Coalition and Greens senators have combined to accuse Labor of secrecy over its plans to reduce the cost of the $42 billion National Disability Insurance Scheme, saying parents fear their children will be kicked off the scheme. Source: The Age.
The Albanese Government has repeatedly refused to reveal the assumptions behind its decision to limit NDIS growth to 8 per cent a year, banking $74 billion in savings over a decade, and continued to do so in a Senate Budget estimates hearing yesterday.
The National Disability Insurance Agency also declined to provide details about the scheme’s growth trajectory over the most recent four months, including its costs and participant numbers, in a sign of caution within the Government about how the numbers are interpreted.
NDIA chief executive Rebecca Falkingham said the agency was “very optimistic the scheme is on track to reach national cabinet’s annual growth target of 8 per cent by 1 July 2026”.
But NSW Liberal Senator Hollie Hughes said families on the scheme were nervous because the Government’s plans for curtailing its growth had not been sufficiently explained.
“There’s two ways you reduce expenditure on a demand-driven scheme … you either reduce the value of the plans, or you reduce the number of participants,” Senator Hughes said.
“I would have thought we would want to be saying … if you’ve got a kid with developmental delay, you don’t need an NDIS plan because the states are going to step back up with community speech therapy and [occupational therapists]. That’s a great story and something that’s really positive.
“But we don’t even get that. All we’re getting is parents petrified their kids are going to be kicked off, there’ll be no supports then in place at a state level and they’re going to be left with no lifeboat.”
Ms Falkingham said many people on scheme packages would start to receive additional community supports, which was the original NDIS design, while NDIS Minister Bill Shorten has previously said all children would receive the support they needed.
FULL STORY
NDIS savings plan kept secret as parents panic children will lose funding (By Natassia Chrysanthos, The Age)
