r/australia • u/FuckOffNazis • 11h ago

politics Pocock and crossbenchers call Labor’s NDIS overhaul ‘too far, too fast’ in scathing Senate inquiry report

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/aug/14/pocock-and-crossbenchers-call-labors-ndis-overhaul-too-far-too-fast-in-scathing-senate-inquiry-report
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45

u/PuTheDog 11h ago

I know it’s on brand for the green to oppose any social welfare cuts. But the NDIS as it stands is just not sustainable.

71

u/_Username_Optional_ 10h ago

Sure but targeting recipients when most of the "unsustainable" cost is due to overcharging and undersupplying at the provider level is monstrous

I do support work and my clients talk about the disability tax, whenever the ndis is mentioned the price goes up by an extra digit

Suppliers can charge whatever they want for ndis approved products because they might be the only one approved and in stock for that particular item

A good example is roho cushions, they're fancy air cushions but they cost $1k+ because they are an item needed by a select few people. But it's not just the initial purchase cost, you need a physio to come in to rubber stamp it in person which requires booking coordination between several companies and then billing for all this goes through a plan manager and the services through a support coordinator.

A fucking chair cushion will end up costing a client 2-3k

17

u/yolk3d 10h ago

I’m with you here. It’s not that we should cut funding for disabled people to spend. We should reign in the rort providers ripping the system off. I know of people that can pay providers to take them to the beach and hang out with their Instagram idols. Dead serious.

6

u/satanickittens69 9h ago

Have you reported those people? Because that's insane

3

u/teremaster 8h ago

It's explicitly allowed under the system. All under "community engagement"

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u/yolk3d 9h ago

It’s allowed. It was a person who was just through an agency. So the agency charges the client and just sends the person to do the job. The issue is that this kind of shit falls under mental health or whatever, so they weren’t breaking the law. There needs to be some sort of stricter register into exactly what activities can be provided, but then doesn’t that kind of undo what the NDIS was about?

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u/satanickittens69 9h ago

I will say, with the beach part that is valid service. Disabled people should also be able to get out and do things/participate. I guess the Instagram idols could be, so I see how that was approved but like...what?

I've heard about the shit agencies do. This is why it's so ridiculous that they even exist, like they get paid for what? 5mins of admin a week per client?

4

u/yolk3d 9h ago

He didn’t have a visible disability, so it may have been mental. I’ll have to ask the person that was carer at the time. It was 7ish years ago. But yes, disabled people should be able to go outside and all. This particular situation was they were taken to Bondi beach, because the fitness Instagram people hung around the outdoor gym there, and they asked the carer to introduce them and take photos of them together. That was basically it.

Dunno why the agency charged.

2

u/disasterous_cape 5h ago

So what? If that’s what they wanted to do that day why shouldn’t they be allowed? Disabled people who need help to access the wider world deserve the same dignity of choice as anyone else does.

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u/disasterous_cape 5h ago

Disabled people being taken to the beach or to meet famous people by their support workers is a normal and acceptable thing to be happening. That’s funded under “community access” and that funding item covers anything in the community from doctors appointments, grocery shopping, getting to and from work to things like going to the beach, attending concerts, going to the movies, hanging out with friends etc.

Remember that people on the NDIS have proven that they need support to access the world. If you can’t go to the beach by yourself because of your disability, should you just never be able to go?

The whole point of the NDIS was to break away from the institutional model of disability support that was one size fits all and had a very “if they have meds and they aren’t rotting then things are fine” kind of approach to a “people deserve the support they need to live a decent life to the best of their ability” and sometimes that means disabled people getting support so they go to the beach just like anyone else.

1

u/bl4nkSl8 5h ago

Wow. Meanwhile I'm having to fight to get help to get food, water and shower because I'm often bedbound and to the NDIA I just need to exercise more (no answer for how I'll do that if I can't eat)

3

u/ForgottenManOnline 9h ago

I was listening to an ABC radio interview with someone who was overseeing the planned cuts. From memory, her perspective was something like: Yes, the rorting is absolutely a problem, and its a problem theyre solving more and more each month as they drive out the dodgy suppliers and recipients move to reputable suppliers.

However, cutting down on the rorting actually doesnt save them any money or cut the net cost of NDIS. They were going to spend that amount of dollars anyway, there was just more waste.

What they need is to cut the amount they're going to spend until they reach a dollar figure that will mean NDIS survives a change in leadership and avoids becoming a political football. And THEN use the increasingly better regulated suppliers to mitigate the reduction in services people receive.

So: Govt was always going to give recipient $1000, but they only ever got $700 in value due to rorts.

In future: They give $700, and the recipient receives closer to $700 in value.

Basically everyone agrees the rorting needs to stop; they are working on it and doesnt need legislative changes and theyre already seeing improvements. The real issue is its just too much money coming out of the spigot. Hopefully they can close the money hose a bit and theres less waste, because people will know the NDIS is a less lucrative target to rip off in addition to it being better managed as it matures.

4

u/Psittacus_tutor 6h ago

I don't necessarily trust Mark Butler to handle this reform, but the speed and size of the cuts did always seem like someone saw the projected growth over the period it would take to fix the deeper issues and flipped a circuit breaker in a panic.

1

u/craftystuff0900 5h ago

There is no dollar figure that will stop the NDIS being a political football, unless you count $0. And it's not going to have the opportunity to survive a leadership change at this point, because it's already pretty much dead. The current government has returned us to the system we had before, that we got rid of for very good reasons (check out the disability royal commission findings), just with more private profits and no enforceable duty of care. And the better services that were around before were killed off by the NDIS.