E&OE TRANSCRIPT

SUBJECTS: Northcott Dapto Disability Hub; NDIS reform

MELINDA JAMES, HOST: Well, it's just over two weeks, I think, since the NDIS Minister, Bill Shorten announced that there would be changes to the NDIS and the services you can and can't apply for. A new list is out, but it's the first in a tranche of changes in its wider overhaul of the NDIS that's taking place. The Minister, Bill Shorten, will be in Dapto today to open the new Northcott Disability Services Centre in Dapto and he's been good enough to give us some of his time this morning. Bill Shorten, good morning.

BILL SHORTEN, MINISTER FOR THE NDIS AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES: Good morning, Melinda.

JAMES: Can you tell me a little about this centre first of all? What's special about it, the Northcott Disability Services Centre in Dapto? What's brought you to Dapto to open it?

SHORTEN: Yeah, listen, I'm really looking forward to being at Dapto at 10:00am with Stephen Jones, a member for Whitlam and Minister in the government as well. We're going to be having a look and opening the work set up by Northcott. It's a fully accessible community hub. It's going to replace Northcott Wollongong and Northcott Oak Flats locations. They're centralising all their current services in the Wollongong area. The hub's going to essentially have multipurpose meeting and training rooms. It's got lots of parking and convenient public transport access. It'll provide respite care, therapy, life skills training and also some of the admin for Northcott in the area.

JAMES: Okay, so like a one stop shop really, for people?

SHORTEN: Yeah.

JAMES: Okay, well, look, it'll be interesting to see that unveiling today. I just wanted to take the opportunity, it's been a couple of weeks now since you announced what's probably the first of these major changes to the NDIS. You yourself have talked about the need for a major overhaul. We've seen a huge funding blowout, but I thought it might be interesting just to quickly talk about the progress of some of these changes. The list of services that are in and out of the NDIS. There's this twelve month transitional period. I wonder if you've seen much activity in the past couple of weeks since you announced the list and who is the onus on in relation to these services? The client, the services or the NDIA?

SHORTEN: Okay. NDIS is changing hundreds of thousands of lives for the better and what we're trying to do is make sure that it's – the money's getting through to the people for whom the Scheme was designed. We also want to make sure that it's their future generations. The year before I became the Minister, it was going 23, 24%, which is just too fast in a year. One of the issues that we found, after a lot of consultation with people, is that there was a lack of clarity about what you could spend your funds on. And most people are spending funds on the right things, I should say, and providers who are doing a good job. But what we found is that there are some opportunistic behaviour, unethical behaviour by a minority of service providers, where things are being sold to people on the Scheme that they were never intended to have money spent on. So, this is a list of what you can use your NDIS funds on and what you can't. So, it's clarity. And despite what a few critics said, the sun came up the next day and people are liking the clarity and they're also liking the idea that some of the scammers and some of the nonsense therapies, you know, being given the boot.

JAMES: So, just say, for example, you're a client of the NDIS and you've been receiving. I won't go through some of the no brainers that the NDIS should not be paying for your cigarettes and your gambling and all that sort of stuff. I mean, they're kind of no brainers. But what if there's something that's been a little bit hazy, a particular alternative therapy that you believe helps you out? You've now realised, oh, this is probably not really available to me under my NDIS funding, how does that come to anyone's attention? How does that stop?

SHORTEN: Well, if, for whatever reason, you've got something on your plan which is not going to be supported in the future, if it's on your current plan, you still get it. But I must say, that doesn't include the sort of no brainer stuff which somehow was just getting in because invoices weren't getting checked. So, if you've got something on your plan which is being phased out, if it's on your current plan, fine. So, then you'll have that until the end of your plan. Also, what happens is sometimes people get encouraged to spend money on something and they're taken advantage of because of their disability. If it's under $1,500, what we'll do is we'll educate the person when we see the invoice, we won't try and recover a debt, but what we will do is explain that in the future this isn't on. So, there's a transition period of about a year. But what we're also doing is – before I became the Minister, people could put in invoices and they just weren't getting checked. So, you just got the money, no questions asked, for thousands of dollars without any explanation. So, that's just ridiculous. So, the in and out list is also combined with better pre invoice checking at the agency, which really wasn't happening before I became the Minister.

JAMES: Is this kind of checking from now on or is there some kind of frantic audit system going on behind the scenes at the end of the day?

SHORTEN: Well, there's been a bit of, there's been a bit of checking back and not retrospectively using this list, but more generally, it is unacceptable that for years people could put in invoices with no ABN and no explanation. That's just not on. I love this Scheme, I bleed it. But I'm not going to have a few opportunists building their, you know, getting their, getting their, building their profits off, ripping off the taxpayer and people with disability.

JAMES: Of course, we don't know when the federal election is going to be, sometime between now and May. That's not a long period of time. We know that you have announced your retirement from politics. You're pretty much the architect of this Scheme originally and it will be a huge legacy that you've left for the country. But there are several changes to come. Needs based assessment process for access to the Scheme. So, in terms of diagnosis versus needs, etcetera, what happens to children in the states and territories needing to lift their game when it comes to assisting children with an autism diagnosis, for example, there's the registration requirements for service providers. There's a lot to get through that you've announced need to happen as an overhaul of this Scheme. It's not all going to happen before you go, is it? I mean, what kind of state do you think you'll be able to leave this Scheme in by the time you retiree?

SHORTEN: Well, first of all, in a democracy, there's always changes to who the Ministers are, so change is inevitable about the personalities. My aim in the last two and a half, three years has been to try and politician proof the Scheme, make it sustainable for the future so that whoever's there, it's consistent. So, in my time, we have put in an extra couple of thousand people to help the agency run properly. It was just chronically understaffed when you ring up, you'd always get a different person. That's not acceptable you need - we've also got now 50% of the board of people who've lived experienced, led by Kurt Fearnley, Australia's remarkable Paralympian and disability leader. We've also beefed up our detection system. We've now got hundreds of investigations into the crooks and we've got 56, 60 people in front of the courts. But we've also got an agreement with the states that the NDIS isn't going to be the only lifeboat in the ocean. So, we're going to build out a series of supports for people whose disabilities don't require the full NDIS. But there'll be services in the future which they can access anyway because they still need some support. We've now got agreement to register most of the service providers because at the moment, 90% plus of service providers in the Scheme are not registered. As we've just spoken about, we've now got a list of what you can and can't spend your money on. So, who you spend your money with, what you can spend your money on, and also work out what is, how do you get consistent access to the Scheme, what are the rules? All of that work is now agreed and underway. Set. Now, we're currently working right now work up till the day before I go on, how do we start the ball rolling about consistent assessment across the Scheme so people coming into the Scheme, people know how you get into it and what's the standard? We're also starting the work on registering the most high risk service provisions first. So there’s a lot of good people coming in and working in the Scheme. There's, I think, a lot greater clarity about direction and agreement about the need to keep the Scheme sustainable. It's been a lot of work done and it's a bit like painting the Harbour Bridge. When you finish it, you just go back and start again. So, that's the NDIS. It's a massive Australian institution, but Australians can now be sure that it's better run and more accountably run than what we found three years ago.

JAMES: Bill Shorten, I appreciate your time this morning. Thank you very much.

SHORTEN: Yeah, lovely. Cheers. Bye.

JAMES: That's the Minister for the NDIS, Bill Shorten.