National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Getting the NDIS Back on Track No. 1) Bill 2024

Submission 120

To whom it may concern,

As an NDIS participant since 2020, I wish to address the ‘Punitive measures’ that has been outlined in this email regarding the bill to proposed changes.

Forgive my assertion, but under no circumstances should a legitimate participant who intends to do the right thing with their funding, ever be issued a debt notice for alleged ‘misuse of funding.’ I would assume this would only apply to self managed participants since that type of management has the most control and choice in where funding goes, since they are the ones paying the bills or their family or other supports and not a third party.

Many participants accessing their first plans have no idea what they can do with their funding. I was this participant in 2020. When you are plan managed, it is the plan manager and the NDIA who ultimately are deciding if funding is being appropriately spent, regardless of how much input the participant has on that decision and what evidence they’ve presented to ‘justify’ funding being spent on this or that. Under no circumstances is this ever the participants’ fault for misusing their funds, nor should they ever have to repay this money.

I would be hard pressed to believe that a participant has never ‘misspent’ funding. Participants are granted funding to enrich their quality of life, so let them use it and spend it. That’s what it’s there for, not the other way around. Participants are some of the most vulnerable and helpless individuals in our society. They access this scheme because they simply do not have the financial resources behind them to afford the kind of support and services that can be provided to them under this scheme. So, how are they expected to repay a debt due to ‘misuse of funds’ when they’ve got nothing to repay it with? It is a form of scapegoating to make a participant to blame when those who are at fault are those who have designed this scheme so poorly and now participants are dealing with what they have been dealt. To make a participant pay and I mean pay quite literally speaking… scaremongering participants that they will have debts to pay if they misuse their funds, is a form of exploitation and I can only imagine the kinds of stress levels that would arise from this along with the thoughts of suicide. Reminds me of the Robodebt scheme. Auditing participants would be an acceptable measure, but serving debt notices is abhorrent and I imagine those within the disability community would feel wronged by a system that was designed to support them, not make them owe because a scheme was so poorly implemented.

I can absolutely appreciate there are criminal syndicates rorting the scheme. Illegitimate participants along with criminals in a legitimate participants circle, who are exploiting them and robbing their funding for their own gain. Those are the ones who should be investigated. The fact that it is even possible to do such a thing with a so-called insurance scheme that is consumed by bureaucracy and legislation, speaks volumes of an utterly flawed and broken system.

Sincerely,