E&OE TRANSCRIPT
SUBJECTS: Best Life House; funding of the NDIS
GRAHAM PERRETT MP: Welcome to Eight Mile Plains, to Best Life House where we met Lara, Will and Finn and some of the people who care for them and their parents in a model house in terms of training people for independence and training people to care for people who want to be independent. It's great to be here with my good friend Bill Shorten, who's been meeting with some of the parents and some of their children. And I'll hand over to Bill.
BILL SHORTEN, MINISTER FOR THE NDIS AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES: Great. It's great to be here at Graham Perrett in Moreton, really great to be here at Best Life to understand how families from the ground up are giving their kids the best possible lives with the support of the National Disability Insurance Scheme. Today I've heard an exciting proposal of making sure that kids with a disability are supported in their school years to learn some of the skills of independent living, and it's pretty fantastic to see it. And fingers crossed that the Queensland Budget can deliver some further support to Elaina's House, where we can train kids and train their support workers in the skills of encouraging young Australians to have a more independent life. But this initiative is being supported at the national level by last Tuesday's budget. The NDIS is here to stay. We want to make sure, however, that every dollar is getting through to the participants and their families for whom the scheme was originally designed.
We want to make sure that this scheme is working in the best interests of participants. Will and Lara and Finn, by virtue of their impairment, shouldn't be excluded from some of the experiences which other Australians take for granted. They and their families and their supporters have been working hard to set them up and give them an opportunity in life which might otherwise be denied to them. The Federal Government is investing $732 million to make sure that the administration of the National Disability Insurance Scheme delivers on the promise of a better scheme for participants. We're optimistic that if we have a better participant experience, then what will happen is that it'll help moderate some of the cost growth in the scheme, but through the lens of the best interests of the participant. Some really exciting work being done here on the ground, a message we'll carry back to Canberra as we travel around Australia. Impairment is a fact of life. It can happen at birth; it can happen in the blink of an eye on a country road; it can happen through the onset of ageing, but it shouldn't define a person's opportunities in this lucky country. Labor's committed to making sure the NDIS helps profoundly and severely impaired Australians have a better life and that's indeed what this scheme is doing here. Happy to take any questions.
JOURNALIST: After last week's budget, should families and participants be worried about the NDIS?
SHORTEN: No. In fact, they should be relieved that at last, after ten years, the scheme's got political support, which has never had in the past. The message out of the budget last week is that we want the NDIS to make sure that every dollar is getting through to the participant. The NDIS is here to stay. It hasn't been well run in the past, but even despite that, it's been changing lives for the message participants and their families should not be worried by making the scheme better for participants.
JOURNALIST: The National Cabinet agreed on the NDIS financial sustainability, to cap costs at about growth of 8% over some time. Did the states in that agreement agree for more cost sharing when it comes to disability services?
SHORTEN: With respect, I just want to change some of the, or correct some of the language you use and there’s a lot of language and jargon in NDIS, the NDIS is not capped. What we have said, and what the National Cabinet said, is that if the reforms which we're doing federally roll through in the next three years, we are forecasting a target of growth of 8%, but if it's above or below that, so be it. But we think that if you run the scheme better, if we get the shonks out of the system, if we get the service providers who are overcharging or under delivering, if we make sure that the planning process is better, that you've got a more empathetic bureaucracy and public service, if you've got the service providers who treat people with disabilities as human ATMs are given the short shrift out of the scheme, we think we can get to 8%. Now the point about the states is yes, I do believe states need to step up. Now the states would say they're doing enough, fine, that's a legitimate debate. We also need councils to step up and we need the private sector to step up and other federal government departments need to step up, as does my own agency. The NDIS was never designed to be the only lifeboat in the ocean. Not every Australian living with a disability was intended to be on the scheme. We've got to make sure that there are supports for people with mental illness who are not so sufficiently impaired that they need to be on the NDIS, but there's still support for them. We need to make sure that the school experience for kids with a disability is one of enablement and empowerment, not of isolation and bullying. So, we've got to make sure our health system treats people better. So, it's a collective effort, as they say, it takes a village to raise a child. It takes a community to support Australians with disability. It's a joint effort. I'm confident the states have got good will. Clearly, we do in the Albanese government and we're just going to work with people for their best interests.
JOURNALIST: I guess we've seen through forums like the Disability Royal Commission, the lack of information sharing across agencies at a state level, you know, misconception of what the NDIS or the NDIA is for, but on the information sharing, I guess what is the Federal Government doing in that space? And are you concerned about the lack of information sharing across agencies and perhaps from providers to the NDIA as well?
SHORTEN: Listen, some of the issue of information sharing, which has been covered by your paper, has been clearly in the realm of states and child protection. But silos where departments don't talk to each other is a problem as old as Federation, but that doesn't mean that we should accept it going forward. In the budget which we announced last Tuesday, there's an extra roughly $140 million for the safe federal NDIS regulator to make sure they can do their job better. At the end of the day, what we've got to do is make sure that when you're supporting a vulnerable child or a vulnerable person with an intellectual disability, for example, but they just don't have one line of communication, one relationship. One of the challenges is to make sure we can engage the community in looking after each other. The warning signs are always there. The question is, how do we make sure that all of the agencies are talking to each other properly? And we're certainly up for working with other people to protect people with disability. But the federal government can't do this alone. There are clearly some responsibilities which are in the state domain, and we just need to make sure that we're giving them information, but other people are also doing their job.
JOURNALIST: You mentioned about their potentially being shonks in the industry and you want to crack down on that.
SHORTEN: I do.
JOURNALIST: How? How will you crack down?
SHORTEN: People say that the scheme needs to be better, and I think one of the ways we make the scheme work better in the interests of participants is we stamp out what I call unethical behaviour. At one end unethical behaviour is just straight criminality. I am aware of situations which we intend to close down, where some service providers, there's many good ones, but some service providers basically get someone who has an NDIA package and they cut them off from any other relationship and they effectively are mining these packages for their own benefit, not the benefit of the participant. And that's straight illegal in my opinion. But then you've also got situations where some service providers, some contractors, even some tradies, when they find out someone has an NDIS package, they jack up the price. I know it may be part of the great Aussie tradition to say, oh, its government money, so let's get in for our chop. That's got to stop. When someone over charges a person on NDIS package and said there's a higher NDIS rate for, you know, bathroom modifications through to assistive technology that's just not on. You're robbing from the disabled, you're robbing from people with disability. An NDIS package isn't an infinite wishing well. There's only a certain amount of money people have. And if you're over servicing or overcharging or if you're just jacking up your prices because you think you can, you want a veranda around the second floor of your sunny Coast beach house because you're a service provider, just get out of our scheme. We don't want you. You're not welcome. Thanks.