If it *IS* broke, why fix it?

The NDIS is a broken system at its heart. It’s one of the fundamental truths of the universe. From its inception, there have been inbalances and instabilities in the way it was formed that meant it had a shaky foundation for the rest of its operations. I discussed a lot of this in a YouTube video last year. I’ve often hoped for change, but I’ve been realistic.

Well, change has finally happened! Yes, legislation has been passed that will make major changes to the NDIS. Sounds promising, right?

Yeah, not so much. When asked by ABC Radio Mid North Coast what these changes felt like, I described them as a punch in the gut. Other advocates have described them as a betrayal. So many of them feel like complete backtracking from what the NDIS was meant to be, and what we’ve been told it would be from the very beginning.

You can find the full list of changes here. Some of them, to be fair, seem positive. One of them will make it easier for participants to know what they’re actually on the NDIS for. This seems like a no-brainer, but it’s something that is currently missing on the system. We’re told to make sure that everything we ask for is in line with our registered disabilities, but those disabilities aren’t listed on our plan paperwork, and we aren’t able to inquire about them when calling the NDIA. So this is a welcome change.

But so many of the others are stripping away vital facets of the NDIS. One of them is ‘eligibility reassessments’, which could see participants have their access to the Scheme reassessed and even revoked entirely. This is shocking, especially as the NDIS has always claimed to be a scheme for life, and we have had to prove that we will need it for life before we’ve been accepted onto it.

Participants could see their decisions about plan management taken out of their hands if the NDIA believes their funds aren’t being managed appropriately. While it makes sense to keep an eye on possible fraud, taking the ‘choice and control’, the motto of the NDIS, away from the participants should be secondary to investigating the source of fraud. By all means investigate if a plan manager or plan nominee is misusing funds, and direct them to a different manager or nominee, but don’t say to a participant, “we will no longer permit you to have your funds managed the way you want.”

The criteria of ‘reasonable and necessary’ is being phased out, and replaced with a set list of supports that participants can access, as well as a ‘support needs assessment’. So essentially, instead of participants finding the supports they require and being able to present their reasons for why these supports are suitable for them, we will have someone else assess our needs, and then whether those needs suit a list of pre-approved supports.

This is concerning, as not all disabilities and supports are one-size-fits-all, and many people with disabilities find off-the-wall supports that work for them, but might not have been thought of before. Previously they could make a ‘reasonable and necessary’ case for these supports. However, now, if they’re not on the preapproved list, they might not be considered.

This legislation is not only going back on the ‘NDIS is for life’ promise, and the ‘choice and control’ promise, but also Labor’s promise to not cut funding to the NDIS. These changes are being made in the hope of cutting NDIS funding by $14.4 billion over the next four years. It’s ostensibly to make the NDIS more sustainable over time and to help people better. But is it the right approach?

If you had a bunch of hungry people waiting in line for food, you could announce, “I’m going to make sure everyone in line gets fed,” and then shoot half of them. Less mouths to feed means more food to go around, right?

Sure, the fraud and routing on the NDIS needs to be stopped. But that should have been the first target of the legislation. Try to target fraud first and see how much could be saved. THEN attack the rights of the people you’re claiming to help. Don’t go straight for the kneecaps.

All of these changes are also hanging under the cloud of the legislation being passed despite opposition from people with disabilities and disability advocates. It gives a major feeling of people without disabilities claiming to know what’s best for us, and forcing us to sit back and be helped, and to stop squirming so much, for goodness sake! Just let ourselves be punched in the gut with help!

Just a word of advice – if the disabled people think your disability laws suck, you should probably listen to them.

Also, my ‘The NDIS Song’ seems particularly pertinent right about now. Will it ever go out of style?

-Nell-