previous year before I became Minister, grew at 23%. Yeah, I love the Scheme. I'm going to make sure the Scheme survives, but I don't love the Scheme and make it survive by pretending that the status quo was working exactly as it should, because there are rorts out there. Some people in the disability sector never want me to talk about the problems because they say that trashes the value of the Scheme. Aussies aren't dumb. They know on one hand the Scheme's amazing for a lot of people, but they know on the other hand, there are some providers having a lend of the Scheme, and we're just cleaning that up.
CULLIVER: Okay, so -
SHORTEN: Thank you for letting me get that all out of my system.
CULLIVER: No happy to hear it, and I think it's very useful information. And I know that people on the NDIS are appreciating the detail that you're providing today, Minister. So, just to be clear about this, though, if someone, say, makes a mistake, or I can even imagine in a scenario where an unscrupulous provider, and obviously we've been talking about the fact that there are people doing dodgy things, you know, with this system, say if they entice someone to use a support that they perhaps claim is under the NDIS, and in fact is not, what happens then? If someone wants to use the NDS to pay for something and they can't?
SHORTEN: Well, this goes to the transition period. The transition period - first of all, if there are items under $1,500 and mistakes are made, we're going to educate rather than say there's a debt. There are some matters, though, which should never be allowed and are not going to be allowed, like drugs, vapes, alcohol, I mean, illicit substances, alcohol, sex services, you know, these things are not allowed now. Booking a holiday to Tokyo is not allowed now. But if a service provider is manipulating a participant, we're not automatically, we're not dumb. We can work out that where a participant's been shanghaied. In fact, one of the changes which we put into the law which triggers us being able to issue a list is that in the past, if a debt was incurred, the Government was not allowed to take into account the person's disability. Now we can. I organised a class action on Robodebt where the previous government said there was billions of dollars of debts owed by recipients of welfare, and it was just welfare blaming. It was shonky, it was illegal. We won the class action. We've done the Royal Commission, the scheme got scrapped. In this Scheme, we haven't booked a single dollar of debt. In other words, we - none of this is about driven by debt recovery per se. It's about making sure that the Scheme is run appropriately so there's plenty of flexibility to work through with participants. You know, we've got a - I would encourage your listeners, there's a 1800 800 110 number, 1800 800 110. At 2:00pm today, we'd had 105 calls. You know, there'll be plenty of rubbish, I nearly swore, but rubbish on social media, saying, oh, this is right or this is wrong. Just ring the Agency, find out what's in, what's not. We'll give service providers a 30 day grace period to work it out. So, when people say, oh my world has changed and everything's a disaster in two days time, I understand anxiety because people with disability have had to fight hard to get what they've got in their families. But what I'm trying to do is actually make sure the Scheme is there in the future and not taking some of our medicine and sorting this stuff out. I think most Australians will be shocked to know that 92% of service providers are not registered and that in the past, people were able to put invoices in with no explanation and the principal system was just too easy to drive a truck through. So, we have to get a bit more specific, as a guidance.
CULLIVER: Minister, I will thank you for not swearing on my radio program. Really, really do appreciate that.
SHORTEN: Yeah sorry, it’s about social media trolls, sorry.
CULLIVER: You are hearing from the Minister for the NDIS, Bill Shorten, this afternoon, talking through this list of supports and certainly list of what is not a support under the NDIS. A text message that I wanted to read to you here, Minister, saying, will there now be a total funding package? The question asks, does this mean the core and capacity budgets will be collapsed and able to be used flexibly? If so, does this apply to existing plans or only new ones?
SHORTEN: They won't apply to existing plans, but what we did when we came in, we did a range of things, but one is, I promised we'd do a full review of the existing system and what we found out. So, we started a review in about October, November of 2022, and everyone got a chance to participate in that. It went for a year and the review came back with several observations without boring you about all 26 recommendations and 137 sub recommendations. A couple of core themes. One is the NDIS shouldn't be the only lifeboat in the ocean. So, we need to work for services for people who have a disability, who are not eligible for the NDIS but still need some support. The other thing they said is you've got to redo the personal budget setting process. See, this is 661,000 individual budgets. No country in the world attempts to try and be as this, you know, pro the individual and giving people choice and control. But the way that budgets were set in the past, the review said, was very adversarial. People could, you know, it was like a second full time job. People reported to me that they'd do a good interview, but then when they got the plan, they'd feel they got someone else's plan. So, we - over the next twelve to 18 months, we're going to co design and consult to do a top down plan where we look at a person's whole needs and allow them more flexibility. So, short answer to your questioner is yes for future plans, after we've co designed and worked out what the budget tools and needs assessments tools are. Existing plans remain as is.
CULLIVER: All right. And just finally, I think you paid mention to the foundational supports already. I know that negotiations are ongoing with the state and territory governments over what will be supported for people that are not on the NDIS. How is that negotiation shaping up?
SHORTEN: That's being run by, you know, governments have demarcations and Ministers and portfolios. That's being led by my colleague Amanda Rishworth, and she's doing a lot of work with Kate Washington, who's the member for Port Stephens, and the Minister for Disability in the NSW Government. That's moving along. What we've got to make sure is that people still eligible for the NDIS get NDIS, but that the NDIS was never meant to be the whole story of inclusion in Australia. It was personal budgets for those who were most profoundly and severely impaired. But there's still millions of Australians with disabilities who do need some interventions. And so the states, the territories, the sector participants, people, the feds, are all sitting down talking through what could be provided in the way of targeted and general services for people with disability in NSW and the rest of Australia without having full the NDIS personal budget. That work is just underway.
CULLIVER: Minister, appreciate your time and look, if you happen to come to Newcastle before the election, please do drop by the studio.
SHORTEN: Count on it. Okay, thank you.
CULLIVER: Minister for the NDIS, the National Disability Insurance Scheme, Bill Shorten, hopefully providing some detail and understanding of this list that has been published.