• Table of Contents
• Disability Investment Group
• Executive Summary
• National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) – A Possible Model
• Principal Recommendation
• Summary of Other Recommendations
• Section I
• Part 1: Experience of Disability in Australia
• Part 2: Need for Change
• Section II
• Part 3: Establishing a New National Disability Insurance Scheme
• Part 4: Ensuring Income Support is Adequate
• Part 5: Improving savings and taxation incentives for privately - funded services
• Section III
• Part 6: Providing More Housing for People with Disability
• Part 7: Offering Better Employment Opportunities
• Part 8: Building Research and Best Practice
• Appendices
• Appendix A
• Appendix B
• Appendix C
• Appendix D
• Appendix E
• Appendix F
• Appendix G
• Appendix H
• Appendix I
• Appendix J

The Way Forward – A New Disability Policy Framework For Australia

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Disability Investment Group

22 September 2009

 

The Hon Bill Shorten MP
Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities & Children’s Services and
Parliamentary Secretary for Victorian Bushfire Reconstruction
House of Representatives
Parliament House
PO Box 6022
CANBERRA ACT 2600

 

Dear Parliamentary Secretary,

DISABILITY INVESTMENT GROUP

On behalf of the Disability Investment Group (DIG) it is my pleasure to present you with our report, “The Way Forward – A New Disability Policy Framework For Australia”.

When the DIG was initially formed you challenged us to think creatively about how to inject additional resources into the historically underfunded disability sector. In the course of lengthy discussions amongst ourselves, with people with disabilities, with family members and other carers who support people with disabilities, and with experts in the field, it became apparent that individual measures such as tax concessions to encourage additional private expenditure would, of themselves, be as useless as throwing a cup of water on a raging fire.

Despite Governments spending around $20 billion annually on the disability welfare system (with billions more spent on other services in relation to people with disabilities) there remains a large, and rapidly growing, unmet need for care and support. This is despite an estimated army of 2.5 million family members and other carers providing unpaid care and support.

The lack of proper planning and integrated service delivery is a national disgrace and with increasing demand for, and increasing cost of, these services (formal costs of the disability system are projected to rise in real terms by 5%-10% pa in coming years) the situation for people with disabilities and their carers will undoubtedly worsen so long as the current arrangements remain in place.

Accordingly DIG believes fundamental change is required.

It is the strong view of DIG that structural reform is required in the framework governing disability policy in Australia. If this transformational shift occurs as suggested by DIG then the system would move from one based on short-term and often ad hoc resource allocation—with all of the inefficiencies and inequities involved—to a rational system where need, rather than happenstance, determines resource allocation. A whole new world of opportunities would be opened up for people with disabilities, and the families and other carers who support them.

We believe that a National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) is required to create the transformational shift to move care and support for people with disabilities out of the dark ages and into the 21^st Century. We believe that further analysis is required but on the basis of the substantial work in this report we are confident that the NDIS represents the way forward.

The new order would replace the welfare model of disability services with a 3 pillar policy to support people with disabilities. The 3 pillars are:

1. a comprehensive NDIS to deliver care and support for life for people with severe and profound disability using an individualised and lifelong approach; including reform of state-based insurance schemes to include all traumatically injured people. This would be the bedrock of the whole system;
2. a strong income support system that facilitates people with disabilities who cannot support themselves through work, to live in dignity; and
3. a range of measures to facilitate increased private expenditure.

Our central recommendation is that the Australian Government, in consultation with States and Territories, immediately commissions a comprehensive feasibility study into a National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS).

I wish to acknowledge and thank the members of the DIG who all spent a massive amount of time on this task – Bruce Bonyhady; Allan Fels; Bill Moss; Mary Ann O’Loughlin (who stepped down from DIG in October 2008) Kathy Townsend; and John Walsh.

I particularly wish to recognise Bruce Bonyhady, who has made a massive contribution to this report. I also wish to thank the staff of FaHCSIA who have assisted DIG including Lee Emerson, and especially Helen Hambling who has done a wonderful job in drafting the report.

The DIG commends the report to the Government and in particular the central recommendation of the immediate commissioning of a comprehensive feasibility study into a National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). An NDIS represents an exciting way forward for Australians with a disability and for their families and carers.

Yours sincerely,

IAN SILK

Chairperson

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