SENATE STANDING COMMITTEE ON COMMUNITY AFFAIRS
LEGISLATION COMMITTEE:
INQUIRY INTO THE NATIONAL DISABILITY INSURANCE
SCHEME BILL 2012
COMCARE’S SUBMISSION
25 JANUARY 2013
Comcare strongly supports the purposes of the NDIS Bill which recognises the need to address the inequities in the provision of care and support services to those persons with severe and permanent disability in the community.
The NDIS is intended to provide services to participants with a disability who may, in some circumstances, be eligible for workers’ compensation. If Comcare has determined liability to pay compensation to an employee, who is also a participant, the NDIS Bill allows for NDIS to recover from Comcare the amount paid for NDIS arranged services. Comcare’s submission addresses this aspect of the Bill in particular. Comcare may need to provide further comment when more details of the operational aspects of the NDIS are developed.
The SRC Act is limited in defining circumstances in which it can reimburse the cost of services provided through a third party such as reimbursement of medical treatment costs to Medicare under the Health and Other Services (Compensation) Act 1995. However, Comcare is already well acquainted with section 1184(6) of the Social Security Act 1991, which is identical to the proposed section 111(6) of the NDIS Bill, which allows payment of compensation to be paid to the Social Security agency.
Payments made under the Social Security Act 1991 are for discrete payments – reimbursement of income support payments made by Centrelink. In contrast, the services provided by the NDIS are much broader and less clearly defined. Consequently, unless the NDIS claim for reimbursement specifies in detail the nature of their services and the cost for which it seeks reimbursement, the result may be that the recoverable amounts may not relate to the payment for a service or support that is provided for under the SRC Act. Comcare could not be certain, in such circumstances, that it has discharged its liability by reimbursing the NDIS. This would not be unique to Comcare as other Australian workers’ compensation schemes may experience similar outcomes.
Comcare submits that the Bill require that the NDIS provides details of the claim made by NDIS to ensure that the services for which Comcare is reimbursing the NDIS are clearly aligned with both the heads of power for compensation and the quantum of that reimbursement as prescribed under the SRC Act.