Rhett Ellis – 9th June 2021 - Submission to Joint standing Committee on the NDIS

My name is Rhett Ellis, I’m a 26 year old with autism, I have previously appeared as a witness before the Senate Select Committee on Autism and now I’m here.

I don’t want to go on and on about how important I am, but my credentials are that I’m a disabled rights activist with a deep understanding of technology and disabled employment.

I used to run the largest software development group in Queensland, a super majority of that group had autism, and many were either unemployed or underemployed despite extremely advanced qualifications such as PHD’s in mathematics and nuclear physics.

This upset me and led me down a path of trying to help others in the same situation, I sometimes cry myself to sleep at night thinking about other disabled people who have been abandoned by society for committing the crime of being shy.

It’s my personal goal to fix that, and to create a fair society that values disabled people.

To do this, I called upon a good friend who happens to be the CEO of the best tech company in Australia, WithYouWithMe, they are a 200 FTE cyber/tech company from Sydney led by 70% combat veterans, they are one of the most successful businesses in APAC by revenue, the business is based around helping veterans transition from being a rifleman with no previous IT skills and making them an IT superstar in 100-200 hours, they have successfully done this thousands of times and have the best track record of any company doing that in Australia, and a success rate multiple times higher than DES or any equivalent government program.

As a result of my activism, WithYouWithMe, have generously donated 5 million AUD to support disabled people into employment, for no reason other than it being the right thing to do, we are lucky to be among such patriotic and good people.

With this stated, and with the knowledge that we have provided more funding as a single private company than the entire federal government for the purpose of employing autistic adults, I will begin with my recommendation, and follow up with my reasoning for it.

Recommendation:

- The NDIS should announce a pilot program that allows an autistic NDIS participant to self-
  select to pause NDIS supports in exchange for full time APS employment.

Why?

It would save more money than the independent assessments, aligning the growth of the scheme to the 4% growth Linda Reynolds and Martin Hoffman and Sarah Johnson need.

It can be done right now today without the need for any legislation changes.

It represents an immediate 50% saving per participant Year 1 for the average 25 year old autistic NDIS participant, and caps future growth to wage indexation, turning the annual 12% plan increase into a 2% increase of wages, plus they pay taxes etc, with data below.

It is easily reversible if it doesn’t work, with the option to just reinstate the NDIS plan.

It doesn’t hurt anyone, and shows the NDIA listens to disabled led solutions.

There are currently 250,000 diagnosed autistic people in Australia.
Autistic people have three times worse employment outcomes than other disability types, this is one of the main reasons we cost more, more of us are at home all day
There are 122,000 autistic NDIS participants (31% of all NDIS participants at June 30 2020)
Only 30% of the 250k autistics have intellectual disability, meaning we have tens of thousands of participants with mostly social issues that can be easily helped, all they need is a chance with a supportive employer, the government is perfect.
65% of NDIS participants in the 7-14 age bracket are Autistic, and rising
The average 25 year old autistic NDIS participant costs the government 110k per year
With my recommendation, you could offer to hire them for 75k as an APS3, and save the budget nearly 50% per person immediately while improving the quality of life of that person and without hurting them, and solving backlogs of work and skills shortages in a range of professions, and being reversible if it doesn’t work, and become champions of disabled people all over the world.
An economic win, as Linda Reynolds has stated that the 12% annual plan growth needs to be closer to 4%, well hiring someone caps future growth to wage indexation, which is under 2%, alongside tax contributions and so on, doing this program would save more than Independent assessments without hurting anyone.
A social win, as we empower the disabled and drive down underemployment, with a voluntary program that can be easily reversed if it doesn’t work for a participant, and afterwards we can target other groups with other programs designed by disabled people for disabled people.
It can also be done right now without any need for legislation changes.
A technological win, as autistic people represent 50% or greater of the workforces in some of our most crucial areas of government, such as missile defence systems, where there are currently chronic skills shortages, AustCyber’s 2019 report stated we are 17,000 cyber workers short, plus tens of thousands more in AI, data analytics, robotics process automation and many others.
Other countries with unlimited budgets like the USA and the UK have only been able to solve these shortages with autistic and dyslexic hiring programs, the same will be true for Australia.
Other countries like Israel have elite autistic only teams in the military, they consider autism to be a unique advantage, a rare one given only to 1% of the population, they do not waste the precious resource of neurodiverse talent like we do in Australia.
Neglecting autistic adults guarantees a perpetual national security crisis which will inevitably kill large amounts of Australians, reducing the tax base far beyond any potential “savings” by cutting the NDIS.
Cutting the already low supply of autistic talent by reducing or removing the NDIS supports of the 1% of the population being autistic people uniquely gifted to save us all is a national security crisis, as it directly attacks the future supply of the very people we need to operate critical safety systems, and should not be done in any circumstance.
GCHQ the UK signals branch of the military has dyslexic hiring campaigns right now, they have gone through a full procurement process and risk analysis and determined a need, not a want, a need for neurodiverse capability, it’s a national security issue, they need it, they need as much of it as possible, it’s a life or death situation.
The 122k autistic NDIS participants are a precious resource, we must not forsake them.

To recap.

The NDIA has paid consultants millions of dollars to reduce the cost of the NDIS.

The best they could do was suggesting a program that costs 300 million to save 700 million, while affectively harming and traumatising disabled people, creating as Martin Hoffman and Linda Reynolds have both acknowledged, fear and anger and concern, to save 400 million dollars, while likely cause more than the 400 million of “savings” in additional expenditure to other areas of the government such as hospitals and mental health services and lost tax revenue due to informal supports having to quit work etc.

A photo of a poll from the largest Facebook group for the NDIS indicates over 95% of NIDS Participants “totally oppose” the independent assessments is attached below:

NDS Grassroots Discussion

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Just wondering how participants and carers and applicants in this group feel about the Independent Assessments right now? (No provider answers please)

Added by you: Totally oppose them - 482 votes
Undecided (please explain why in comments) – 24 votes Added by you
Would like to see some changes made _——them -13 votes Added by you
Totally support them - 3 votes added py Ms
Make them voluntary - 2 votes

Add an option

When was the last time you saw 95% of people agree on anything?

The Occupational Therapy Australia peak body has also come out with strong opposition, stating that in dependent assessments are not fit for purpose and won’t work. Other peak bodies have already prepared documents to “exempt” participants from independent avsessments entirely as they would actively harm participants often permanently inflicting lifelong trauma that cannot be rehabilitated drastically increasing the cost of support and amount required.

Independent Assessments

Submission 388

Linda Reynolds job extends beyond being told by the treasurer to “make the state governments pay more” – disabled people deserve better.

We deserve to be respected, and listened to, and a seat at the table about decisions being made about us.

Nothing about us without us.

The NDIA could save a far greater amount, several billion by simply hiring NDIS participants who self- select for employment into the APS in exchange for pausing their NDIS Plan, which would align the scheme to its 4% growth targets, which would empower disabled people, which would solve backlogs of work, and add new capability in whatever areas the government needs; it’s a no brainer.

they can do it right now, with no need for any legislation changes, and its easily reversed if for any reason it doesn’t work by just reinstating the NDIS plan, and it costs less than what we are already doing, and it helps people.

how is it possible that these genius consultants could miss such an obviously good and simple thing?

because almost none of them are disabled, and as such they are not qualified to make decisions for the disabled community.

i’m a 26 year old autistic man and that just saved the NDIA more money than a team of top expert consultants being paid millions of dollars, and you didn’t even need to pay me millions for the privilege, all you had to do was ask the disabled community to propose a solution.

65% of all NDIS participants in the 7-14 age bracket have autism, how can they have hope for the future when the existing adults are not being helped now? We must do better.

Please keep that in mind going forward.