The Way Forward – A New Disability Policy Framework For Australia

Recommendation 1

DIG recommends that the Commonwealth Government, in consultation with States and Territories, immediately commission a comprehensive feasibility study into a National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS).

The scheme would:

• be designed to meet existing, unmet and future needs of people with severe or profound disability for life, where disability is acquired before age 65;
• replace and enhance current arrangements for funding and providing disability services;
• be based on a social insurance model and fund a basic level of personal care and support for life;
• be administered by a new statutory authority with a robust prudential governance structure;
• be funded from general revenue or a Medicare-like levy, in recognition of the shared public risk of disability; and
• have a staged implementation over 7 to 10 years to allow for the development of the necessary infrastructure and workforce.

The feasibility study should also consider:

• how State and Territory accident insurance schemes should interact with the proposed national scheme and move to providing nationally-consistent, no-fault insurance for traumatically injured people; and
• the potential to enhance additional private provision for people with disability by making a NDIS the centrepiece of a new three pillar disability policy framework.

The DIG also recommends that any work commissioned on the feasibility of Medicare Select should align with work on the feasibility study of a NDIS.

Proposed Terms of Reference for a feasibility study are at Appendix B.