Speaker 1: I'm Ruby Jones and you're listening to seven AM. The
Speaker 1: federal government says too many children are on the NDIS
Speaker 1: because there's simply nowhere else for them to go. Health
Speaker 1: Minister Mark Butler has unveiled a new plan called Thriving Kids,
Speaker 1: pitched as a way to save the NDIS by bringing
Speaker 1: back mainstream supports for children with autism and developmental delay
Speaker 1: that over time were defunded. But the announcement raises questions
Speaker 1: who decides what counts as mild or moderate when it
Speaker 1: comes to these disabilities and the level of care these
Speaker 1: children need. Today journalist and author Rick Morton on whether
Speaker 1: Thriving Kids will save the NDIS or just shift the
Speaker 1: costs elsewhere. It's Thursday, August twenty eight, So Rick. Last
Speaker 1: week the Minister for the NDAs, So that's Mark Butler.
Speaker 1: He announced this plan, this new scheme called Thriving Kids.
Speaker 2: Children with mild to moderate developmental delay or autism need
Speaker 2: a robust system of support to help them thrive. A
Speaker 2: program for Thriving Kids.
Speaker 1: And he said that that's a key part of the
Speaker 1: government's plan to secure the ndas's future. So maybe we
Speaker 1: can begin by talking about thriving kids. Tell me what
Speaker 1: you know about what it is.
Speaker 3: I think we don't know a lot yet. Mark Butler
Speaker 3: announced Thriving Kids, much to the surprise of almost everyone
Speaker 3: who didn't see this coming, including the states and territories
Speaker 3: with whom the Conwealth is trying to do a deal
Speaker 3: on this kind of support funding outside of the NDAs.
Speaker 3: But what we do know is that for a very
Speaker 3: long time, both the Coalition and now Labor have had
Speaker 3: what they describe as a problem with the number of
Speaker 3: children accessing the National Disability Insurance Scheme. It has always
Speaker 3: been the case that there were more children approaching the
Speaker 3: scheme than the initial modeling suggested, either by the Productivity
Speaker 3: Commission by the allowances made for in the legislation, and
Speaker 3: governments have struggled to figure out what to do with
Speaker 3: that number.
Speaker 2: Diverting this group of kids over time from the NDIS
Speaker 2: is an important element of making the scheme sustainable and
Speaker 2: returning it to its original intent servicing people with permanent
Speaker 2: significant disability.
Speaker 3: There are more than seven hundred and forty thousand people
Speaker 3: on the NDIS now, and children make up just under
Speaker 3: half of that number, and the primary disability for those groups.
Speaker 3: Mary in mind that people could have more than one
Speaker 3: is autism and developmental delay, particularly for children under the
Speaker 3: age of nine, and as Mark Butler points out the
Speaker 3: prevalence of autism and developmental delay, he says across the country,
Speaker 3: wonning ten six year olds is on the NDAs he
Speaker 3: calls that a failure of government. He says, I don't
Speaker 3: think parents that he says, we don't want it.
Speaker 2: Families who are looking for additional supports in mainstream services
Speaker 2: can't find them because they largely don't exist anymore. And
Speaker 2: in that all governments have failed them.
Speaker 3: And so thriving kids is kind of a throwback to
Speaker 3: the past where what they want to do, and this
Speaker 3: is Mark Butler speaking, is to take children with what
Speaker 3: he calls mild to moderate disability. It's quite a controversial concept.
Speaker 3: How do you define what is mild autism or moderate
Speaker 3: autism and divert them from the National Disability Insurance scheme
Speaker 3: with lower intensity support, perhaps some therapy, perhaps, as he says,
Speaker 3: some Medicare line items for allied health, some therapy giving
Speaker 3: them help that isn't to the same standard and according
Speaker 3: to the government, isn't required to the same standard as
Speaker 3: the National Disability Insurance scheme which has as its kind
Speaker 3: of feature individualized support packages one on one for people
Speaker 3: to receive quite intensive assistance with daily living and being
Speaker 3: able to be in the community.
Speaker 2: And frankly, many of those children are being overserviced. The
Speaker 2: extent of therapy provided to those children now in the
Speaker 2: NDIS is extremely high compared to anything that you would
Speaker 2: see in the health system.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's talk about that. What do you think he
Speaker 1: means when he says that, and is there such thing
Speaker 1: as being overserviced?
Speaker 3: I don't know what evidence he's relying on, but there
Speaker 3: is a clinical judgment that is made, and a therapy
Speaker 3: judgment and allied health practitioner judgment that is made where
Speaker 3: they know they will tell you if they think therapy
Speaker 3: is useful or not. I think what Mark Butler was
Speaker 3: trying to say but did not come out and directly say,
Speaker 3: was that he thinks that there are some providers who
Speaker 3: are not expressing that judgment because they're getting paid to
Speaker 3: see the child anyway via the National Disability Insurance Camp
Speaker 3: who makes that judgment in terms of the government, And
Speaker 3: you know, for how many children are they going to
Speaker 3: say you've been over serviced? I'd like to see the
Speaker 3: evidence and the assessment on which they base that, because
Speaker 3: by their own metrics. The National Disability Insurance Scheme in
Speaker 3: their last quarterly report has been absolutely crowing about the
Speaker 3: successes they've had with children in the scheme. It was
Speaker 3: released just a week before the National Profit Club. They
Speaker 3: say children between starting school and age fourteen had improvements
Speaker 3: of more than ten percentage points across all domains. Daily
Speaker 3: living is the strongest one which helps children in their
Speaker 3: kind of day to day life. And so what does
Speaker 3: overservicing mean and does overservicing also mean that children are
Speaker 3: faring better?
Speaker 1: Can we talk a bit more about what the original
Speaker 1: vision for the NDAs was in terms of how big
Speaker 1: it would be versus where we're at now, because obviously
Speaker 1: we hear all the time that the cost of running
Speaker 1: the NDAs has ballooned, it's gone beyond its original intent
Speaker 1: and this is one attempt to save some money. So
Speaker 1: talk to me about I guess how we've gotten to
Speaker 1: where we are.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a great question because there's a little bit
Speaker 3: of blame shifting now going on, I think between the
Speaker 3: federal government and what's happened with the NDIS. So when
Speaker 3: the Gillard government and then the rud government in its
Speaker 3: second iteration, we're desperately trying to get bilateral agreements approved
Speaker 3: between each state and territory and the federal government. They
Speaker 3: made all sorts of deals which I essentially say, yeah,
Speaker 3: by the way, you can close all your existing community
Speaker 3: health support services. They put the numbers in and they said,
Speaker 3: here's how we're going to pay for it. We'll roll
Speaker 3: these programs in, and those programs disappeared. The entire Department
Speaker 3: of Service Delivery disappeared because of the NDS. All of
Speaker 3: community mental health in Victoria disappeared because of the NDIS.
Speaker 3: The Helping Children with Autism Commonwealth package disappeared because of
Speaker 3: the NDIS. I could keep going, better Start for Children
Speaker 3: disappeared because of the NDAs. Partners in Recovery disappeared, and
Speaker 3: the NDAs became as Mark Butler says, the only poured
Speaker 3: in the storm because of those decisions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it sounds like the problems that we're saying now
Speaker 1: were not only foreseeable, but were in some ways kind
Speaker 1: of baked into the system.
Speaker 3: You know, every single person that's on the National Disability
Speaker 3: Insurance Scheme now is there because the legislation allows them
Speaker 3: to be now the government doesn't like the cost of it,
Speaker 3: and the cost of the NDIS has gone up. I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, the product Committy Commission modeled four hundred and
Speaker 3: ten thousand participants originally at a cost of about thirteen
Speaker 3: point six billion dollars a year, and of course, now
Speaker 3: you know, more than a decade later, we've got a
Speaker 3: scheme that's forecast to cost about sixty four billion dollars
Speaker 3: a year. Thriving Kids is a two billion dollar Commonwealth
Speaker 3: commitment which has to be matched by the states and territories.
Speaker 3: So that's a four billion dollar commitment. And so there
Speaker 3: is still going to be money paid to these children,
Speaker 3: maybe not quite as much as it would have been
Speaker 3: in the NDAs, but there will be a whole parallel
Speaker 3: kind of increase in bureaucracy elsewhere, and increase in funding elsewhere,
Speaker 3: and increasing gap fees elsewhere, and so you know, it's
Speaker 3: going to make the NBAS look better in terms of
Speaker 3: pure numbers, but the numbers are still going somewhere else.
Speaker 1: Coming up, how the federal government is strong arming the
Speaker 1: states on disability funding. Can we talk a little bit
Speaker 1: more about the relationship between the federal government and the
Speaker 1: states and territories as they try and get this through.
Speaker 1: We've now recently heard the Treasurer say that the states
Speaker 1: need to kick in this funding matching the federal governments
Speaker 1: or they could risk losing their hospital fundings. So talk
Speaker 1: to me a little bit about that approach and what's
Speaker 1: at risk here if the federal government can't get agreement
Speaker 1: from the states.
Speaker 3: I think there's a broader point here, but they have
Speaker 3: deliberately held up hospital funding in a really broken hospital system.
Speaker 3: The commoal said we're not getting your hospital cash unless
Speaker 3: you do a deal on disability, and that hasn't happened.
Speaker 3: So it got to the point where just before the election,
Speaker 3: the government the Comalth had to institute a rollover of
Speaker 3: the original funding agreement for hospitals of just an extra year.
Speaker 3: They sold it as a big win, saying more cash
Speaker 3: for hospitals, but the reform work is tied to the
Speaker 3: actual new agreement, which has not been done because it
Speaker 3: has been held a negotiating tactic. And I think more broadly,
Speaker 3: this speaks to a concern in the community. So right
Speaker 3: after the election, Mark Butler was made Minister for Health
Speaker 3: and Aging and Disability and the National Disaility Insurance scheme.
Speaker 3: He's Cabinet Minister for the NDAs. The NDAs was moved
Speaker 3: from social services social policy to health, which in the
Speaker 3: disability community is a big red flag because they see
Speaker 3: that as going back to a medicalized model of looking
Speaker 3: at disability. It's not about social support, it's about intervention.
Speaker 3: The NDAs is not a medical scheme, it is a
Speaker 3: support scheme, and so a lot of people saw this
Speaker 3: as foreshadowing what we seem to be having now where
Speaker 3: we've got you know, Medicare line items been introduced to
Speaker 3: some kind of potential problem solver for children with autism
Speaker 3: as part of thriving kids and hospital negotiations tied to
Speaker 3: disability negotiations. It's a bit of a mess at the moment,
Speaker 3: to be quite honest.
Speaker 1: And can we talk a little more concretely about what
Speaker 1: this means for a kid with mild or moderate autism.
Speaker 1: You know, the difference it means if it's picked up earlier,
Speaker 1: and the quality of care that they get.
Speaker 3: If it is. Yeah, I mean it's basically with any
Speaker 3: developmental condition development to delay autism, the earlier you pick
Speaker 3: these things up, the better. You can't go all the
Speaker 3: way back to point zero. We don't have a test
Speaker 3: for autism. You've got to have a family that is
Speaker 3: engaged with GPS, with midwives for follow up care, with
Speaker 3: the community through universal access childcare, which Mark Butler says
Speaker 3: will help a lot with thriving kids, and I suspect
Speaker 3: that's true. The more referral points you've got, the better
Speaker 3: right and the individual here might be as gentle as
Speaker 3: understanding the child's communication needs and you know, as they
Speaker 3: grow up and develop over time, figuring out what it
Speaker 3: is that child needs to make the world around them
Speaker 3: more accessible to them, and that at its best is
Speaker 3: exactly what the NDIS does. As long as there is
Speaker 3: something that gets to the children of all kinds before
Speaker 3: you know problems kick in, then you can they can
Speaker 3: live a pretty good quality of life. But it's important
Speaker 3: to note that Mark Butler appeared to stumble over this
Speaker 3: where he said that.
Speaker 2: Remember, the NDIS was established to support people with significant
Speaker 2: and permanent disability.
Speaker 3: And so there was some angst that people were thinking
Speaker 3: that maybe he was trying to suggest that autism is
Speaker 3: not an ongoing permanent disability, which it absolutely is. He
Speaker 3: was asked to clarify this in subsequent radiohen it views,
Speaker 3: which he did. He said, no, no, it's a permanent disability.
Speaker 3: We're not trying to find a cure. But he reiterated
Speaker 3: that the NIS is for people with significant disabilities.
Speaker 1: Rick, I think a lot of Australians are very proud
Speaker 1: of the NDAs. They think it's a good thing that
Speaker 1: was put in place by Julia Gillard and we're one
Speaker 1: of the few countries in the world to have something
Speaker 1: like this. But the commentary from the federal government for
Speaker 1: many years now has been that it is too big,
Speaker 1: it's too expensive, changes will have to be made. So
Speaker 1: do you think that as a result of that there
Speaker 1: has been erosion in the public support for the scheme
Speaker 1: and the public's appetite for spending on looking after people
Speaker 1: with disabilities.
Speaker 3: I think there has been, and I think it's almost
Speaker 3: entirely at the feet of federal politicians starting with the Coalition.
Speaker 3: But turbocharged, I might say, by Bill Shorten when he
Speaker 3: was Minister, who very deliberately set out on a kind
Speaker 3: of machiavellian, I guess way of trying to implement his
Speaker 3: own NBAS reforms after having stood very publicly in the
Speaker 3: way of the coalition's ones which did much the same
Speaker 3: thing and are almost exactly the same when you read
Speaker 3: the draft legislation changes that were put up in two
Speaker 3: in twenty one and that were put up by him,
Speaker 3: and then he commissions red Bridge Group to do this
Speaker 3: social research that looks at how they can sell reform
Speaker 3: to people. And the key takeaway from four different tranches
Speaker 3: of research there is that they can induce, as they
Speaker 3: call it, qualified tolerance, qualified tolerance for unpopular changes to
Speaker 3: eligibility and more difficult reform in the NDAs if people
Speaker 3: think that there's a problem with fraud and routing, and
Speaker 3: you know, I keep seeing it because of Robodet here.
Speaker 3: But you know, the way they sold Robodett is the
Speaker 3: where they sold the NDAs reforms, which is to talk
Speaker 3: about all of the fraud, all of the routing, all
Speaker 3: of the time. And when you're playing with that kind
Speaker 3: of fire retric loose language using the tabloid media to
Speaker 3: get your message across, you're going to lose trust in
Speaker 3: this scheme. And that's exactly what we're seeing and I
Speaker 3: think it is an appalling use of power.
Speaker 1: Well, Rick, thank you for speaking with me today.
Speaker 3: Thanks rebby always pleasure.
Speaker 1: Also in the news today, the Prime Minister Anthony Albernezi
Speaker 1: says he takes the threat of the sovereign citizen movement seriously.
Speaker 1: The man accused of shooting dead two police officers in
Speaker 1: Victoria's northeast, Deisi Freeman, is a self identified sovereign citizen.
Speaker 1: The Prime Minister says the government is aware of the
Speaker 1: dangers of the spread of extremism and ASIO has been
Speaker 1: warning about it. And Britney Higgins has been ordered to
Speaker 1: pay almost three hundred and fifty thousand dollars in defamation
Speaker 1: damages to the former Defense Minister Linda Reynolds. A judge
Speaker 1: ruled yesterday that reynolds reputation was damaged by social media
Speaker 1: posts made by Britney Higgins in July twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: You m