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Government’s own reform committee release scathing take on NDIS Bill.

Image of Chair of Every Australian Counts and disability sector advocate, Dr George Taleporos

Many in the disability community are experiencing an alarming level of distress at the uncertainty surrounding the NDIS reforms, prompting the Federal Government’s appointed NDIS Reform Advisory Committee—made up of individuals with lived experience of disability—to release their scathing submission on the controversial National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill.

It comes after it revealed that the Committee itself was not consulted on the legislations contents at any stage of its drafting.

According to the Department of Health, Aging and Disability, the NDIS Reform Advisory Committee was formed to give independent advice from people with disability on implementing reforms.

However, the current actions of the Labor government suggests a blatant disregard of the daily support challenges faced by the disability community.

The Reform Advisory Committee (RAC) claims the proposed legislation pushes ahead with cuts and reassessments while alternative supports remain largely undefined, unfunded or unavailable.

“[There is] genuine shock, incomprehension, widespread participant and family concern, and fear that the NDIS and its inter-government framework is being partially dismantled,” the submission reads. “The Bill in its current form does material harm to current and future participants. It misrepresents the founding intentions of the NDIS.”

The submission, authored by its co-chairs, El Gibbs and Dougie Herd, calls for the legislation to be “redrafted in genuine partnership with the disability community, in the sequence the NDIS Review recommended, with the rights framework intact, and with the Scheme’s joint-venture architecture preserved.”

Disability sector leader and independent Chair of Every Australian Counts, Dr George Taleporos, took to LinkedIn to agree with the RAC’s assessment, arguing that the Bill disregards the NDIS review and breaches human rights.

This message is consistent with what people with disability and advocates have been saying about the Bill. It comes from the body chosen by the government and states and territories to advise on NDIS reform.
Dr George Taleporos

The Reform Advisory Committee claims the process leading to the Bill has failed to honour Australia’s obligation under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

“The submission directly challenges the government’s claim that the Bill is consistent with the NDIS Review. The RAC says the Bill “inverts” the Review by cutting access and budgets before foundational supports are in place,” Dr Taleporos writes.

The warning comes as newly released government modelling reveals more than 241,000 existing NDIS participants are expected to be pushed off the scheme within four years of new eligibility rules commencing, with almost 350,000 fewer people projected to be on the NDIS by 2031 than previously forecast, according to People with Disability Australia (PWDA).

PWDA claims the reforms risk recreating past inequalities experienced by the disability community, which is exactly the type of situations the NDIS was designed to prevent.

“When you strip away the supports that allow people to participate in community life, people…are pushed towards ‘disability only’ settings because those become the only places support still exists.”

Dr Taleporos summed it up best by stressing that the NDIS needs to be preserved as an individualised, needs-based scheme.

Do not pass this Bill in its current form... Do not make people with disability pay for budget savings with the supports we need to live safely, participate in our communities and exercise choice and control over our lives.
Dr George Taleporos