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Powerd Media's Emma Myers sat down with Minister for the NDIS Bill Shorten, to discuss the upcoming 11th anniversary of the NDIS and the proposed changes to the scheme currently before Parliament.
With thanks to Noah Secomb for the photo of Minister Shorten.
Bill Shorten on the NDIS
Emma Myers 00:00
I've reached out to the disabled community, since we are for the community and by the community. So I've got a few of their questions as well. Excellent. Why was the NDIS needed in the first place?
Bill Shorten 00:25
Because Australians with disability and their families were living lives of virtual exile in their own country, from birth to death and at every life stage in between, Australians with profound and severe disability and the people who love them were getting second-class outcomes. And I certainly believe, when I became a junior minister in disability, well before the NDIS was created, that what people with disability deserved is to have control over their own lives and by having personal budgets, they were able to be treated as consumers, not charity.
And also, I wanted people with disability to, we needed to change the model and not be treated as a deficit and to recognise disability is universal, it could be any of us at any time, but what effectively disables people are the barriers the community puts in their path. And the NDIS is a world-leading endeavour, which has been led by Labor, but absolutely supported periodically by other parties to give people with disability a fair go in Australia and have fulfilling lives.
Emma Myers 01:38
And anyone can tell that you're extremely passionate about the NDIS and it's the wellbeing of its participants. Why is this game so personal to you and have your views changed since becoming the Minister?
Bill Shorten 02:00
It's personal to me because when I came into Parliament, I thought I'd seen disadvantage because I've been a union rep and always for the underdog in my life. But I hadn't, nothing prepared me for the systemic exclusion of people with disability from so much of the Australian story. And I hate it when people are treated in an inferior or less equal fashion. We're all different, we're all good at different things, but just because someone has a disability doesn't mean that they should be treated as inferior or second-class. It's just a fact of life, it's like any other attribute and it's on the Australian community at large to help.
Has my view changed since I became the Minister? No, I've probably got more idealistic, not less, but I'd probably get a little more impatient with the people who are ripping off the scheme. And by that, I mean some of the service providers. Most service providers are great, but some are having a lend of it. And that's ripping off participants, their families and taxpayers. The other... so that frustrates me. The other thing is the NDIS shouldn't be the only lifeboat in the ocean. So since I've become a minister, I realised that it's a chapter in the story of people with disability in Australia, but it's not the whole book.
And we now need to do a lot more outside the scheme to create an inclusive Australia, specifically just because the NDIS exists doesn't mean that various other government departments and levels of government are excused from their obligations to include people from the school system, the employment system, the transport system, the building system, the hospital and health system. Like everyone's got a job to do here, not just the NDIS.
Emma Myers 03:52
Which brings me to, I guess, we're skipping ahead a bit, but do you think the Federal and State Governments are well enough equipped to set up mainstream supports for those with more older disabilities?
Bill Shorten 04:13
I think everyone means well. I think my state brothers and sisters, I think the community, the private sector, most of them want to do the right thing. Absolutely. But I think it's an overdue conversation, merely because we've got a national disability insurance scheme. Doesn't mean that if you're an outpatient in a hospital, you should be told, go and see the NDIS, not the hospital. Merely because we've got an NDIS, doesn't mean that a kid at school has got developmental delays, should be told, get the NDIS or not. Merely because we have an NDIS, doesn't mean that we shouldn't have accessible transport or accessible building codes. So we've just got to work on it all together. And I think we will do. I'm optimistic.
But also, you know, I guess it's inevitable. The scheme has been in the developmental phase. It's immature as opposed to mature. It's only 10 -years -old. So I think a lot of the conversations we're having now are about making sure that it's true to purpose, true to its original intent, making sure that every dollar gets through to the participants room the scheme was designed. Conversations we're having now are about the next chapter of inclusion in Australia. They're about accountability. They're about building the back office of the scheme so that some opportunistic and unethical behaviour can be detected and eliminated by some service providers.
It's a conversation about the truth, isn't it? Like deep down, I get sort of trolled occasionally by some of the dodgy service providers or indeed some genuine disability advocates who say don't talk about the problems in the scheme, but it's about being honest. The scheme is doing a lot of good for like hundreds of thousands of people. It now employs 400 ,000 people. It's awesome. But ignoring the problems doesn't make the problems go away.
But then also on the other side, you get some of the, you know, some who say, Oh, the scheme is too generous or people with disability don't deserve this. You know, they're wrong too. The scheme is, it's world leading. I've just come back from overseas as we're a lot of other countries to talk about what they're doing for people with disability. We're doing good here. Like we could do better, but we're doing good.
Emma Myers 06:37
And, you know, going into the disability Royal Commission recommendations, they were the commitment to grade to co-design with people living with disability. But how is that actually happening? Is the government on track to fulfilling the recommendations?
Bill Shorten 07:02
Yes, my colleague Amanda Rishworth is coordinating a government response about the Royal Commission across areas outside the NDIS. But in terms of the NDIS, we've got 23 co-design groups and consultation groups. For me, co-design is not a new announcement, it's just a way of thinking. The whole reason why I backed in and was the first politician in Australia to use the terms National Disability Insurance Scheme was I'm motivated by empowering people. For me, empowering people means you've got to involve them in the processes. I mean, you've got to get on and do stuff. It's not consultation by exhaustion.
At some point, life's not a mirror which we keep looking into. You've got to get on. But co-design is just a fundamental way of thinking for me. It's the way I view life, that you get the best out of people and the best out of situations when people have agency in their own lives.
Emma Myers 08:00
A lot of people are quite anxious about the proposed challenges that are coming up. How different is the new system to the one that NDIS replaced are you concerned about the unintended consequences?
Bill Shorten 08:20
I can respect people being concerned because people have battled so hard to get what they've got. And when people talk about change in the media or in Parliament, what people on the scheme might think is change equals I lose something. That's not what these changes are about. I want to stop money getting wasted. I want to stop people, lack of clarity about what you're allowed to use your money on. But if you love the scheme, you don't tell people nothing has to change. Being told that you can just, nothing ever changes is actually dangerous logic. People with disability know that there are flaws in the system. And I've been the opposition spokesperson since 2019, but before then I was leader of the Labor Party.
The reason why we had a Disability Royal Commission is because Labor called for it when I was leader in 2017, or maybe even it was 2016. And when I was first in Parliament, we helped set up the NDIS. So I want the NDIs to be around long after I'm out of politics and long after even the current participants have grown up or grown old. I want this around for a very long time. And that means we've just got to make sure that money is not getting wasted.
At the moment, the scheme is growing at 20%. That's too fast. But I think we can moderate the growth to about 8%, but not in one day. It's going to involve a lot of conversations, a lot of listening, co-design, building out inclusive Australia beyond the NDIS, getting rid of some of the shonks and frauds out of the unregistered sector and wherever else. We've got to get rid of the overcharging and treating people on the NDIS as human ATMs. We're going to make the National Disability Insurance Agency a lot more human, a lot more empathetic to deal with, better quality decisions.
We've got to include a lot more people in Australia in being able to access the scheme equitably, transparently and fairly. So the legislation is just initial stuff. And I get that there's anxiety, but for me the test is not what happens next Monday or next Friday or two Tuesdays' time. It's what happens next year, next decade. For me, the success of the scheme is about kids who are at school getting employment. For me, the success of the scheme is autistic kids getting the early intervention they require so they can have better experiences.
For me, it's about being able to get the right wheelchair, doing the needs for people. It's about people joining in the community. It's about relieving that midnight anxiety of ageing parent care is who's going to look after their adult child when they no longer can. It's about people with disability not being socially isolated. Anyone who says that you never need to change is talking rubbish. But by the same token, the people who say we should just cap the scheme and just give little amounts, little morsels of support they're wrong to.
Emma Myers 11:35
Tracy on LinkedIn wants to know if there's a better way for NDIS participants to get the best out of the programs they attend because often the NDIS funds them to attend a program and just if they're getting the benefit from it, the funding dries up. So is there a better way?
Bill Shorten 12:01
Sure. We've got to focus not just on the building blocks of people's plans, but of people getting the outcomes that the plans are purchasing. So people get personal budgets. I want to make sure that the people who are providing the service are delivering outcomes, not just charging them money. So we've got a long way to go about improving quality. But I have to say there's literally more also talk about good news stories. It's very hard to get good news stories up at the NDIS. But also I think it's about just building more inclusive services for people with disability generally. So it's all of the above.
And I think we can do better. One thing I'd like to do is have better standards for people who give advice to people on the NDIS. A lot of the effort that goes into work on the scheme is helping people liaise with the National Disability Insurance Agency about their funding. I'd like to have a focus also where we're spending a lot more time encouraging the people with their budget how to get the best out of life in the community.
Emma Myers 13:17
And let's touch on employment and getting... Harley on Facebook raised good points. Even though some Australians with a disability can hold down a job, it doesn't mean that they can afford to pay all that comes with being disabled. You know, it's more every time someone earns a nightly income regular or otherwise it has to be reported to Centrelink. These people always have disabilities. Why are they being affected negatively for trying to build a career and what are you doing to better support disabled people, working disabled people?
Bill Shorten 14:08
Let me just say, it's great when people have a go. So I'm very supportive of people with disability getting opportunities. I'm not in charge of every aspect of that question. I don't run the employment programs or the policy for the pension system, but let me have a bit of a go. I think our disability employment services are a bit hit and miss. There's some good ones, but there's other ones who put some people in the two hard baskets, so I think that needs to change. But we're reviewing our disability employment approach, and Ministers Burke and Rishworth for having a red-hot go at that.
In terms of the interaction with the pension system, I think government should be better at recording people's disabilities so they stop having to reprove it. Because if it's permanent and lifelong, it's a bit dehumanising. You'd have to keep proving that you're still blind, or you're still quadriplegic, or so that could be frustrating. But the interaction of how much pension you get with what you do when you work, I get that the big anxiety for people who might be on the disability pension going to work is not even the pension, because that can get replaced by income, but it's the healthcare card.
So I think that's a fertile area for further discussion, so we can remove that anxiety where you're either on the DSP and you've got your healthcare card, or you're working and you lose your healthcare card, because sometimes for people that could be a disincentive to risk working, and then if it doesn't work out, all of a sudden, you're left with nothing at all. So I think we've got to do a bit more work on that issue.
Emma Myers 15:43
And Sarah on Facebook asks, from a provider perspective, what are the plans regarding education and training local area coordinators and ECEI coordinators to actually understand their participants and found therapies and supports according to the person, sorry.
Bill Shorten 16:17
I understand your question... and the FPCI, I think they mean early childhood.
Emma Myers 16:21
Yeah, rather than the age and diagnosis.
Bill Shorten 16:26
Yeah, I think part of the problem has been that, I'll be honest, under the previous government, they increased the scale of the scheme. That's good. But they didn't want to hire any more people at the agency. So they created all these other jobs like local area coordinators and support coordinators and specialist support coordinators. And some of them are doing a great job. But the standard essay and local area coordinators can vary. There's some really good ones, but there's others who are not familiar with disability. So the reviews proposed that we create a new category of people called navigators. And a lot of these other functions might roll into that.
But we've got to make sure we have proper accreditation of people who call themselves advisors and intermediaries in the world of disability. So there's some great intermediaries, but not all of them have got the same level of knowledge. And I think we do need to and the review says that and we'll spend a couple of years working on that. How do we better accredit people who are saying they're advisors to people with disability to make sure they actually know what they're talking about.
Emma Myers 17:26
And before we wrap up, I have to touch on the fraud. The population without disabilities or involved in the NDIS now has the belief that a large portion of providers and participants are fraudulent in their activities. Why do these cases keep sleeping through the system? Are the safeguards in place actually strong enough?
Bill Shorten 18:02
Well, first of all, with whoever gave you that question, I don't agree that Australians think a majority of people on the scheme or service providers are frauds. I can understand if you're a service provider, it's very sensitive when you read about a dodgy provider being caught. But this is going back to that answer I gave earlier in our conversation about the truth. The truth is most people are doing the right thing. The truth is that most people work in NDIS are fantastic. The truth is the participants are getting good outcomes. But the truth is also that there are some service providers attracted by easy government money who are manipulating participants and not delivering the promises that they're getting paid for.
So that's just the truth. Life's a shade of grey, not everything's black and white. But what I'd also say is that before we came in, the payment system had no backdoor. You could put in a claim and chances are it will never get checked. So we're strengthening our payment system. We're getting all the government agencies to talk to each other. We've now made it illegal to charge a higher price for an identical service just because someone's on the NDIS. We've now got a lot more investigations going on, a lot more prosecutions going on. We've also doubled the size of the safeguards commission, but that's going to take a while to get it working to where I'd like it to be.
And we also want to give the safeguards commission more power to look at all of the operators in the system, not just the registered ones.
Emma Myers 19:37
Thank you so much - and lastly, what aspect of the NDIS are you most proud of?
Bill Shorten 19:52
[It] didn't exist 10 years ago. I'm proud of the fact that this nation invests so much of its scarce resources into the lives of people with disability. I'm really proud of the fact that in the 21st century, this is probably the biggest thing Australia has done. I'm really proud of the fact that because the NDIS exists, we can say to anyone in the world, judge Australia by the priorities that we spend our resources on, and that we as a nation don't want disability to define you. So I'm really proud that we have an NDIS. I'm really proud that 400 ,000 people work in it. I'm really proud that 650 ,000 people get support.
But we've got a lot more work to do, and I just want to make sure this scheme can get above politics and just work, be a consistent, transparent, accountable experience for people, and that we build a more inclusive Australia off the back of the existence of the NDIS.
Emma Myers 20:55
Thank you so much, Bill, for your time today. I really appreciate it. The audio was just jumping at the end there. So I had to turn off my mic... I mean, my video. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Bill Shorten 21:09
I thought that was you wrapping the ups at our... Bill, you said enough!
Emma Myers 21:12
No, no, no. No, never, never. I enjoy hearing you talk.
Bill Shorten 21:17
Well, thanks for the chat, it was great, and there were great questions. Thank you so much. And I hope that helps put people's minds at ease, not that we'll get everything right, but that what's motivating us is the best interests of Australians, nothing else.
Emma Myers 21:31
Hmm, I thought it should be.
Bill Shorten 21:35
As it should be. Alright, great chatting with you.
Emma Myers 21:37
Thank you so much for your time, I really appreciate it.
Bill Shorten 21:41
Now likewise, you have a lovely day.
Emma Myers 21:42
You too! Bye!
Bill Shorten 21:44
Toodaloo.