Making the NDIS work

Lisa Paul - It's a bit cosy back here. (audience laughing) 

I thought I might drop off the back. (audience laughing) 

All your WHS delegates would be onto me. (audience giggling)

I would like to start by acknowledging the traditional owners of the lands on which we're meeting today, the Gadigal people of the Eora nation, and pay my respects to elders past, present, and emerging. And of course, pay my respects to any First Nations people that might be with us today or indeed might in due course watch the filming, which is just of me, not of the session afterwards, by the way.

I also wanna thank Angus for inviting me to speak today. I've got great respect for Angus who I've known since his days as president of the National Union of Students. 

He was five. (audience laughing) 

If anything, my respect for Angus and the people he represents has grown during my time as co-chair of the National Disability Insurance Scheme Review. My respects grown because I've seen firsthand what ASU members do to not just make the NDIS work, but to help secure its future. 

And we're all wearing the T-shirt that proves that. With that in mind, I wanna take this opportunity to say thank you to the ASU and to the disability support workers that you represent. Thank you for day in and day out making the NDIS work 'cause simply, there'd be no NDIS, but for your work. And thank you for the extraordinary efforts during the pandemic to not just support, but keep safe people with disability. 

And thank you for the long campaign for systemic reform of the NDIS and for fair paying conditions and for greater stability for workers and participants. And thank you for your contributions to the NDIS Review as well, all of which is a long way of saying I'm really delighted to be here today. It was fabulous to meet some of you a minute ago outside. I've come here for three reasons. 

Firstly, I wanna brief you on some of the work of the NDIS Review, and secondly, I want to share some emerging views from the independent panel. And third, I wanna listen to you and learn from your experiences. So, let me start with a bit of context. Last October, the NDIS Minister, Bill Shorten, as Angus said, set up the independent NDIS Review. He asked us to find ways to improve the experiences of participants and families, ensure the NDIS is sustainable, and restore trust in the scheme. The review covers the whole scheme and beyond. No pressure. (audience giggling) 

Since then, we've received more than 2,800 public submissions, travelled to every state and territory, and met thousands of Australians. And as my co-chair Bruce Bonyhady said in Newcastle yesterday, "We've been dismayed by much of what we've seen. Dismayed by the systemic inequity, for example, too many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds are not being supported well enough by the NDIS, dismayed at how much people in regional and remote communities are missing out, dismayed by the rising trajectory of costs, which wasn't predicted by anyone, dismayed by the lack of innovation with too many decisions based on poor and incomplete data, and dismayed by the lack of fairness and consistency in what supports are considered reasonable and necessary." 

What Bruce said yesterday in his speech to participants and repeated later in a webinar with service providers was that unless significant action is taken, the actual integrity of the NDIS could be in danger. 

And Bruce also said that every part of the disability sector shared a responsibility to act now, to protect the sustainability of the NDISS for future generations. But none of this is news to the ASU. 

After all, you've been sounding the warning for years. You warned about poor employment and pricing practises and how they were connected to poor participant outcomes in 2017. You warned about poor workplace conditions and staff churn in 2020. You warned about the impact of COVID-19 on disability support workers in 2020. And your warnings are always backed up with research. 

You've also made numerous submissions to inquiries, including joint standing committees and the NDIS Review. In addition, your contributions to public debate on the direction of the NDIS have been thorough and constructive. And this constructive approach is clear from the four pillars of the ASU's NDIS campaign. Firstly, decent paying conditions. Secondly, secured jobs. Thirdly, workforce engagement. Fourth, professional standards. All of which is why when Bruce spoke to providers yesterday, he not only flagged that I was speaking to you today, he also said the NDIS Review is listening very closely to what the ASU has to say. 

That's the context of our conversation today. Here's the content. We released our interim report called "What We Have Heard" on June 30th. The ASU's submission on the workforce issues and the quality and safeguards framework informed our report. 

Needless to say, we found your contributions thorough and constructive. As Angus and the CEO of Veruma, Martin Levity, stated in a letter to the NDIS Review, "We support the rights of participants to have choice and control over the supports they receive. And we also understand that this requires a degree of flexibility in the workforce as participants needs will evolve and change over time." In that joint letter, as in the ASU submissions, Angus and Martin advocated for the introduction of a portable leave and training scheme in the NDIS. They made a strong case and we strongly support your call for portable leave and training scheme. (audience clapping) 

And in fact, I'd go so far to say that the introduction of portability and recruitment and retention of capable staff are linked. You know, it's kind of a no brainer. 

That's why we have already put your call for portable training and leave to all ministers for disability. We did that in a paper in February. (audience clapping) 

Thank you. 

What we recommended to ministers was this: that they design and trial workforce attraction and retention initiatives for the care and support sector, including sector-wide portable training and sick and carers leave schemes. (audience member whistling) And our commitment is in the paper we published on our website as well. 

Believe me, I've been pushing portability with the Department of Social Services and anyone else who will listen. And I really do wanna congratulate Angus and all of you on your work on this. (audience clapping) 

That is absolutely outstanding. Props to you and the good employers that you've been working with who are willing to give this a go as soon as possible. 

Now I'd like to give you a broad outline of our overall vision for the scheme. We recognise progress has and is being made. You know, the last federal budget made significant investments to build the capacity of the NDIA, I think it was about $720 million, as well as preventing fraud. In addition, the number of appeals to the administrative appeals tribunal has gone down significantly and hospital discharge rates have been significantly improved. And for the first time, 50% of people on the board of the NDIA are people with disability. (audience clapping) 

Which I gather was a trivia question. (audience laughing) Which I passed. (audience laughing) 

The challenge ahead of us, though, is to keep pushing for progress. 

First, we wanna see real measurable outcomes for people with disability, as does the ASU.

Second, we want a renewed focus on quality of care, as does the ASU. 

Third, we want to strengthen and offer greatest stability to the workforce, as does the ASU. 

Those are the headlines, but what does it mean for workers represented by you? It means we want disability work to be a sustainable career choice. We want people to be secure in their jobs and safe in their work and rewarded for their excellence. And we want people to work in a sector where they continuously develop new skills and qualifications, which they can carry with them. That means that, as I've said, we strongly support portability of leave and training. 

We're also seriously considering differential price caps to recognise the work of people who support participants with complex needs as well as in regional and remote areas. So just getting that a bit more sensible. Differential pricing could help manage workforce demand. We know that the NDIS needs another 128,000 workers by mid 2025, which did shock me when I realised that's only two years from right now. It's a lot of members, though. (audience laughing) 

Anyway. Not all of these workers will go on to have a career in the disability sector. You know, as one parent of a young adult with Down syndrome said to me, "There's a real need for short-term workers as well, such as university students." So let me be clear I'm not saying such workers are the answer to the scheme's workforce shortages, but what I'm saying is that a diverse workforce is a great thing. Able to carry out everything from really straightforward to really complex tasks. And that means there's a need for both career and casual support workers. And one more thing, there could be an unexpected benefit from the use of young Australians as casual workers, too. The benefit is that some of them might find their calling and stay in the sector and others might leave the sector but become ambassadors for people with disability. But I'm getting away from matters at hand. 

Before I finish up, I just wanna make this point. The NDIS cannot work without disability support workers. Not only that, the NDIS cannot improve without disability support workers. We, and by we, I don't just mean the NDIS Review, I mean the Australian people who have invested a decade in the development of the NDIS, we need your engagement and input. The point I'm driving at is that I am here to listen. I really am. 

You've heard what I've had to say, but I'm far more interested of course in what you have to say. So, please tell me. 

How do we get more people to come and work in the NDIS? How could support workers play more of a role in helping participants connect to community? What are the needs of participants and workers in regional and remote areas? And if there was one thing to do to make the NDIS better, what would it be? I love that question. And then, you know, of course, if there's other areas that you wanna cover, like unregistered providers or wherever you wanna go, please do. Whatever's on your mind? I wanna hear it. 

So let's talk. Thank you. (audience clapping)