E&OE TRANSCRIPT
SUBJECTS: NDIS Section 10 lists
CRAIG REUCASSEL, HOST: Do you or someone you know use the National Disability Insurance Scheme? The NDIS has been undergoing a revamp after a review last year called for sweeping changes to the structure and delivery. Changes are expected to take effect this week on Thursday. There's a revised list of things that will no longer be available in the Scheme. The NDIS Minister, Bill Shorten, has mentioned some of them yesterday.
AUDIO PLAYS: “We don't pay for groceries in the ordinary course of events. We don't support a range of therapies, tarot cards, clairvoyance, wilderness therapy, cuddle therapy.”
REUCASSEL: And Bill Shorten joins us now. Morning, Minister.
SHORTEN: Good morning, Craig.
REUCASSEL: So, this is that – there's a lot of therapies, I mean, a lot of kind of natural therapies, a lot of different things have been taken off the list. What's been the basis for taking things off the list?
SHORTEN: The NDIS is changing lives. It's a fantastic Scheme. There's 660,000 people who receive supports, in many cases for the first time, they never got support. But what we've got to make sure is that the money's getting through to the people for whom the Scheme was designed. And it is the case that in the last decade, at the margins, I've got to stress at the margins, some service providers have sniffed out Government money and are taking advantage of people with disabilities. And so in the past, there hasn't been one clear, legislated list of what's in and what isn't. And that's what we've done yesterday after two years of review, consultation and direction.
REUCASSEL: So, there's also things like have been ruled out, things like rent, home deposits, donations, penalties, courts, court orders, all of these different things have been ruled out as well. What are the things that the NDIS is meant to be paying for?
SHORTEN: Things which support people with disability have fulfilling lives which they incur as a result of their disability. The act or the law which underpins NDIS has always been clear, at least in principle. It said that the NDIS is not to provide services which can be provided by other mainstream services. So, we've said you shouldn't be paying for prescriptions when you can get that through the PBS, or shouldn't be paying for school gear at school when the school should be paying for it. It provides a range of supports which help you participate in your community. So, home modifications, care workers to come and help you be able to get dressed or to be fed, resources which just allow you to participate in the community. So, they are personal budgets. The way it's worked out is that you get a plan and the plan – you sit down and talk about what your needs are. If you're a little, you know, baby or three year old toddler, it provides access to early intervention services. If you're an adult, it might provide you with care, carers. 75% of the Scheme goes to pay for, roughly, just disability carers.
REUCASSEL: Minister, the new list has put out, yesterday, what is in and what is out, and what the NDIS will cover. It actually then comes into effect this Thursday. There's been some complaints from disability groups that there's not enough notice on this front? There's two days to basically figure out what you can and can't pay for?
SHORTEN: Now let's be candid. I could never give enough notice to some people. That's not me being rude, it's just saying that we actually got 7000 submissions which some of the people who complained didn't say. 7000 submissions. I know that the Department of Social Services and the National Disability Insurance Agency went through every submission. What's happened is when I became the Minister, that was two plus years ago, two and a half years ago. We wanted to make sure the Scheme was growing, but it's been growing too fast. It's been the year before we got elected. It grew in terms of outlays by 23% in a year and 15% extra people coming on it. Last year it's growing at 18% and 8% increase in numbers, which is still significant. What our aim is to grow it at 8% and we're assuming that next year the Scheme will still have more people than this year. But it's getting, I think, a sustainable growth. And the truth is there are some people out there who've been scamming the system. I hate it. It breaks my heart to say that.
REUCASSEL: Absolutely. And I think that's been accepted that there has been some scams there. One criticism from El Gibbs from the Disability Advocacy Network Australia says they are concerned about how many people with a disability may end up owing large amounts of money to the NDIS after these new rules come into place. Can that happen under these changes?
SHORTEN: Well, I've got a lot of time for El. I heard her say that. So, I'm going to go through that. We've got pretty clear policies about debt and by that – I was the guy who helped put together the class action against Robodebt. The first thing I'd say on debt is that we don't book any debt. By that, what I mean is we don't predict that there is automatically going to be any debt, so therefore we don't have a target of debt to recover. At the moment, it's about 1400 out of 660,000 people who have some debt. Now, sometimes the debt occurs accidentally and could even be due to a person's disability. Because of the changes in law, we weren't able to take account of a person's disability and how they accidentally got the debt, but we now can. So, that's actually a more humane measure. For measures under $1,500 ,what we've said is there's a twelve month transition period now. Things which are illegal are still illegal. So, you're not going to get waived on that, you know, the illicit drugs, for example. But we get that as the guidelines are published, we want to give service providers and plan managers, these are intermediaries, 30 days grace to try and make sure they understand things.
REUCASSEL: So, there will be a grace period as these new laws come in?
SHORTEN: Yeah. And then we give twelve months grace period where you can make two mistakes, up to $1,500, and we'll try and educate you and work it through with you. The other thing is, if you're already getting something on the plan, on an existing plan, which now we've excluded, your current plan stays in place until it expires. But the reality is that some of the exciting therapies, which, you know, we talked about at the start, they are at the margins. But, yeah, we are going to be black and white and I think that restores social licence in the Scheme.
REUCASSEL: Well, thank you so much for speaking to us, Minister. We appreciate it.
SHORTEN: Yeah, I know, there's a lot on today.
REUCASSEL: There is. Thank you, Minister. Bill Shorten there, the Minister for the NDIS.
