‘Scared’: NDIS shake-up sparks fear of cuts to support
Disabled Australians fear their services will be cut by a major overhaul aimed at reining in the spiraling cost of the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
Health Minister Mark Butler is expected to announce sweeping reforms to the $50 billion program on Wednesday; These include changes to who is eligible for support and stricter registration requirements for providers.
But when the government said it would be negligent to allow the NDIS to continue growing at around 10 per cent a year, disability advocates warned that cuts to services would leave participants worse off.
Disabled Persons Australia president Jeramy Hope told AAP: “Our community is scared and we want to make sure everything is going to be okay.”
He urged the government to focus on making the program more efficient by cutting red tape rather than reducing the right to save money.
Finance Minister Katy Gallagher said she understood the concerns of the disability community but said the long-term sustainability of the NDIS needed to be addressed.
“I understand that the disabled community will feel a lot of that pressure,” he told reporters at Parliament House on Tuesday.
“But there is a lot of pressure on us to make sure this plan is truly sustainable.
“We are finding $35 billion more than originally planned for a year; we would be remiss if we acted as if this were normal,” Senator Gallagher said.
On Tuesday, Mr Butler and Finance Minister Jim Chalmers briefed state and territory officials reluctant to accept any changes that would require them to pay more.
“We can’t have a situation where people are denied the NDIS and then the state provides the service because it’s still coming out of the same pockets of New South Wales taxpayers,” NSW Premier Chris Minns told reporters in Sydney.
Michael Perusco, director general of the National Disability Service, backed the government’s push for change, warning that the program had gone far beyond its original aim of supporting people with a significant lifelong disability.
He also called for mandatory registration of all providers to make the program more transparent and accountable.
“We currently have a situation where only one in 20 providers is registered. The other 19 providers have no visibility and this needs to change,” Mr. Perusco said.
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