Speaker 1: From Schwarz Media. I'm Ashlin McGee.
Speaker 2: This is seven am. There are two things to know
Speaker 2: about the National Disability Insurance Scheme. The first is that
Speaker 2: it makes such a huge difference to so many lives,
Speaker 2: and the second is that it's wildly expensive and getting
Speaker 2: more so every year. So how to reconcile those two things. Well,
Speaker 2: the government is trying to do just that with a
Speaker 2: new piece of legislation that's been shrouded in secrecy for months.
Speaker 1: Today the Saturday Paper is.
Speaker 2: Rick Morton on the holes in that legislation and why
Speaker 2: could hand the Disability Agency extraordinary new powers.
Speaker 1: It's Wednesday, June five.
Speaker 3: Rick.
Speaker 2: The NDAs is one of the biggest schemes we've ever
Speaker 2: had in this country. Can I ask you first about
Speaker 2: this state of the INDAS today?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it is an extraordinary scheme and there's
Speaker 3: nothing like it anywhere else in the world where the
Speaker 3: first jurisdiction to kind of come up with an insurance
Speaker 3: model for people with profound and severe disabilities who need
Speaker 3: support living their lives. It's not welfare. It's a scheme
Speaker 3: to actually, you know, give them support workers, help them
Speaker 3: get out of the house, purchase new wheelchairs, therapy, things
Speaker 3: like that. And it's a little over a decade old now,
Speaker 3: it began in twenty thirteen, and it's had a few
Speaker 3: teething problems. I think it's fair to say. And certainly
Speaker 3: one of the elements that has been the kind of
Speaker 3: lightning rod for every discussion has been that it's growing
Speaker 3: massively in.
Speaker 4: Cost is the ABC can reveal forecasts will show the
Speaker 4: cost of the NDS rivaling that of Medicare within three years,
Speaker 4: more than thirty billion dollars annually.
Speaker 1: Expect that.
Speaker 3: And then, of course, when you've got a big bucket
Speaker 3: of government money, you've got dodgy contractors, dodgy providers.
Speaker 5: Wroughters are on notice. For too long they've been using
Speaker 5: the NDS to line their own pockets while people living
Speaker 5: with the disability and their carers are short changed.
Speaker 3: That's the backdrop to wear we're at now. And so
Speaker 3: by the time Bill Shorton gets into government with Albanesi
Speaker 3: as Prime Minister, it's his second time around as a minister,
Speaker 3: he is fully of the view that there needs to
Speaker 3: be reformed.
Speaker 6: The National Disability Insurance Scheme is here to stay. It
Speaker 6: is not going away. But and this is important, we
Speaker 6: don't need to get it back on track.
Speaker 3: It's not completely beyond redemption, but it needs to get
Speaker 3: back to the original focus of what the Indians is
Speaker 3: meant to be, which is kind of like really good
Speaker 3: thorough support for the five hundred six hundred thousand people
Speaker 3: most in need out of a population of about four
Speaker 3: million people who have some form of disability.
Speaker 6: In Australia, the NDAs has changed lives of hundreds of
Speaker 6: thousands of Australias of disability and their families.
Speaker 3: And the NDOS review was finally released in the first
Speaker 3: week of December last year. However, since the NBAS Review,
Speaker 3: the government went a little bit quiet. They hadn't actually
Speaker 3: responded to the NBAS Review, and then all of a
Speaker 3: sudden in March, the Minister for the NBAS Bill shortened
Speaker 3: kind of surprises disability advocates when he gets up in
Speaker 3: Parliament and introduces legislation that amends quite significantly the National
Speaker 3: Disability Insurance Scheme with the promise of allowing disabled people
Speaker 3: co design and consultation on the finer aspects of it.
Speaker 7: Down the track, first reading a Bill for an Act
Speaker 7: to Amend the National Disability Insurance Scheme at twenty thirteen
Speaker 7: and for related purposes.
Speaker 1: I'm called the Honorable Minister.
Speaker 6: Thank you.
Speaker 3: Nobody had seen the bill at this point. Those who
Speaker 3: had half an hour earlier were forced to sign non
Speaker 3: disclosure agreements. But of course Shorten gets up into the
Speaker 3: House Representatives to talk about all of this, and he
Speaker 3: essentially says, you know, we need to make the NDO
Speaker 3: secure for future generations. We need to make it safer
Speaker 3: for people who use NDA support services.
Speaker 6: And I can respect nervousness which might be caused by
Speaker 6: this discussion. I just want to reassure these people who've
Speaker 6: battled hard to create an Indie Eyes and to get
Speaker 6: their packages of support, we will work with you to
Speaker 6: make sure that people are getting the right support in.
Speaker 3: The right way.
Speaker 6: Under this government, this scheme will continue to grow.
Speaker 3: And so I've been talking to people as I've been
Speaker 3: getting their heads around there, but particularly you know, disability
Speaker 3: advocates who are involved in the Participant Reference Group on
Speaker 3: the National Disability Insurance Scheme but also National Disability Legal Services,
Speaker 3: and they've got some pretty significant concerns right.
Speaker 2: So as people are getting to spend a bit more
Speaker 2: time with the legislation and get into a bit more
Speaker 2: of that detail. What kinds of things are they discovering there.
Speaker 3: I think the main issue is that a they're worried
Speaker 3: about why we're doing the legislation right this second, because
Speaker 3: what it does is kind of sets in concrete a
Speaker 3: lot of new powers for the government and the National
Speaker 3: de Disability Insurance Agency which runs the NDAs. A really
Speaker 3: good example of that is this new needs assessment. It's
Speaker 3: a new way for the agency to issue orders, to
Speaker 3: get reports and an assessment based on a tool that
Speaker 3: we don't know what it is yet. We don't know
Speaker 3: who's going to administer that tool, so it's some kind
Speaker 3: of it's not a medical assessment, but similar to if
Speaker 3: you're doing it like an ADHD diagnosis test or an
Speaker 3: autism test, but it's something for all disability which doesn't
Speaker 3: really exist. And importantly, what this new legislation does is
Speaker 3: kind of says that we're going to come up with
Speaker 3: a budget, an NBA support budget, based on an outcome
Speaker 3: of that needs assessment, but we don't know any of
Speaker 3: that detail. Now. This particularly concerns people because it does
Speaker 3: have some kind of eerie similarities to a twenty twenty
Speaker 3: one push from then coalition government to introduce mandatory what
Speaker 3: they called independent assessments. So essentially they said, well, you
Speaker 3: can't use your treating doctor or you're treating therapist anymore.
Speaker 3: We're going to get government appointed independent asscesses to tell
Speaker 3: us what your functional need is and they're going to
Speaker 3: tell the NDAA how much support you need. The concern
Speaker 3: here is that the drafting here is so bad that
Speaker 3: there are a bunch of perhaps unintended consequences where the
Speaker 3: needs assessment doesn't look like it can be reviewed if
Speaker 3: someone gets it wrong. And of course the bill was
Speaker 3: almost immediately referred once they got to the Senate to
Speaker 3: the Community Affairs Legislation Committee for inquiry. And then when
Speaker 3: you get to the Villamante Disability Legal Service submission, and
Speaker 3: they again they represent clients who are kind of fighting
Speaker 3: the National Disability Insurance Scheme, their submission is one of
Speaker 3: the most daming that I've ever read in any inquiry.
Speaker 3: They eventually go on to say that this kind of
Speaker 3: needs assessment model that has been introduced in this legislation
Speaker 3: and the way in which it seems to tie automatically
Speaker 3: into a budget tool decision. Villamanta said that if this
Speaker 3: were to get up, this would be the NDAs equivalent
Speaker 3: of robodet in the sense that we're talking about automated
Speaker 3: decision making based on inputs that aren't really controlled or
Speaker 3: reviewable by unknown needs assessors and you don't really have
Speaker 3: much say in the matter.
Speaker 2: Rick, We've just talked about how there was this big
Speaker 2: review into the NDIS, but just to clarify, this legislation
Speaker 2: isn't a response to that review.
Speaker 1: This is separate.
Speaker 3: Well, the review gave twenty six recommendations, and this legislation
Speaker 3: focuses on giving the government and the NDAA more power
Speaker 3: and all of the good stuff, quote unquote. It's not
Speaker 3: here yet, it's promised, it's not delivered, and now we're
Speaker 3: being promised again that that's going to happen and that
Speaker 3: we just have to wait for it. But this bill
Speaker 3: has come first. And that's the key issue that a
Speaker 3: lot of people have with this at this current point
Speaker 3: in time, which is like why are we doing this now?
Speaker 3: And I think a really good example of that is
Speaker 3: that there is this discussion about primary and secondary disabilities.
Speaker 3: I won't go into the full background, but currently under
Speaker 3: the NDIS, they've been quite inconsistently with the current law
Speaker 3: giving people access to the NDIS and then deciding what
Speaker 3: funding they will get based only on a primary disability.
Speaker 3: So if you're someone with a spinal cord injury who
Speaker 3: also has a serious psychosocial mental health disability, they might
Speaker 3: say your spinal cord injury is your only disability, and
Speaker 3: they just ignore the secondary ones because to them, they're like, well,
Speaker 3: we gave you access under spinal cord, so we're going
Speaker 3: to give you some support workers to help you feed yourself,
Speaker 3: get dressed, shower, all those sort of things, but we're
Speaker 3: not going to help you with any of the social
Speaker 3: anxiety when you have outings or something like that. Now,
Speaker 3: that's not what they're saying in public, like even in
Speaker 3: the Parliament when Bill short And got up to talk
Speaker 3: about it, he says, your needs assessment will look at
Speaker 3: your support needs as a whole, and we won't distinguish
Speaker 3: between primary and secondary disabilities any longer. But the bill
Speaker 3: explicitly and repeatedly states that only impairments for which a
Speaker 3: person meets the criteria should be assessed, which means if
Speaker 3: you've got a lower level disability that wouldn't otherwise get
Speaker 3: you in the NBAS. In addition to a quote unquote
Speaker 3: primary disability. It's just not forming part of the assessment
Speaker 3: under the way this bill is currently drafted. So when
Speaker 3: you take all these things together, the changes that are
Speaker 3: posed in the new legislation create what some people are
Speaker 3: saying is is kind of like stunning new matrix of
Speaker 3: uncertainty that disabled people or their cares or family or
Speaker 3: guardians will be expected to navigate, and it explicitly ties
Speaker 3: failure to do that to increased punishment or consequences if
Speaker 3: you get it wrong.
Speaker 2: After the break, focus on debts and compliance and what
Speaker 2: that could mean for people on the ndis Rick, You're
Speaker 2: someone who spent years of your life covering Robodeat, and
Speaker 2: I'm sure your ears prick up at any kind of
Speaker 2: legislation that talks about retrieving debts. What do we know
Speaker 2: about the powers in this legislation to pursue debts in
Speaker 2: the system.
Speaker 3: This is the stuff that kind of really gets my
Speaker 3: spider sense tingling these days, because I've got a long memory.
Speaker 3: And so when I was covering this in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 3: I received in the coalition at the time, Stewart Robert
Speaker 3: and then Linda Reynolds were trying to get this new
Speaker 3: legislation up and fall through independent assessments. The minister denies
Speaker 3: there's been a lack of consultation. He says independent assessments
Speaker 3: are part of the scheme's original design.
Speaker 6: Now is the time to do the last piece of
Speaker 6: the build. We're now on the second trial of independent assessments,
Speaker 6: will continue to engage draw.
Speaker 3: I received a leaked copy of the internal drafting of
Speaker 3: the new legislation at the time under the coalition, and
Speaker 3: I had all the NBIA agency directors and branch managers
Speaker 3: commenting on what they wanted and how it was going
Speaker 3: to work. And one of the people commenting on that
Speaker 3: was one of the architects internally of ROBODEBT, and they
Speaker 3: were very enthusiastic at the time about trying to get
Speaker 3: up an explicit link. In fact, this is one of
Speaker 3: their comments that the debt that the agency was raising
Speaker 3: was against the disabled person, not against the third party provider,
Speaker 3: because that's too hard for them to get back again
Speaker 3: to the person receiving the NDA support money. And then
Speaker 3: later on they kind of go further by saying my
Speaker 3: reading of this is that it provides a clear legislative
Speaker 3: basis for stopping future payments until we have received previously
Speaker 3: requested information and documentation. That was a separate section where
Speaker 3: there was a new information gathering power which we've seen
Speaker 3: resurrected under this new bill. So there's a new power
Speaker 3: under this legislation that Bill Shorton's put before the Parliament
Speaker 3: that allows the CEO to demand any information that they
Speaker 3: see fit literally anything if they're making a decision about
Speaker 3: revoking someone's access. And so taken together, you know you've
Speaker 3: got the ability to raise debts against people. You've got
Speaker 3: the ability to demand information from people and then revoke
Speaker 3: their access to the scheme which has never existed in
Speaker 3: that form in the NDAs before. And you've got these
Speaker 3: sections from twenty twenty one which were essentially a wish
Speaker 3: list from the agency, which they never got at the
Speaker 3: time because the opposition led by Bill Shorten, not led
Speaker 3: by but the campaign was led by him as the
Speaker 3: opposition spokesman on NDIS matters.
Speaker 6: For the past eight years, we've seen a successive Liberal
Speaker 6: governments have continuously gone low when Australians are demanding the
Speaker 6: high road for people with disability. We cannot forget that
Speaker 6: this is the government who will legally forced thousands of Australians,
Speaker 6: many of whom were extremely disadvantaged, to repay back money
Speaker 6: they never owed in the robodebt scandal. There's been colossal
Speaker 6: wistmanagement of the NDIS at the very top, and it's
Speaker 6: people of disabilities who are being required to pay for
Speaker 6: the mistakes of others.
Speaker 3: They killed that reform and they killed independent assessments, and
Speaker 3: of course now we're seeing some elements of that reform
Speaker 3: back on the table.
Speaker 2: You've been talking to a whole lot of people right
Speaker 2: across the disability sector about what this new legislation would
Speaker 2: mean for them if it passes. Can you talk me
Speaker 2: through what it would mean for someone who is on
Speaker 2: a care package? Play me out a hypothetical.
Speaker 3: This is pretty easy to do, actually, because we already
Speaker 3: see some pretty dodgy behavior from the agency now. So
Speaker 3: if you're a person at a disability and you've got
Speaker 3: an NDAs funding package and they've given you under the
Speaker 3: new legislation, they've given you. Some of it is stated support,
Speaker 3: whether you have to spend it on certain things, so
Speaker 3: it's like you have to spend it on an ot
Speaker 3: therapist or a speech pathologist. But then some of it's
Speaker 3: flexible where it's like, well, you know, we've given you
Speaker 3: a you know, let's say ten thousand dollars that you
Speaker 3: can spend on things that are important for your disability
Speaker 3: that help you function in the world. Now, if at
Speaker 3: a later date you've spent five thousand dollars of that
Speaker 3: on respite, and because the respite brochure includes other things
Speaker 3: like horse riding or something like that, and the agency decides, well,
Speaker 3: actually that's not appropriate, even though they haven't done the
Speaker 3: full investigation into what you spent the money on that
Speaker 3: was not an approved NDA support. You need to pay
Speaker 3: that money back. So they're raising a debt against you
Speaker 3: even though you have already paid for the service. And
Speaker 3: so you don't have that five thousand dollars anymore. And
Speaker 3: you made that decision in perfectly good faith. Suddenly this
Speaker 3: compliance measure clause money back from you. If they don't
Speaker 3: want to raise it dead against you, they can decide that, actually,
Speaker 3: you're not capable of managing your own plan anymore, and
Speaker 3: they've got to make it agency managed. So they're going
Speaker 3: to restrict your choice in control. I don't want to
Speaker 3: be alarmist, but it's almost like a casualist debit card
Speaker 3: in that sense for NDS support plans if they think
Speaker 3: you've done the wrong thing. Now, Bill Shorten and the
Speaker 3: Department of Social Services have come back to me on
Speaker 3: this and said, no, no, no, we sort assurances it
Speaker 3: will only ever be used in extreme cases, particularly around fraud,
Speaker 3: which is what they're really worried about, and people spending
Speaker 3: money on the wrong things, and no one argues that
Speaker 3: you shouldn't do something about that. But the problem is,
Speaker 3: as it's been put to me by legal academics and
Speaker 3: legal aid people, is that the legislation doesn't say that
Speaker 3: it gives the power hole US bowlers to the agency.
Speaker 3: So really what we're talking about here is that if
Speaker 3: this law gets passed and in the future, the CEO says, hey,
Speaker 3: we need you to give us all of your medical
Speaker 3: history and also every time you've ever visited a certain
Speaker 3: type of clinic, and if you don't, we're going to
Speaker 3: turn off your support package or kick you off the
Speaker 3: scheme altogether. And you know, let's say you've got a massive,
Speaker 3: profound cognitive impairment, or you don't have family around you
Speaker 3: and you don't respond to that request, or you can't
Speaker 3: get those documents within ninety days. It's quite likely or
Speaker 3: possible that you can get kicked off the scheme or
Speaker 3: lose your funding and support and you've got nothing. People
Speaker 3: have been crushed by the bureaucracy and we've seen it
Speaker 3: happen time and time again within the existing infrastructure.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So what's Bill Shorten had to say about all of this, Well, you.
Speaker 3: Know, he says there's no where EGO involved in this,
Speaker 3: so he's kind of foreshadowed that there's going to be
Speaker 3: a bunch of different amendments still coming to this legislation. Now.
Speaker 3: Bill Shorton says that you know, never in the history
Speaker 3: of modern Australia has a government done more work with
Speaker 3: disabled people, more consultation with disabled people to come up
Speaker 3: with a way to help support them. Shorten a lot
Speaker 3: of his legacy is tied to the NBAS and now
Speaker 3: that he's the minister years down the track, there is
Speaker 3: so much writing on this moment, this legislation, this reform
Speaker 3: in terms of how we see the rest of that legacy.
Speaker 2: Player Rick, we've been talking about how much the NDIES
Speaker 2: costs and how much it's projected to growing cost and
Speaker 2: of course that's why the government is promising some kind
Speaker 2: of reform. I think that sort of everyone agrees that
Speaker 2: has to happen. So if we're talking about a context
Speaker 2: of cost savings, what's wrong with focusing on compliance?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean the problem with compliance and I think
Speaker 3: Robott is the extreme version of this, right, But the
Speaker 3: problem with compliance in general is that it's really actually
Speaker 3: quite expensive, but also the cost to people is extremely
Speaker 3: harmful when it's weaponized and change needed to happen. But
Speaker 3: my concern had always been that it's going to be
Speaker 3: people on the NDAs who were promised something who are
Speaker 3: going to have that ripped away. And the fear is
Speaker 3: what happens after Bill shorten, what happens with the next government,
Speaker 3: what happens when compliance becomes the easy way to get
Speaker 3: money back. When you start to see fraud and roughting
Speaker 3: and compliance issues, suddenly everything looks like fraud and roughting
Speaker 3: and compliance issues, when really what you're looking at it's
Speaker 3: compliance brain. People thought everyone in Robodett were criminals, and
Speaker 3: when you get compliance brain, you see them wherever you go.
Speaker 3: And the NDIS is a place where you can't afford
Speaker 3: to get that wrong, because they're talking about people who
Speaker 3: are already fighting this kind of crazy bureaucracy. And constantly
Speaker 3: being told that they're a burden on the system when
Speaker 3: they just want to live lives and contribute to society.
Speaker 3: And that's what the NDIAS has allowed them to do.
Speaker 3: When it works well for people, it works so well.
Speaker 3: And when it doesn't, it's typically because people don't have
Speaker 3: the capacity in their own lives to fight for themselves.
Speaker 3: And this is certainly what disabili advocates worried about, is like,
Speaker 3: you know, talk is cheap, and we've got a culture problem.
Speaker 3: And now we've got this legislation before we've got all
Speaker 3: the other stuff that we were promised. What's going to
Speaker 3: happen down the track?
Speaker 1: Rick, Thanks so much of your time.
Speaker 3: Thanks that.
Speaker 2: Also in the news today, Defense Minister Richard Miles is
Speaker 2: announced a timeline for allowing non Australian citizens to serve
Speaker 2: in the Australian military. Miles said that as part of
Speaker 2: a plan to grow the number of recruits new Zealanders
Speaker 2: have been residents for more than twelve months, we'll be
Speaker 2: able to serve from July this year, followed by Americans,
Speaker 2: Canadians and UK citizens from January next year. And the
Speaker 2: New South Wales government says it's concerned by an indigenous
Speaker 2: hip hop artist song being played in schools. The song,
Speaker 2: by rapper and activist Birds, is written from the perspective
Speaker 2: of an Indigenous warrior and refers to Captain Cooker's White Devil.
Speaker 2: It was used as a school bell at a school
Speaker 2: in Sydney's South during Reconciliation Week. The New South Wales
Speaker 2: education departments launched an investigation, with Premier Chris Mins.
Speaker 1: Declaring that rap songs in general probably not.
Speaker 2: The best for New South Wales schools.
Speaker 1: My name's Ashley McGhee. That's all from the seven AMTM
Speaker 1: for today. Thanks for your company. We'll see you again tomorrow.