NDIS crash landing
The agency in charge of the national disability insurance scheme (NDIS) has been likened to “a plane that took off before it had been fully built and is being completed while it is in the air”, in an independent report that questions its ability to roll out the flagship project.
The report’s authors, led by former public service executive Jeff Whalan, point to woefully inadequate IT systems, staff confusion, lack of direction and vague terminology in the crucial assessments, such as the key “reasonable and necessary” supports.
The woes of the agency were made apparent as the Public Service Association in NSW stepped up a campaign to “ban work which requires their co-operation with the National Disability Insurance Agency” over its claims that the insurance scheme is being used as a cover to privatise disability services.The ALP rushed this to get it out before the last election and it shows. They make mileage out of their “great ideas” but never got on top of actually making them work or financing them. Those minor problems are left to the Libs to fix. And then there is this. LABOR’S most experienced frontbencher, Jenny Macklin, has signed a deal with Melbourne University Publishing to write the inside story on the social policy achievements of the Rudd/Gillard governments. What should be a book of blank pages will wax philosophically about the ALP’s great programmes and NDIS, NBN and Gonski will rate highly in anything she produces. The book should be restricted to programmes that were planned, financed and established in the system which would make Macklin’s job so much easier. But it won’t be.
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Posting about the NDIS is probably not a good idea, Kev.
In the first place, remember that Metronome Tone gave it his full support before the election – http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/policy/abbott-pledges-support-for-ndis/story-fn59nokw-1226325315864
So any dilution of this support represents a broken election promise.
Secondly, support for people with disabilities is a newly discovered principle for the Coalition. I’ve been working in the field since 1971, and this is the first time I’ve seen it, with one notable exception.
Guelfi Scassola was Liberal member for Mount Gravatt in the late seventies. He was instrumental in the creation of Early Intervention programs for children with disabilities, which persist today.
This probably because, as the father of a child with Down Syndrome, he well understood the issue. In 1983, Scassola was one of eight Liberals who crossed the floor to vote with Labor over the creation of a public accounts committee.
Jo Bjelke-Petersen never forgave him. He left Queensland politics, but continued to be active in the disability sector. He was an honorable man. He died in 2002.
The current Queensland government has withdrawn funding from family support for people with disabilities through Dept of Communities, sacked public servants working in the field, and refused to continue to support funding for many NGOs supporting people with disabilities.
This is more typical of Coalition governments, so Tone will look for any excuse to break his promise. Support for the most vulnerable in our community is simply not in the Conservative DNA.
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Actually questioning NDIS is necessary as people need to know how bad the ALP government were.
I am not saying it is a bad thing, just that, as always, the ALP have the odd good idea but seem to be incapable of bringing it to fruition with any sort of efficiency. In years to come, when it is up and running, people need to be told that the Libs were the ones that made it work.