NDIS cuts not just about kicking people off: minister
Spending cuts to the National Disability Insurance Scheme will not come entirely from removing tens of thousands of disabled people from their support, the minister says.
NDIS Minister Mark Butler has defended controversial reforms to the program that would include the removal of 160,000 people and the re-assessment of all participants regardless of their disability.
The changes will save the NDIS $15 billion a year by the end of the decade, but have sparked criticism from disability groups who fear program participants will be left behind without federal support.
Mr Butler said measures to reduce the cost of the scheme would be implemented well before the first tranche of people was removed in 2028.
“The reductions you will see in spending do not reflect people leaving the scheme,” he told Sky News on Sunday.
“This will obviously be a much more efficient but also effective way of supporting people who were never intended to be covered by the NDIS in the first place.”
Legislation will be introduced to parliament in May to reduce the increase in spending on the program to two percent each year for the next four years.
The national cabinet, made up of federal, state and territory leaders, had previously agreed to reduce the spending increase in the plan to eight per cent as NDIS costs have risen and become one of the largest items in the federal budget.
Eligibility assessments will be prepared by a working group and the disability community, but Mr Butler said he expected many people with autism would be excluded from the NDIS.
“It doesn’t really matter what health condition or disability you have, you will be evaluated through a program or through an evaluation process that is applied equally across the program,” he said.
“Frankly, given that people with autism make up such a large portion of the program’s population, you’d expect them to be a pretty significant part of those 160,000 people.”
Mr Butler said the assessments were necessary even though people with severe disabilities in the program had to relive eligibility requirements.
“What we’re looking at is people’s ability to function on a day-to-day basis,” he said.
“Obviously this is going to be much more evidence-based than the diagnostic gateway that I talked about is really the way for people to engage in this plan.”
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese spoke to Opposition Leader Angus Taylor about the plan changes.
Deputy opposition NDIS spokesman Henry Pike said the coalition would seek to work with the government on the changes.
But he said he had little confidence that spending growth targets of just two percent would be met.
“So far they have not been able to implement any of the reforms they have proposed, so I have very little confidence that they will be able to implement what they promised,” he said.
“There are a lot of people outside of the project who I think deserve support, and there are a lot of people within the program who are very deserving of it, but at the same time some of them have packages that are much bigger than they know what to do with.”
Australia’s Associated Press is the beating heart of Australian news. AAP is Australia’s only independent national news channel and has been providing accurate, reliable and fast-paced news content to the media industry, government and corporate sector for 85 years. We inform Australia.
