**Please withhold my name and personal details.

The biggest issue with Securing the NDS for future generations**

Is that the Government and NDIS are wanting to:

turn back federal decisions such as a blind person needing a wheelchair
Not wanting to be preventative for degenerative conditions
Taking too long to make a decision (they still do not count the access request case time taken with the milestone to make a decision)
Not learning from tools already used (1)
Not being transparent about the pace system that does not work and is not fit for purpose or built for NDIS
Not re-thinking the gap between medical care and disability - people can be both and a person can also have more impacts as they aged - not all people will be able to build capacity but they will be able to build a meaningful life - screening tools should aim for that as a final and only goal - a meaningful life for a person who has a disability across all life transitions including sickness and age. (2)

People who have Autism sometimes have cancerous tumors too that are life changing and eventually life ending - both the NDIS, health, rehab and palliative care need to work together to fund that package. (3)

If the NDIS is going to pay for legal services to fight then this cannot come from the NDSIS pool. All cost including the right to legal services to the participant must come from the government pool. (4)

Page Text

The NDIS and government does not have the right to prevent federal rulings. (4)

Its time to stop pretending we are being included in decisions – the bill was sent with no consultation to parliament with the emphasis on fraud being a participant problem.

Disabled people did not design the NDIS, the rules or the legislation the Government did. The market is failing not because of use by Disabled people but by poor design.

We are now seen as a problem that costs to much. Rather than a person with right to access services like any one else.

Compensation for a harm that has occurred is not to be clawed back by the Government or any other service unless the NDIS can undo the harm. (5)

If the NDIS was truly a social program it would have not gone about these changes in the way it has. It should solve its own problems first before trying to tell us how we need to solve their problems while managing our own lives. (6)

In 2023/2024 around the same time a previous CEO managed to direct a participant who had been on the radio speaking about their experience kicked of the scheme the NDIS quietly issued an apology for claiming debt against participants and then realizing that this was in fact incorrect. The bill now wishes to issue penalties against families who make mistakes or can’t follow the ever changing NDIS rules. (8)(10)

The NDIS have not actioned a end of plan review, the pace environment has not been able to transition people from the old system and the inflation roll over is not of the people but a on purpose decision made by the NDIS.

The NDIA portal is frequently down. It is not reasonable let to expect a person with a disability to be able to meet the 90 day requirement, nor is it reasonable of the NDIS to fact check previous plan payments (8-9)

AI is relatively new, and in some cases it has been dangerous. The disability community are not test subjects so if a new system needs to be tried then consent for this should be asked.

Protective factors and overrides should also be in place if the expected income does not occur.
People with a disability fight for their rights every day. Sometimes for their life. They are tired and they need support from their community to stand with them.
The bill is so long and proposes so many changes that it is easy to forget or have some slip through which have devastating consequences.
Having open ended minster powers can mean that these can be changed on a whim by people who do not have lived experiences who do not know how people with a disability live and can not know how poorly thought through changes might impact on the county.
The community that just so happens to have disabilities have become a political football between the parties and we deserve more than this. We deserve a system that is fit for purpose.
In most services that the tax payer contributes to, there is an right of appeal. For services from the NDIS this has been dramatically reduced to a very strange pathway of the option to have the assessment done again for the same outcome which cannot be changed by a human.
The NDIS news site shows that it does not matter if the provider is registered or not – fraud will occur. At this stage it does not even matter if you work for a provider or the NDIS fraud will occur. It cannot be value for money for each individual person to set up their own services – that’s the risk that’s taken in the move from block funded to individual care packages. However it must meet value for care.

Tighter eligibility

and not looking at the whole person. A person who is born deaf, develops seizures, vision loss and becomes physically disabled and later has a ABI and then gets MS when they get older should no have to have each condition assessed to meet eligibility. The red tape and the hoops we have to jump is quite something and its not easy to navigate. The idea that NDIS is not about diagnosis and functional impacts and that it has to be returned to its “true purpose” is not based in facts. The NDIS has always been about how the functional impact is across all diagnosis. I would argue the NDIS needs to think about the whole person and assess them as they are. I also think it is cruel and in some cases insulting to think we can be fixed, repaired and rebuilt in our capacity – that’s simply not true for some people (MS, SMA, Parkinson, Down Syndrome on the sever end of the scale, CP on the sever end of the scale.) For others it is totally true that a person with down syndrome can live independently, work and drive – but they still have a lower life expectancy and a higher risk of losing that function due to age and fact that they are more likely to die from aged related diseases like Alzheimer much younger.

The true cost

focus on the scheme had become all about cost, despite data from progressive think tank Per Capita suggesting that for every $1 invested in the NDIS up to $2.25 of economic benefit was generated…(11)

Greater risk fall to families and carer givers.

As well as the female population with a disabilities who are mothers being significantly disadvantaged in caring for their children or fleeing family violence or homelessness.

Does it add up?

Original forecasts predicted that the scheme would service around 400.000 people at maturity The NDIS and Government have never explained what is considered maturity Early estimates anticipated an average plan being around $13,000 – but it is closer to $30- 60K. It has not taken into account inflection, cost of living, wars, and the fact that the numbers of people who actually have a disability was incorrect. Why are we chasing a 2015 prediction? That prediction was wrong.

Mission creep - The NDIS is failing by design because it was rushed and poorly thought out.

There are not enough delegates to do the scheme as designed, the inflaction occurred because plans were not reviewed. Covid put an end to the practice where plans would end and people would run out of funds because they had not been assessed for a new plan in time.

The design for NDIS occurred by trial and error and the roll out was poorly thought out.

In 2015 the scheme was not fully operational in all states and territories and the scheme was not fully rolled out till 2020.

Different numbers have been given for predictions ie It was expected that there will be 550,000 on the scheme by 2030 now thought to be 1 million by 2032 – but on the 31.3.2025 there is 774,456 already on the NDIS, 562034 receiving support for the first time and 18,530 initial plans recently approved.

So what cost the most the NDIS Plans?

Was it:

The pilot ideas that never went any where,
Ideas that ran into a wall and stopped,
The IT systems that keep changing,
The waste of internal systems within the NDIS?

I have been unable to find a good source for actual cost and numbers but the Government has been less than transparent about this. The claim that delaying this Bill by 12 months would cost 17 Billion. However the savings if the Bill had passed would have been only 2 Billion in the first 12 months. This claim just does not add up.

More recently the Senate enquiry has opened the submissions again for this bill – why could this not have been done in the first place.

Why was it not announced?

Fear and uncertainty have been the driving factor in putting forward the bill the way it has been. It has made the disability community out to be the problem when we are not the

problem

the scheme and the providers and the NDS system are the problem - we are just the humans that have to put up with the rest of the community saying oh you cost too much, you take up too much space, you ask for too much. When we never had it to begin with. Always treated poorly, always treated unfairly, always have to fight to be heard and fight we have don.

References

1.  Government's aged care tool to be reviewed | SBS News

2.  People with MS concerned about losing access to NDIS as survey reveals some

already don’t qualify for scheme | SBS News

3. More than 1200 people died while waiting for NDIS plans | SBS News

4. NDIS ordered to fund mobility scooter in 'extremely significant' Federal Court ruling
 - ABC News

5.  Dane’s payout for historical sexual abuse meant the NDIS slashed his funding. He and
his mum are fighting back | National disability insurance scheme | The Guardian

6.  https://www.ndis.gov.au/news/11571-sa-woman-charged-over-alleged-5-million-

dishonesty-plot-against-ndis

7.  Recovering funds owed to the NDIA | NDIS

8.  Latest news | NDIS

9.  Increasing integrity checks on older claims | NDIS

10. When Advocacy Becomes a Threat: Unpacking the NDIA Chief's Intervention

11. False Economy: The economic benefits of the NDIS and the consequences of

government cost-cutting - Per Capita