WhatsUp

Last month, NDIS Minister Bill Shorten spoke at the National Press Club on the ‘future of the NDIS,’ where he outlined his 6 policy priorities for the Scheme.

Shorten is a man caught between a rock and a hard place - or more specifically, a Review and a budget. The Minister has promised that all substantial changes to the NDIS will be led by the recommendations of the big independent review into the NDIS. Yet on the flipside, with the May budget set to once again indicate a ballooning NDIS price tag, there must be political pressure to be seen to be doing something.

We are left with a speech that includes a mixture of announcements, kind of announcements, hints of things that may-or -may-not be announced one day and a good chunk of fluff. Let’s look at the 6 policy priorities to sort out the real from the rhetoric.

The first priority highlighted by Shorten is to increase the capacity and capability of the NDIA. This will be done through a focus on building a specialised workforce, lifting staff caps, improving systems and processes, moving some call centre functions back inhouse and reducing staff turnover.

Shorten did not say how much we can expect the staffing cap to lift by. It has gone up over the years, but only by a few hundred workers here and there. Labor went to the last election promising only 300 additional staff for the Agency. Which, if you ask me, isn’t in line with the scale of the problem.

More positively, there was an emphasis on hiring more people with disability at the Agency.