‘I’m a 63 year old indigenous man from NSW. I have more than one disability.
This Bill has to be stopped. There’s a rule they want in place where they can kick you off the NDIS if you don’t give them information in 90 days.
That’s bullshit. I’m pretty lucky with my GP, but even then, sometimes it can be three or four weeks before I can get an appointment. So, if you’ve got to get a specialist report, or see a specialist, or get a CAT scan or an MRI, and then wait for the specialist to write the report, 90 days is bullshit.
I’ll tell you something you probably don’t know. I come from Queensland originally, but I’ve lived in Queensland, the Northern Territory, Western Australia, and Tasmania. In Queensland, if you don’t go to a public doctor or hospital for 10 years, your records are wiped.
I broke my back years ago. When I had to get my records, I had to contact the insurance company. The guy said the records from 1991 were down in a storage warehouse. He found all the reports from both the insurance company side and my side, and that’s how I got them to my doctor. Otherwise, they would have been gone because I haven’t lived in Queensland for more than 10 years.
There’s another thing they want in place. That the NDIS can decide what your primary disability is, that they don’t have to tell you what they’ve decided, and they only provide funding based on what they decide your primary disability is. You might disagree with it, but you can’t challenge it. That’s wrong. I have more than one disability. Lots of people do.
I don’t have a primary disability. I have a lot of disabilities. I have CTE from too many concussions. But I also have spinal nerve damage, emphysema, osteoporosis. If you look at a bone density scan, you’d see the red line at the bottom where I am. Which disability would you reckon is your primary disability? I can’t decide mine. The emphysema is about getting CO2 out of my body. If I don’t get enough sleep, I’m basically poisoning myself.
And then I have dementia. Dementia isn’t classed as a disability unless it’s early onset. This primary disability rule has to go. And the idea that people who don’t know me can make these decisions by looking at a
piece of paper is ridiculous. There’s more to a person than their **medical records.
Another** issue is that they want to force you to use specific providers or supports. That’s for everyone, not just group homes. They want to put rules in place saying for some things you can use your funding only with specific providers. When they renewed mine, they put me on this PACE system without discussing it with me. I still don’t fully understand it, but it hasn’t affected me yet. Or I don’t think it has, I don’t know.
When** I broke my back, I spent eight months in the hospital learning to walk again. I was fine and went back to work. But now, if I broke my back again, I’d be ** fucked**. I’d need a lot of different support because of my spinal osteoporosis. They can’t put a rod in it, so I’d be stuck in a wheelchair, which isn’t me. I spent seven months in one, and I didn’t like it. And all the paperwork. The reason you’re writing this for me is because I can’t do all that.
The** NDIS should be about looking after people with disability, but it’s all about the government cutting costs. They’re trying to kick most of the kids off. I know there’s fraud, but it’s a tiny percentage, it’s something like 0.01%. The majority of us need the support and shouldn’t be penalised for that. I can’t physically work anymore, and my license might be taken away eventually. I volunteer my time, and even though sometimes I get a sitting fee, it doesn’t cover the amount of time I put in.
The** government needs to stop doing this crisis-to-crisis management. I’ve** worked hard all my life, paying taxes and doing physically demanding jobs. The NDIS isn’t giving me anything I haven’t earned.
How** can anyone with a conscience look at kids with disability and say they don’t deserve help? It’s just wrong. Some kids are so disabled they use their chin to drive their wheelchair. I’ve seen people refused proper wheelchairs and offered ones they can’t use. This kind of neglect is unacceptable.
People** with worsening conditions need to be covered. My emphysema isn’t just from smoking, but from years of exposure to dust and c hemicals at work, from cement. From the sugarcane in the cane fields. I started working at 13 years old. The NDIS is for everyone. I’ve had a fair life, and the NDIS helps, but we could survive without it.
It’s** really bad. This is like what the Liberals tried to do a few years ago, b ut even worse. I don’t know how they can live with themselves, **doing
‘this. I think about the people I know, especially mums with kids with multiple disabilities. They need all the help they can get.’