National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Getting the NDIS Back on Track No. 1) Bill 2024
Submission 30
Dear Committee,
I am a wheelchair user and an NDIS participant.
The NDIS bill must not pass.
Right now, there’s way too much detail to be filled in later, without public scrutiny or accountability. This bill is not worthy of a democracy.
The current bill gives the minister sweeping powers. Whatever the claimed intentions of the current government, legislation needs to be written recognising the reality that governments change. It must be written in a way that keeps whatever government is in power accountable to the parliament and to the people. This bill does not do that.
Central to this bill is a needs assessment of disability – with no detail. We need to know what the assessment tools are, how they will be applied and by whom.
NDIS participants must know what disabilities the NDIS has recorded for us and be able to challenge that.
We need a system that recognises disabled people as whole beings. The current bill wants to slice and dice us with some disabilities recognised by the NDIS while the impact of other disabilities on the same person goes unrecognised.
When people are born with or acquire disability we don’t get to choose which bits we will accept and send the others back. Disability doesn’t come in component parts like modular furniture. It’s a scrambled egg that can never be unscrambled and yet we have legislation before the Parliament that suggests the NDIS will pick and choose what bits of us they will fund. That can only make people’s lives more difficult.
Disabled people need to see a draft assessment before anything is finalised to check for errors. Under the current system we’ve seen errors as basic as the wrong person’s name and details in someone’s plan. The proposed bill doesn’t appear to offer any means for that to be picked up or challenged. That is unjust and could put people in serious danger if it means that their needs go unmet.
Disabled people must not be simply cut off the scheme after 90 days if they have difficulty meeting its requirements. That could have catastrophic consequences for people.
Regardless of which disabilities the NDIS recognises, all the disabilities we live with have an impact on our ability to function and to satisfy the requirements of the world in which we live. There are times when we just can’t get hold of the specialist we need. It’s even harder for people who live in a regional or remote area.
There are times when we struggle to find the time and emotional energy to deal with the administrative load of being disabled. People who are disabled (and on low incomes, which is many of us) spend a lot more time than other people filling out forms to satisfy the bureaucracy. It’s exhausting and it comes on top of living with disability. One of the common impacts of disability is that ordinary tasks are more time consuming and demanding for us than they are for others. It takes a toll.
No one should be cut off from the NDIS without demonstrated significant effort on the part of government/NDIA to understand why they have not met requirements and ensure that meeting requirements is realistically possible for the person concerned.
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Getting the NDIS Back on Track No. 1) Bill 2024
Submission 30
Reading between the lines, this bill looks designed to deny support to a lot of people without making it look deliberate. That is not acceptable.
I’m concerned too about “classes” of people and how that suggests we might be treated. It feels like we are being turned into job lots. It is not reasonable to assume that people who have the same disability have the same needs or capacity.
The current NDIS enables me to work. I have flexibility around who provides my supports and when I receive them. Right now, I can make it work. I’m a taxpayer, contributing to the costs of the NDIS.
If the system becomes less flexible it will be much harder for me to maintain paid employment. That will send me back onto government benefits. I will no longer be paying taxes. I will become a much more significant cost to the government. I won’t be the only one.
The current bill looks set to send us back years in terms of disability inclusion. Don’t do it. It does not represent the country we want to be.