Disability: What’s happening with the NDIS?

NDIS reform has been happening for years now, and these reforms are the latest installment in this saga.

Sam, what does this mean for NDIS reform? Where are we up to now?

Yes.

You're right, Hannah.

It has been rather a saga.

It can be very tricky following the bouncing ball of NDIS reform because there's been a lot of it over a long period of time.

But I'll try and give our listeners a sense of where we've come from and where we're up to today.

We had government back in 2023, for the first time, introduce a growth moderation target.

The scheme's costs have been growing at over 20% a year for the four years prior to that.

Um, they said that initially they wanted to bring that growth rate down to 8%, and they brought forward legislation in 2024 to try and enable that.

I was looking back, we recorded a podcast around that time.

It- following the name of the legislation or, or the bill as it was at that point in time, we were asking, "Will this legislation get the NDIS back on track?" And somewhat belatedly, unfortunately, I think we can clearly say, uh, today that it didn't.

Uh, we're still tracking a growth rate of 11.3% at the moment, and that growth rate has actually gone up rather than down in the last 12 months.

So what we saw April this year, huge package of reforms announced by Minister Butler at the Press Club.

In May, we saw how those reforms were supposed to impact the forward estimates as a big part of the federal budget, very big savings contribution in terms of the government's fiscal repair.

And then we saw legislation brought forward, introduced to Parliament to enable all of those changes to occur.

And as you said, we've had a pretty quick four-week Senate inquiry undertaken to have a look at all of this.

A pretty bland report from them, to be honest, which saw the light of day on Tuesday.

Uh, and then, as you said, an extension of a further eight weeks to the inquiry.

We also saw some amendments brought forward.

This is as a result of the Greens' support for Labor's legislation around tax reform.

Uh, there are a couple of amendments made that address some of the concerns that senators heard in those hearings, uh, as well.

So we're at a, as you said, a, a really important juncture.

Those previous legislative amendments in 2024 never did anything to the scheme's eligibility criteria, and that is one of the key drivers of cost growth within the NDIS is essentially how many people are coming in and how much their plans are costing and, and growing over time that impacts on those costs.

So it was always likely we were gonna need to come back with another reform package.