Bill Shorten and Tanya Plibersek speak with inner-city community on NDIS

By ERIN MODARO

Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) Bill Shorten was joined by Sydney MP Tanya Plibersek and state member for Heffron Ron Hoenig at a local forum on the NDIS. Sydney inner-city residents using the national insurance scheme, or searching for information on it, were invited to the Waterloo community centre to have their questions answered and their concerns heard by politicians.

Shorten, who took over the NDIS as minister for the current Labor government last year, has been a vocal advocate for fixing issues within the scheme that have arisen, as more Australian make use of the funding. A review into the NDIS is currently being undertaken, which is expected to be completed in October 2023.

Shorten said there was still “plenty of work to be done” after attending the forum.

“I got a lot of good observations,” he said. When asked what feedback the minister was hearing from the community, Shorten said that “they love the NDIS, but they want it to get back to its proper purpose”.

Over 100 attend forum

Plibersek estimated there to be around 100 people in attendance at the community centre. With 8 NDIS representatives set up outside the forum ready to answer questions, the community centre was certainly busy, and the meeting room was nearly packed to the brim.

Plibersek said that many attendees were “talking about the frustrations they’ve experienced” trying to access and use the NDIS.

A government services report by the Productivity Commission showed that waiting times for plan approvals decreased from 69 days in 2020, to 48 days in 2022. This decrease comes as more Australians than ever are accessing NDIS funding.

While the Labor government has been working to lessen the administrative load that Australians have to face in order to access disability funding, reports show that the process of getting on the NDIS is sometimes complex and inaccessible.

Labor launched a taskforce in September to address a backlog of legal appeals, which were overwhelming the administrative appeals tribunal. The independent body was set to review thousands of appeals, with the hopes that over 2000 cases would be resolved before Christmas 2022.

Plibersek said that Labor is still dealing with a “big backlog of NDIS cases at the Administrative Appeals Tribunal”. However, she added that leadership changes are being made within the National Disability Insurance Agency.

“I think that gives people a little bit of hope that their frustrations are going to be answered,”  Plibersek said.

Australian Paralympian and disability advocate Kurt Fearnley was appointed Chair of the NDIA board in September last year, a decision that disability advocates praised as Fearnley became the first person with a disability to chair the board.

NDIS “post-code lottery”

Other current concerns with the NDIS includes the uneven spread of resources across locations, both regional and metropolitan. In a Q and A discussion last year, Shorten said one of the issues with NDIS access was that people in regional areas faced more roadblocks in accessing the scheme, calling it a “postcode lottery”.

Plibersek said that most people in Sydney were “luckier than some parts of Australia where even if you’ve got a package, you can’t find people to deliver the supports you need”.

She said that forums were a start to addressing the resource gap.

“It’s pretty extraordinary that we’ve got a federal cabinet minister coming to talk to the people of Waterloo and Surry Hills and Glebe and Waterloo and our suburbs here in Sydney,” Plibersek said.

“He’s here to talk to and listen to them.”

“The grassroots is where the action is” Shorten said.