It is a pleasure to stand and speak in support of the Disability (National Disability Insurance Scheme Transition) Amendment Bill 2019. I acknowledge how imperative it is for us to be hearing this debate now, with 1 July only a couple of weeks away. The national disability insurance scheme (NDIS) is a modern system of delivering the support and services people with permanent and significant disability need in our community. It provides the quality of life and freedom of choice that everybody deserves, regardless of differences in ability. But not only that—this bill is the next step in ensuring we meet our collective obligation of good governance when providing for those living with a disability or caring for someone with a disability, all while maintaining the quality and safeguards on which we pride ourselves as Victorians.
The old system of one size fits all provided neither the best support nor the most cost-effective support for individuals. It was described by the Productivity Commission as ‘underfunded, unfair, fragmented and inefficient’, arguing that it gave people with a disability ‘little choice and no certainty of access to appropriate supports’. It is a system that has been clearly broken, which is why the implementation of the national disability insurance scheme is the largest social service reform introduced in Australia since Medicare over 40 years ago.
Like all large reforms, it is important to get it right. It is important that we look at the technical details carefully and that we reform regulatory requirements to meet the needs of Victorians. And as the Victorian government, this is exactly what this bill will achieve as we move to a system where direct control over funding and over support and services received is handed to the people who know best. Stakeholder consultation on this bill with providers and, most importantly, with those living with a disability has been considerable. Because, simply, they know best how to improve their own lives. They just need the opportunity to make informed decisions. That means better support for people that need it and a stable, consistent budgetary approach to funding as costs are factored in over a lifetime rather than as an annual expense varying year to year.
We have already started to see some of these benefits from this new system for those who, let us be honest, have been able to access a plan at the very least. One area in particular this bill will finalise is the complete deinstitutionalisation of disability services. We instead get to see people given the opportunity to live independently. The company Empowered Liveability is an example and has designs for six specialist houses to be built in Wyndham alone for NDIS participants who are funded for specialist disability accommodation. One is already completed in Tarneit, allowing those with high-care needs to live independently while still maintaining round-the-clock care.
By its very nature the task and complexity of transitioning 105 000 Victorians to the NDIS is not simple; it is a really big job, and that is without taking into account the gaps created by the $1.6 billion shortfall in federal funding, a shortfall claimed to be the result of slower than expected uptake in NDIS plans. Yet there are an estimated 872 Tarneit locals who I represent still waiting for a plan as of the start of May, locals faced with unacceptable delays and intensified levels of stress, the people who are least able to cope—real people, people living with a disability and their families, who are much of the time their primary carers. ‘Slower than expected uptake’ is just another way of saying ‘unnecessarily complicated bureaucracy has intentionally slowed uptake’. And it is not just in Tarneit; we have seen this right across Victoria and the rest of Australia—delays leaving individuals stuck in hospitals for more than three months despite being ready for discharge. These are individuals who have been unable to return home because they do not have access to the services they need, the services they have been promised. Instead they are forced to spend on average 107 extra days in hospital beds—beds that are in demand. They are being occupied by individuals who want to go home and are ready to go home.
Funding of services by the federal government has to come eventually. They cannot stall forever. But while they do these delays create an unnecessary burden on families solely with the purpose of pushing back so the federal budget looks better—well, let us be honest—on the paper that it is written. A reprehensible trick of accounting—there is absolutely no regard for the knock-on effect this is having on real people’s lives, because if enough individual transitions onto NDIS can be delayed, then the federal government’s budget does not need to reflect funding this financial year. No doubt they will be so proud of the surplus extracted from some of our most vulnerable.
Indeed it is because of these reasons and these delays that the Andrews Labor government and the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) have had to pick up the slack, fighting through the red tape to get Victorians registered. Our government has supported Victorians living with a disability as they have waited for and navigated the NDIS transition, and we will continue to do so. The dedicated specialist teams within DHHS should be commended for the support they have provided to over 28 000 Victorians so far. The Victorian transition support package, worth $41 million, continues to provide support for participants, families and providers as of 1 July, a deadline that looms ever closer. This is in conjunction with just over $25 million funded to boost support for and prepare our disability workforce as they move to the new system as well, because attempting to transition to an NDIS plan should not be such a hard task.
This bill ensures that quality services are provided to those that need them most, with safeguards from violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation, a vital task supported by the $9.45 million funded by this Labor government to establish the disability worker registration scheme, a scheme workers can voluntarily choose to be accredited by to give NDIS participants the additional knowledge that services on offer are of the safest, highest quality, all with an overlap of the NDIS worker screening process, because, as I have already stated, people need the opportunity to make informed decisions. Giving greater choice and control to people living with a disability over their own lives while ensuring workers have the necessary skills, experience and qualifications to provide quality services—that is what this bill does.
Reform like the national disability insurance scheme is massive. Like Medicare it is once in a generation, and this bill will go a long way to ensure we get it right for Victoria, for the people relying on its support and services now and for the generations to come. This bill is representative of this Labor government’s ongoing commitment to support all Victorians—to make sure nobody gets left behind. That is good government, and that is exactly what the Andrews Labor government is about. I commend this bill to the house.
