Op-Ed: Porkies peddled on NDIS rollout

Labor have claimed the 2019 budget is built on spending cuts to the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

This claim is factually wrong; deeply cynical; and conveniently overlooks the NDIS mess our Liberal National Government inherited from Labor in 2013 - which we have worked with considerable success to fix.

In the dying days of the Labor Government, a desperate Julia Gillard ordered that the NDIS should start from 1 July 2013 - a year earlier than the Productivity Commission recommended.

This rash decision, as the Productivity Commission later pointed out, meant the NDIS was like an aeroplane being designed while already in flight.

A key task was to move people across from the existing Commonwealth and state and territory disability programs.

During 2012-13 the Commonwealth agree bilaterally with each state and territory the estimated number of people to be moved across – as well as the number of people to get support for the first time. Adding these up produced a ‘bilateral estimates’ figure of 460,000 people across Australia to be covered by the NDIS.

After completing the trial phase in 2016 - by which point there were 30,000 participants - the full rollout began.

Since that time the scheme has expanded by more than 700 per cent; there are now over 250,000 participants.

Participant growth is reflected in strong spending growth.  In 2017-18 spending on the NDIS was $6.4 billion; in 2018-19 it will be $13.3 billion; next year it will be $17.9 billion; and by 2020-21 it will be $22.2 billion.

With the budget showing a $4.5 billion increase in NDIS spending next financial year, how can Labor claim that there is a $1.6 billion cut?

Only by cynically mischaracterising a highly technical budgeting issue known as an ‘estimates variation.’

These occur at every budget to deal with changes in the number of people being served by what are called ‘demand driven programs’.

For example, in this year’s budget we announced an upwards estimates variation of $1.9 billion over four years for public hospitals - because more people will use public hospitals than was previously estimated.

Labor’s claim that this is because we have under resourced the NDIS is completely wrong.  The biggest single reason is that the number of people available to move across from existing Commonwealth and state and territory disability programs has been significantly lower than originally estimated – to the tune of 90,000 people.

For example, 74,000 people were expected to transfer into the NDIS from Victoria’s disability services, but the Victorian Government has only provided 53,000 ‘actionable records’ – that is, files giving sufficient information so that the person could be contacted to become an NDIS participant.

The story is the same for Queensland - which is supposed to transfer across 47,000 people, but so far has only produced 31,000 actionable records.

The fact is, under the old ‘‘block funded’ system - where service providers were given a set level of funding to look after a certain number of people - the records kept about the people being looked after simply were not very good.

Some people were recorded in more than one program; some people were still shown as being looked after when they had passed away; in some cases providers were paid for more people than they were actually caring for.

Challenges like this are very much to be expected in rolling out such a large and transformational social program.

But they show the fallacy of claims from Labor politicians - including from the Queensland and Victorian Governments - that we are behind on numbers because the Commonwealth has under resourced the NDIS.

As the Prime Minister, the Treasurer and I have stated, the NDIS is fully funded.

It is a demand driven scheme - and if demand exceeds our estimates, the funding will be there.

This is a point that even the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, Tanya Plibersek, and Shadow Minister Linda Burney have now finally admitted.

In an ABC radio interview last week when quizzed if Labor would put more funding into the NDIS if elected Burney’s response was telling - “there doesn’t need to be a commitment it is a demand driven program.”

The fact is we recently announced considerable extra spending: an $850 million increase in 2019-20 through the individual plans of NDIS participants. 

This reflects a recent decision to increase the prices to be paid under the NDIS to service providers such as personal care workers, occupational therapists, physiotherapists and psychologists. The hourly rates allowed will increase by up to 15.4 per cent.

And the budget also includes $400 million in extra NDIS funding - for administration costs for the scheme, and for people supported under existing Commonwealth disability programs who will be on these programs a little longer before transitioning across to the NDIS.

Labor has form in telling cynical and deliberate lies about the funding of social programs. They did it with Mediscare in 2016; and they are doing it again with the NDIS in 2019.

But the facts are clear. The NDIS is fully funded and we remain on track to reach 460,000 participants in 2020.

Paul Fletcher MP is the Minister for Families and Social Services in the Morrison Government.