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The Future of the NDIS Under Labor With NDIS participants expected to grow to 670,400 by 2025 there are many aspects of the NDIS which need reform. Talking to the key people, parties and organisations who will help shape the future of the NDIS under Labor, Link found some of the issues and potential solutions that the Albanese government will be grappling with over the next three years. Alex Oswald reports. disability, said “when it comes to fixing the scheme our starting point should be what the disability community needs.” Advocates for disability across Australia are calling for a deeper commitment to the principles of co-design following the logic of ‘nothing about us without us.’ Labor has said that it will work to increase the representation of people with disability across all levels of the NDIA. Beyond restoring trust, Dr Bruce Bonyhady from the Melbourne Disability Institute is calling for greater collaboration between non-government researchers and government. Speaking to Link, Bonyhady believes, by sharing data “we can democratise the process and introduce contestability” in the types of solutions produced to evolve the NDIS. Minister for the NDIS Bill Shorten was one of the loudest advocates for a National Disability Insurance Scheme (Photo: The Australian)
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n 2013, one of Bill Shorten’s last actions as Disability Minister was to help pass the legislation that would launch the NDIS. Now, nine years later, Shorten and Labor won an election promising to ‘Save Our NDIS.’ According to Labor, the scheme has suffered nearly a decade of “mismanagement and chaos” under successive Liberal Governments. This has been supported by many from the disability community who are calling for the scheme to be ‘reset.’ Now, with a majority in the lower house and a progressive Senate with the Greens and David Pocock in the balance of power, it seems Labor has the political mandate to ‘save’ the NDIS.
the recent history of the NDIS has been marred by several governmental and agency interventions which have ‘broken’ their trust. These include independent assessments, expanding the powers of the National Disability Insurance Agency CEO as well as a lack of NDIA data sharing and transparency. Concurrently, the ongoing Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of people with disability has continued the work of highlighting ableism in Australian society. The stories from the commission suggest that both the government and the agency need to expand their efforts to promote inclusion of people with disability.
Restoring Trust For many in the disability community
In response Senator Jordan SteeleJohn, the Greens spokesperson for
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Workforce shortages According to the NDIS Workforce Strategy the disability sector currently faces an 83,000-worker shortage. Researcher Dr Georgia van Toom cites high rates of casualisation, poor renumeration and unclear career progression pathways as crucial contributing causes. This has led to a quarter of disability support workers saying they won’t be working in the industry in five years’ time. Although Labor’s workforce plan has not been announced in detail, structural changes are needed to make support work more competitive with similar industries, such as aged care, and attractive as a career. These changes include strong investment in worker training, better wages, and conditions as well as clearer pathways from other sectors into support work. Additionally,