E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC RN DRIVE
WEDNESDAY 31 JULY 2024

SUBJECTS: Disability Royal Commission; NDIS reforms

ANDY PARK, HOST: Joining me now is Bill Shorten, the Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme. Welcome back to Drive.

BILL SHORTEN, MINISTER FOR THE NDIS AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES: No worries. Hi.

PARK: I get the feeling, and you can't really say this about many politicians, but I do get the sense that when it comes to the NDIS, that you genuinely care about the Scheme and your portfolio and all the Australians with a disability, I hear that in the way that you speak about it. But today many people with disabilities are devastated. One advocate said her phone has melted down from people with disability from all over the country who are gutted and shattered by the Government's response. What do you say to those people?

SHORTEN: I think my colleague Amanda Rishworth, Minister for Social Services, has been coordinating the responses to the Disability Royal Commission. I get the Royal Commission was a very harrowing time and it exposed an underbelly of abuse and neglect, which I think people who don't know much about disability didn't think existed anymore. But it did. The Royal Commission went for four and a half years. I was Opposition Leader when we called for it. And then in the end, the Morrison Government set it up. It came back with 12 or 13 volumes, two and a half million words. The Government. It had recommendations for the Federal Government and had joint recommendations for the Federal and State Government and had some recommendations for the State Governments as well. So, I think Amanda has done a good job corralling across. Across 16 different departments. And whilst people, advocates are entitled to their opinion, and I always listen very carefully to it, as they know I do, this response is another watershed moment to help keep people safe and included. There's a lot of work to go on from here.

PARK: Minister, if this was such a watershed moment and so important for the Government, why wasn't the Prime Minister at the announcement today? He had time, apparently, to take a call from Kyle and Jackie O this morning. If the Government is taking this seriously, why isn't he announcing this response today?

SHORTEN: Well, first of all, he's a Prime Minister who runs a Cabinet Government. Amanda Rishworth was in attendance, Minister for Health as another senior Minister and myself were present. The Prime Minister follows all matters of disability. I know, for example, my specific areas of the NDIS is incredibly engaged with helping me encourage the states to work together with the Federal Government. So, I don't think it's here nor there. If he's not at each particular press conference, he's got an adult Government Minister who are capable of doing their day job.

PARK: You've had the Commission's findings for more than nine months and yet only 13 of these recommendations you've been able to commit to. Can you give a timeline as to when the remainder of these recommendations will be accepted in full? Because that's kind of what people are asking. They're asking me on the text line right now, they want to know when this will happen?

SHORTEN: Well, there's going to be an ongoing process. The fact of the matter is that the Royal Commission split on some fundamental issues about special school, segregated group homes, all got to be shut down, do we have supported – there’s some pretty big concepts here. First of all, just going to the first part, which some people say, it's been nine months since the Government got the report. It's been nine months since all of the Governments got the report. And every, you know, we've got sovereign state Governments and territory governments. It takes a fair while to work with them. I mean, Minister Rishworth and the whole team have been working very hard to get to the position which we're at in terms of ongoing. It's going to be reported to. Progress gets reported to National Cabinet, there's six monthly updates to the Disability Ministers. Change wasn't going to happen in a day, but I can say to advocates and to people listening in my areas, there are about 50 or 60 recommendations which went to the NDIS and to the Safeguards Commission, and that's the areas I have the privilege of being Minister for. We've already got on with some of the changes, to be honest. Like, for example, one change was suggested that we make sure there was a First Nations person on the board of the NDIA. We've already done that. There were a lot of legitimate upset and angst about how the Safeguards Commission was working. That is, the complaints and quality body oversighting, the actual NDIS that was set up at the beginning of 2018, initially by the Libs, as a response to not having the Royal Commission. It's been historically underfunded you know, since we got in, we didn't wait for the today to announce that we've doubled their funding and we've put in 500 more staff. So, there is progress going on. It's a giant communication exercise. I just encourage people to read the whole of the response that we've put out. I mean, I think everyone's got headlines, but I'd just like people to perhaps take a breath. This is a Government who's invested in disability employment. We've invested in Australia's disability strategy. We've invested in the start of an autism strategy. We're building services to include Australians not eligible for the NDIA. So, we're starting that overdue conversation with the states and in the NDIA I know that from morning to night we're looking at how we can improve the Scheme.

PARK: So, let's take that breath and look at some of these specific points. One of the recommendations you didn't accept, even in principle, was the establishment of a National Disability Commission. Why not?

SHORTEN: Well, we've got a fair bit going on already. I'm not sure another body does solve everything, actually, another committee. Just, people want action. We do have the National Disability Insurance Agency board, like in my NDIA, in the NDIA we've got 23 co design groups. We are doing a lot of engagement with people. Kurt Fearnley, for the first time ever we've got someone with lived experience, who chairs the $44 billion fund, which is the National Disability Insurance Scheme. I know that when in the call centre that we used to have, or that we have for the NDIA, we brought a lot of those functions in house and 40% of the people there, are people with disability. I know that for the first time in the senior executive group of the National Disability Insurance Agency, two out of seven people have lived experience. So, we've got a long way to go and the Commission was an incredibly powerful four year process. We are getting on with stuff and I thought you were going to come and talk to me about some of the NDIS stuff in particular, rather than everyone else's portfolios?

PARK: Well, Minister, it is your Government and I refer back to my first question because I think you do genuinely care here and that's why I want to hear your view. I think you understand this area of the community sort of better than others. Many in the people in the disability community support the phasing out of segregated schools. While there are different views on this, Commissioner Alastair McEwan made the point to Drive that both of the commissioners who have a disability were in support of this. He would like to know when your Government will give weight to the views of people with disability on this issue and end segregation in schools?

SHORTEN: I give weight to people's views, and I spoke a lot also with Rhonda Galbally, who was the other Commissioner who's got very strong views, and she's been an advocate for this for as long as I've known, over the last two decades. So, I get it's a very strong view, but the Commission recommended that it be done over a generation. The issue is that not all education departments agree, but beyond that, we need that. The trend is towards inclusive education. That's where we've got to go. But there are people working right now in special schools who are marvellous educators, and they felt kicked in the guts when people sort of said they were just running a segregation business. I get why people say that, but there's a lot of good people working in the special school, special needs, special ed section of our education system who don't, I think, deserve just to simply be labelled as segregationists, per se. I would like to see every mainstream school offering inclusive education for every kid with a disability. But in the meantime, I know right now there are kids coming home from school today in mainstream schooling who, say, got a diagnosis of autism and they're getting bullied. And the reality is that mainstream education and inclusion, we can't just click our fingers, because there's some great kids and some great parents who would be miserable tonight because of the trauma their kids go through in the mainstream system. So, when the Royal Commission proposed shutting it down, I understand why. But I also understand that there are multiple audiences who hear these things. And the reality is that mainstream education is not the choice, doesn't exist. In fact, the NDIS is funding people going into the school system to provide therapies, because the mainstream system isn't even doing it, and that's not the job of the NDIS. So, I understand the issue, but, wow, there are more shades of grey here than just simply right and wrong, aren't there? And that means it takes time to work through. I think everyone wants inclusive education-

PARK: I want to pick up on –

SHORTEN: – they get scared when they hear about that change and say, you know, you might not have got the text, but I got the text when the Royal Commission, and it said, “is my special school going to shut?” “What's going to happen to my kid?” “How can you promise that my kid will be safe and looked after in a mainstream school?” That isn't what happened to my experience. So, I'm just saying, you know, I get your point and I really respect what Alastair and Rhonda and others are saying, but there's multiple audiences and people can hear the same words and draw dramatically different conclusions.

PARK: I gather that you're sensitive to overlap in terms of too much bureaucracy in this space. I think that's pragmatic. But I want to ask you about one of the recommendations, which is for a national complaints body. Currently, people with disabilities say, despite the efforts you've made to reform it, the safeguard commission in the NDIS still isn't working properly and lacks national coordination. Would a single national complaints body make sense in that case?

SHORTEN: Well, states have got statutory responsibilities, so we've got to work with them. The reality is, in some states they have community visitor Schemes, but in other states they don't. Well, let's go to the problem. The problem is there should be no wrong door. And this is what if you've got a complaint about a disability matter, you know, which is in terms of the reception of services, you should be able to get a state complaints body or a federal body. And then we sort out behind the door whose responsibility is. But at the moment, you've got public guardians, you've got state trustees, you've got complaints, borders at state, and we have the Quality and Safeguards Commission for NDIS participants. And people are falling through the cracks. So, I agreed with the Royal Commission's recommendation. There need to be a coherent national approach and we've agreed in principle. But the point about that is it takes time. I wish it wasn't so, but not every person with a disability supports a community visitor Scheme. They feel it's an imposition on their privacy. Other people at the state level say, well, why should we do with the Fed's job. So, we've just got to work through. I know people want to hear the it'll be done tomorrow answers, and people are falling through in a crack. All I can try and reassure your listeners is that, yes, we need a better safeguards commission. We're revamping that for the NDIS. If we can get that working, that'll be a big step forward. A more transparent complaints process, more prosecutions, more compliance. Then we need to sit down with all the state bodies and I think they're up for it. How do we make sure that when someone rings a number, they don't get the runaround?

PARK: In your bill to reform the NDIS, there's been concerns raised by legal experts that this legislation could open up people with disability to automatic debts, similar to the Robodebt Scheme, if the NDIA determines their expenses under the Scheme aren't appropriate, can you guarantee that won't occur?

SHORTEN: Yeah, that's complete rubbish. I could say it in less polite language. That is rubbish.

PARK: I mean, experts are concerned that these changes would also prevent participants from being able to launch a review of a debt. Will people be able to appeal debts or the removal of support?

SHORTEN: Yes. Yes. Let's go through what we're actually doing. I mean, by the way, I get that Robodebt has left a giant cloud of distrust between citizens and the Government, not just in the disability space. The way that people on welfare were treated as second class and demonised by my predecessors was shocking. And the fact that they relied – they took the manual checking out, the human checking out – they relied on one simple algorithm of a tax office record and then reversed the onus. I know a fair bit about Robodebt, as do many of your listeners and many advocates, but I know I helped. I know about it because I organised a class action against it. Then I pushed my colleagues and the Prime Minister and particularly supported me to have a Royal Commission into it, and we set it up. But what we're doing with the NDIS is different. First of all, I'll tell you one big difference. When we were in opposition, I used to listen to Morrison and other treasurers get up and beat their chest on budget night and say, there are mountains of gold. They didn't use that literal word, but they said there's hundreds, there's billions of dollars in welfare compliance to be collected off the sheets. Can I tell you how much the NDIS budget banks in terms of what we think about debt and people who may owe a debt to the NDIS? Zero. We don't bank any of it. We don't assume it. The actual amount of debt in the Scheme for participants at this point is about $15 million out of $44 billion. So, there is not a big financial push to treat participants as if there's a problem what the amendments that we're putting up do is the current section 195 allows people who incur debts to the agency or the NDIS to have them waived in special circumstances. But unfortunately, the current act prohibits, excludes people's disability being taken as a special circumstance. And it also says that the debt cannot be waived where the participant unintentionally contravenes the act. So, we want to give the CEO greater flexibility to take into account a person's disability, unintentional mistakes. There's about 1400 debts that we're aware of where what has happened is that participants have paid for a service and the service has actually been cancelled and never delivered. Then we just work it through and we work it through with humans checking only one person can make the decision, the CEO. It's so different to the reliance on the algorithm and the Robodebt that whatever, you know, people do – anyway, okay, I’ve probably said enough.

PARK: See what I mean? You do care. That's why I'm asking, and I really appreciate your time because I think we do need to take a breath about these things. I think this special consideration requirement is really important and I think you understand that too. We'll have to leave it there. Bill Shorten is the Minister for the NDIS. Appreciate your time on RN Drive.

SHORTEN: All right, mate. Thank you very much for your interest, bye.