Speaker 1: From Schwartz Media. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven AM.
Speaker 1: Outgoing Labor Minister Bill Shorten says he's leaving politics at
Speaker 1: the end of the month, confident with the state of
Speaker 1: the National Disability Insurance Scheme. As Minister for the NDIS,
Speaker 1: Bill Shorton has been focused on making massive reforms to
Speaker 1: the scheme in an effort to rain in its growing
Speaker 1: costs and insure its sustainability. And while the government says
Speaker 1: the changes are largely about cracking down on fraud, it
Speaker 1: turns out a third of the savings will come from
Speaker 1: pushing children off the NDIS. Today Senior reporter for the
Speaker 1: Saturday paper, Rick Morton on the children targeted in the
Speaker 1: NDAs crackdown and the real intent behind the cuts. It's Thursday,
Speaker 1: January sixteenth, So Rick, I thought we could begin by
Speaker 1: talking about the letters. So the NDIS, the National Disability
Speaker 1: Insurance Scheme, has been sending out letters to some of
Speaker 1: its participants telling them that they are no longer eligible
Speaker 1: for support. You've seen one of these letters, Can you
Speaker 1: tell me about what it says?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So they've been sending out about twelve hundred eligibility
Speaker 2: reassessment letters a week and they're asking for more information,
Speaker 2: more evidence about a person's disability because they believe they
Speaker 2: may no longer qualify. And if after twenty eight days
Speaker 2: these people are unable to furnish that evidence or what
Speaker 2: they give the NDIS agency in charge doesn't meet whatever
Speaker 2: mysterious requirements they have, they tell them they're no longer
Speaker 2: eligible and they literally just kick them off the National
Speaker 2: Disability Insurance Scheme. So I've seen one in particular, where
Speaker 2: there's this young girl. She's got childhood apraxia of speech,
Speaker 2: which is quite a severe communication disability, it's a neuro impairment,
Speaker 2: and the NDA has said, look, there's no doubt that
Speaker 2: your daughter, to the parent we've chosen not to name,
Speaker 2: requires intensive support and will continue to require intensive speech therapy,
Speaker 2: but we're not going to fund it. That is the
Speaker 2: job of the health system, the National Disciplined Insurance Agency says,
Speaker 2: and the health systems are run by the state governments,
Speaker 2: and you need to go and get your support from them.
Speaker 2: So these letters are very blunt, and there's thousands of
Speaker 2: them every week in what is essentially a scattergun approach,
Speaker 2: often without prior communication or explanation. They just spat out
Speaker 2: of a system process where you know, according to people
Speaker 2: I've spoken to, there are KPIs where staff are feeling
Speaker 2: forced to meet a certain number of targets.
Speaker 1: Right, okay, And so twelve hundred letters like this going
Speaker 1: out a week, do we know, Rick, how many children
Speaker 1: are being told this that they're no longer going to
Speaker 1: be supported in this way?
Speaker 2: Yeah, they've actually got targets. So the target for this
Speaker 2: financial year just gone was six percent of all children
Speaker 2: on the scheme they wanted to remove. They ended up
Speaker 2: removing about three and a half percent of the one
Speaker 2: hundred and eighty thousand children under the age of nine
Speaker 2: on the NDS. Children are the biggest and have always
Speaker 2: been the biggest part of the NDAs they've been the
Speaker 2: fastest growing, and a lot of that comes down to
Speaker 2: the fact that the modeling that was done when the
Speaker 2: NDS began just wasn't accurate. They didn't know how many
Speaker 2: kids with autism or how many kids who had developmental
Speaker 2: delay or needed therapy, particularly early intervention therapy, and so
Speaker 2: they've never coped with the numbers, which is one side
Speaker 2: of the equation. But of course the other side is
Speaker 2: that having written the legislation as it is that allows
Speaker 2: kids to get access and their families to get much
Speaker 2: needed support, much needed therapy. The NDAs has decided they
Speaker 2: don't want them anymore, and to the fullest extent possible,
Speaker 2: they are targeting them. They are quite open about this.
Speaker 2: They write about it in their annual report, they track
Speaker 2: it in their quarterly reports. They have grasped the numbers
Speaker 2: of how many kids have ultimately left the scheme, and
Speaker 2: in the last financial year alone, there were six thousand
Speaker 2: and eighty seven children under the age of nine who
Speaker 2: were revoked and another four hundred and fifty who ended
Speaker 2: up qualifying for full disability under the NDAs and going on,
Speaker 2: So three point three five percent of all of the kids.
Speaker 1: Right, So this isn't something that the NDAs is trying
Speaker 1: to hide. But why are they doing it? Rick, What
Speaker 1: are they saying about why they think that these children
Speaker 1: no longer need their support?
Speaker 2: Now the NBAA is selling all of this as a
Speaker 2: massive success story. They actually claim in their annual report
Speaker 2: that there are more children leaving the NDAs because they
Speaker 2: have quote unquote achieved their goals. Now, when I put
Speaker 2: that to an advocate, they're like, that is an outright line.
Speaker 2: They don't even measure it. They can't measure the data
Speaker 2: is missing, and they're actually, as we've spoken about in
Speaker 2: the letters, they're sending to family saying, oh, yeah, so
Speaker 2: and so your daughter needs intensive support. She hadn't met
Speaker 2: her goals at all, she's got childhood a praxia of speech,
Speaker 2: and they're claiming this as a win. It's misleading in
Speaker 2: the extreme. But also we've seen many decisions where people
Speaker 2: have had their access revoked, who should not have and
Speaker 2: who because they fought it, had it overturned. So there
Speaker 2: was a mistake in the agency decision making. They got
Speaker 2: it wrong, they had to overturn it. But not everybody
Speaker 2: is able to fight, and so the process by which
Speaker 2: this is happening, I think it is a blunt instrument,
Speaker 2: and I think it is catching a lot of people
Speaker 2: off guard. And it's also hurting families who actually don't
Speaker 2: have anywhere else to go and whose kids need support
Speaker 2: now lest their decilities become worse over time.
Speaker 1: And so for these children and their families who are
Speaker 1: being kicked off, sometimes completely unfairly, and that's I suppose
Speaker 1: shown in some of the reversals. They're being told that
Speaker 1: they should be cared for by the health system, but
Speaker 1: does that work? Is there any room for them in
Speaker 1: the health system.
Speaker 2: No, you know, you might be able to get some
Speaker 2: chronic health funded items under Medicare, for example, with childhood
Speaker 2: a practicia of speech, you might get access to maybe
Speaker 2: six weeks of speech therapy and then it cuts off.
Speaker 2: And according to the NDA's own admissions on the letter
Speaker 2: sent to the family, this child in particular will need
Speaker 2: intensitive support ongoing. And what happens when you don't quite
Speaker 2: qualify for the NDS is that there should be service systems,
Speaker 2: mainstream supports in schools, in childca settings outside of the NDAs,
Speaker 2: funded by the state governments but also the Commonwealth that
Speaker 2: will support your child. Now, the moment the NDAA started,
Speaker 2: state governments got out of service provision and it was
Speaker 2: a complete disaster and should never be allowed to happen,
Speaker 2: but it did. And what we have now is where
Speaker 2: family's the only place they can get the support they
Speaker 2: need is the NDAs. What the government did was say, well,
Speaker 2: actually we're going to fix that, and we're going to
Speaker 2: start kicking everyone off now before we fixed it, and
Speaker 2: so there isn't this promised foundational level of support which
Speaker 2: isn't due to begin until July this year, and it
Speaker 2: is probably not going to be ready. It doesn't seem
Speaker 2: to be ready in New South Wales. I query whether
Speaker 2: it will even be what was promised anywhere, but it
Speaker 2: either way, it doesn't exist yet. The bald fact of
Speaker 2: the matter is that they're exiting people to nothing from
Speaker 2: the NDIAS and all of the talk we're getting and
Speaker 2: hearing now about NDOS reform is about fraud and wrought in.
Speaker 2: That's a crackdown on fraud, and people are like, yes, yes,
Speaker 2: get the bad people, but that's not actually what we're
Speaker 2: seeing in terms of the savings being realized under the NDIAS.
Speaker 1: Reform after the break to the figures around fraud ad up.
Speaker 1: So Rick, you've been reporting on the savings that the
Speaker 1: government is finding by kicking children off the ndaes. But
Speaker 1: what we've heard again and again is that there is
Speaker 1: so much fraud happening within the unds and does need
Speaker 1: to be cleaned up. So if we look at the
Speaker 1: bigger picture, how much of the savings that the government
Speaker 1: is making come from actually cleaning up fraud versus changing
Speaker 1: who it is who actually receives funding for their disability.
Speaker 2: Well, this is a fascinating question because almost none of
Speaker 2: it and yet to listen to the retric it is
Speaker 2: all fraud, it's all roarting all the time.
Speaker 3: The National Disability Insurance Scheme, set up to help our
Speaker 3: most vulnerable is being roughted by around four billion dollars
Speaker 3: every year.
Speaker 1: Examples just in the last week, a twenty thousand dollars
Speaker 1: holiday border car brand new, seventy three thousand dollars rent
Speaker 1: subsidies alcohol.
Speaker 4: The revelations made by the Schemes integrity chief who told
Speaker 4: Parliament you name it, it's on the list, including illicit
Speaker 4: drugs like heroine, cocaine and ice.
Speaker 2: And in fact they were told that if you want
Speaker 2: to sell difficult reform that cuts the cost of the ndias,
Speaker 2: the way to do that is to focus on talking
Speaker 2: about fraud and routing. And they got the labor aligned
Speaker 2: Pollyon Research GRIP Redbridge in to do three or four
Speaker 2: rounds of market research where they tested messaging with people
Speaker 2: and what they came up with, literally they said, you
Speaker 2: can induce qualified tolerance for difficult NDOS reforms if you
Speaker 2: talk about fraud and morting, and to a t that
Speaker 2: is what the NDAs Minister Bill Shortan has done ever since.
Speaker 3: The roots have been right. For years, the NDIA did
Speaker 3: not have a system to see det or detect. We
Speaker 3: are making up for years of bad systems.
Speaker 2: And the thing is it works because it's true in
Speaker 2: that there is fraud and routing. No one disagrees with that.
Speaker 3: That everyone in this house wants to stamp out the roots.
Speaker 3: But I have to say it takes a labor government
Speaker 3: to fix the NDIS.
Speaker 2: But using Bill Shorten's own figures of crackdowns on payment integrity,
Speaker 2: so not even fraud, but suspicious payments or payments that
Speaker 2: they say we don't fund, which is different to a
Speaker 2: fraud case. They reckon they'll save two hundred million dollars
Speaker 2: over the next four years. Now, the value of kicking
Speaker 2: kids off the scheme is one hundred and twenty five
Speaker 2: million dollars in three months. Their own figures five hundred
Speaker 2: million dollars a year of revoking access to kids, and
Speaker 2: yet the fraud and routing saving is two hundred million
Speaker 2: dollars over the next four years now in the annual accounts.
Speaker 2: After the NDS legislation reform package passed and with future
Speaker 2: proposed reforms, the difference between what the ndias would have
Speaker 2: cost and what it is going to cost now is
Speaker 2: nineteen million dollar less. So they're making nineteen million dollars
Speaker 2: worth of savings to the four cars, only two hundred
Speaker 2: million dollars of which is coming from fraud and warting.
Speaker 1: Right, that's not much at all, Rick, That's only one
Speaker 1: percent of cost savings actually coming from fraud.
Speaker 2: That's correct, and that's just from actually, I mean not
Speaker 2: to overcomplicated, but that is actually just from payment integrity,
Speaker 2: the fraud savings. There's a funny little footnote in the
Speaker 2: annual report for the NDOS which says, oh, actually, so
Speaker 2: the fraud saving for last financial year twenty three twenty
Speaker 2: four was meant to be thirty million dollars or thereabouts.
Speaker 1: Right. So would you say then that the rhetoric around
Speaker 1: fraud is disguising the government's true intent here when it
Speaker 1: comes to cuts to the NDAs.
Speaker 2: I think it disguises the reality, which is that they
Speaker 2: are making really difficult decisions, and I think some of
Speaker 2: them are difficult decisions that were always going to have
Speaker 2: to be made, but they don't want to be honest
Speaker 2: about what they're doing. I've covered the NDA since it
Speaker 2: began right in twenty thirteen. For the longest time, until
Speaker 2: Bill Shorten came to power, the NDAs agency would tell
Speaker 2: me in official statements the NDAs is on track and
Speaker 2: on budget and there is nothing to see here. And
Speaker 2: of course now it's a crisis.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is a crisis for the thousands of children
Speaker 1: who are losing this support. And Rick, it seems obvious
Speaker 1: that if this assistance is pulled and there is not
Speaker 1: a viable safety net in place, then this will mean
Speaker 1: likely worse outcomes for them in the immediate term, but
Speaker 1: also potentially a real knock on effect for their lives.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what we're seeing is evidence that the agency is
Speaker 2: failing on a large scale with everyone. I think their
Speaker 2: own metrics have fallen through the floor. They've collapsed. And
Speaker 2: so this is not a story about how the NDS
Speaker 2: does not need to be reformed. It is a story
Speaker 2: about how the NDAs reform is happening in a topsy
Speaker 2: turvy way that is actually hurting people who should not
Speaker 2: be hurt. And they know about enough of this now
Speaker 2: to know better, and they're doing it anyway. If you
Speaker 2: save money in the NDIAS budget, but the budget of
Speaker 2: medicare goes up and the budget of state services goes up,
Speaker 2: are you actually saving money? The shortsightedness of some of
Speaker 2: these decisions is quite mind boggling because it's become again,
Speaker 2: as all things in austrain politics tend to do, how
Speaker 2: much is the budget for this one siloed thing, and
Speaker 2: if that money goes somewhere else, who cares? Because the
Speaker 2: person who came up with these NDAs reformed Push Orden,
Speaker 2: who's retiring and will no longer be a minister as
Speaker 2: of a few weeks gets to say, I fix the NDAs,
Speaker 2: and I'm just I think the story is much more complicated.
Speaker 1: Rick. Thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 2: Thanks for we appreciate it. Also in the.
Speaker 1: News today, a forty nine year old man has been
Speaker 1: charged with murder after the body of an Indigenous woman
Speaker 1: was found near the Todd River in Alice Springs. Please
Speaker 1: say the fifty one year old woman was the partner
Speaker 1: of the man, noting she's the Northern Territory's first alleged
Speaker 1: victim of domestic violence homicide of twenty twenty five. Advocates
Speaker 1: say the case is the first domestic violence homicide of
Speaker 1: the year in the country. Last year, seventy eight women
Speaker 1: were killed in acts of gender based violence. According to
Speaker 1: the Counting Dead Women Project, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Speaker 1: women are eight times more likely to be victims of
Speaker 1: homicide than non Aboriginal women and her Mass has accepted
Speaker 1: a draft agreement for a ceasefire in Gaza. The proposed
Speaker 1: ceasefire involves a release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners,
Speaker 1: a greater aid access to Gaza, and eventually a full
Speaker 1: withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip. The plan
Speaker 1: still needs approval from the Prime Minister Benjamin Ettina, who's
Speaker 1: security cabinet, with one minister threatening to resign if the
Speaker 1: government agrees to the Dear, I'm Ruby Jones. This is
Speaker 1: seven a m.
Speaker 2: See you tomorrow.