Bill's new Bill.
Public Disclosure; I am 10000% not a lawyer 😬
Many of us have the privilege of mostly ignoring politics until it starts to impact us personally in some significant way. I remember Covid was a brutal yet rapid introduction into how Government can dramatically impact day to day life and being grateful to content creators like Voice for Victoria for providing critical education and commentary with a side of cynicism and sarcasm to take the edge off the cold hard facts.
I certainly don’t remember learning at school about how parliament is formed or how laws are made, (gee I wonder why it isn’t a priority to educate us mere peasants about this stuff) but we also don’t want to be panicking about a draft bill because a draft bill is very different to new law being passed. So for anyone who wants to know more about potential legislation changes with the NDIS… here’s the process in actual English:
There are two Houses of Parliament.
The House of Representatives and the Senate.
The House of Reps has 151 Members each representing an electoral division and makes up a comprehensive system of standing committees.
The senate consists of 76 senators, twelve from each of the six states and two from each of the mainland territories.
A ‘Bill’ is a draft piece of legislation. It’s the starting point to make a new law, or change (make amendments to) a current law.
Initially a new bill is introduced to the House of Representatives, where it will spend quite a while with re-readings, passionate arguments, snide comments, discussion, cheerful insults at other MP’s, and hopefully some genuine public informed debate. At this stage there is also public enquiry into the bill and changes may be made to the draft.
Once the bills voted in through the House of Reps it proceeds to the Senate where again it will have several readings, debate, amendments possibly made and public enquiry.
Amendments made may go back from Senate to House of Reps for more debate.
Then once the Senate passes the bill (by vote) it is sent to the Governor General for “Royal Assent” (to be signed - basically a formality) and then becomes law.
Even after / when /if a new NDIS Bill is passed, there also needs to be updates to The NDIS Rules which are another set of legal instruments which flesh out and go further into detail how The Act should be interpreted and delivered.
So this isn’t happening overnight!
And if you’re wondering who NDIS Minister Shortens counterpart is, it’s Michael Sukkar, Shadow Minister for NDIS and Member for Deaken. But its crickets at his end so far.
Instagram: @michaelsukkarmp
Email: Michael.Sukkar.MP@aph.gov.au
Ph: (03) 9874 1711
#JustSaying!
So last week Bill Shorten introduced his draft bill to the House of Reps (first reading) which contains a huge range of amendments that Labour want to make to the current NDIS Act.
He also made a lovely speech which included many lovely words like ‘co-design, ‘person-centred’ and ‘collaboration’. I do recall media rumours that the ‘collaboration’ with disability advocates for this draft of the bill came with non disclosure agreements. But let’s move on. That’s already in the past, right!?
You can read the all about the bill, which is called The National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Getting the NDIS Back on Track No 1) Bill 2024 #mouthful at the DSS website or if the thought of that gives you a palpable headache then enjoy this bitesized and rather more palatable summary instead.
Minister Shorten provided an overview of some of the main changes in this bill - I assume the changes which look and sound the most positive will be front and centre in many of the speeches to come, and conversely the most damaging and distressing content will make up the requisite clickbait headlines we can all look forward to.
Mr Shorten said;
“What we have to do is reform the National Disability Insurance Scheme Act of 2013 (the NDIS Act) and we have four goals:
1) that the NDIS provide a better experience for participants
2) that the scheme be restored to its original intent to support people with significant and permanent disability
3) that the scheme be equitable
and 4) that the scheme be sustainable.”
The bill has two parts.
The first section lays the foundations for how your NDIS plan is built and what budget is set.
Once you have access to the scheme, you will get a plan based on your support needs, which starts with a “needs assessment” which will be “more dignified and person centred” to give accurate and fair budgets that can be spent flexibly.
Minister Shorten stated that;
'Reasonable and necessary' remains the core basis on which your support needs are met through the scheme.
This bill proposes no changes to the 'reasonable and necessary' core operating principle of the NDIS.
But your needs assessment will look at your support needs as a whole—and we won't distinguish between primary and secondary disabilities any longer.
If over time your support needs change you may need an updated support needs assessment.
Mr Shorten said;
“You can spend this budget flexibly in line with your own support needs—because you know them best.”
This sounds great except it was followed by a slightly contradictory statement:
“We will be clear about what supports can and can't be funded by the NDIS to help you make informed choices and have confidence that you're using your NDIS funds within what is allowed.”
And then we flipped back to Mr Nice Guy with;
“Flexible budgets and a whole-of-person approach will increase the ability of participants to exercise real, true choice and control and to best realise their full social and economic participation in Australian society.”
So glad that’s been cleared up 🤨🤨🤨🤨
He stated that the changes to budget setting are to create clarity and transparency with fairer and more consistent decision-making. Ideally budgets will be more consistent and it will feel like less of a lottery for families.
The second part of the bill looks at;
the definition of what NDIS supports are,
giving more power to the the NDIS Commission to investigate fraud and ban unethical service providers,
the information gathering process for eligibility reassessment, (stating that the NDIA must be able to request information about whether the participant meets the access criteria) but he then stated “this will not result in people having to reprove their disability, but will allow the CEO to determine if a participant is receiving the most appropriate support.”
Plan management arrangements will be more strict where there is a risk for that participant including financial risk because ‘the Agency (NDIA) has responsibilities here too’ and needs to be consistent with the legislation.
Mr Shorten addressed some of the media rumours and commentary saying;
“(1) psychosocial disability is still included in the NDIS—full stop;
(2) autism is still recognised as a disability—full stop; and
(3) there are many good service providers in the scheme,
but at the same time we need to have an honest conversation about the scheme. It cannot keep growing at 16 per cent annually, as it has in the past few years… we simply have to take steps to get it back on track, and that's what we're doing with this bill.”
“Autism is still recognised as a disability” seriously, what does that even mean??
Nothing - thats what it means - the context of the NDIS it means absolutely nothing when we all know the million dollar question for so many is ‘will my kiddo still keep their access to the scheme?’
Mr Shorten finished up his speech by reminding everyone that the States and Territory leaders have already agreed to fund Foundational Supports for those not eligible for NDIS support. Just incase anyone was getting cold toes - and psssst from last weeks media reports, they were.
Victorian premier, Jacinta Allan stated to the media “We had a discussion, we reached an agreement, we released a communique and this legislation goes beyond what was agreed to by state and territory leaders last December.”
Even cheerier news from Victorian Disability Minister Lizzie Blandthorn who said “You can’t achieve the rapid restrictions in the scheme that they want to achieve without removing people from the scheme.”
So already the fight over who will (properly) fund the Foundational Supports has begun. Love that for us!
At the end of the day, Mr Shorten needs to get as many onside as he can (both in the government, and out on the street (yes plain ole you and me) so in most of the Government commentary around this bill, we can expect to hear a lot about human rights and co-design while also never getting a straight answer on anything. We all know the secret sauce to being a politician is to throw around pretty concepts like ‘social justice’ and ‘human rights’ while committing to nothing of actual substance.
‘A friend to all is a friend to none’
So said Aristotle (and Taylor Swift), and we all know that politicians need to communicate their message in a way that appeals to the masses. We also know that the penny will drop as time goes on and we start to see the real world implications of what is being proposed here. It is going to be an impossibility to please everyone.
There will be plenty of analysis as this bill goes through parliament, and advocacy organisations such as Disability Advocacy Network Australia will be involved in consultation and also holding webinars with key experts to get into the nitty gritty of what is proposed. Every Australian Counts have already scheduled an online forum for the 8th of April so that participants can get involved.
While the current NDIS world may feel triggering and uncertain, it’s not at all a perfect system, but it’s the system we have right now.
So rather than getting panicked or too cynical, let’s just get informed and educated on what’s happening, what we can influence and where we can conserve our energy and resources.
I’ll have more to share over the coming weeks and months. For now just remember you are never alone.