Executive Summary
In this final report of its inquiry into the Capability and Culture of the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA), the committee has focused its attention on the extent to which the agency’s approach, policies, practices, and functions reflect a genuine organisational commitment to supporting NDIS participants to live a full life.
In fulfilling its responsibilities to oversight the NDIS, the committee has conducted numerous inquiries over its 10-year history. In all of its reports, the committee has acknowledged the positive life-changing impact that the NDIS has had on the lives of many people with disability. However, the committee has also consistently heard stories from participants and their families of the difficulties, challenges and complexities involved in seeking, securing and maintaining NDIS supports and services.
For some, these difficulties prove to be too great, the requirements too onerous and the information required too personal, and an application for NDIS supports is not pursued. For others on the scheme, efforts to maintain or even adjust NDIS supports and services become all consuming, taking up all available time, resources, and energy, and thereby impacting on health and wellbeing. This is not what was envisaged and is not what Australians expect.
Such experiences were encapsulated by Professor Anne Kavanagh who described her experience with the NDIA at a public hearing in Melbourne on 29 August 2023:
You actually don't know how those decisions are made, and I find that really difficult. I feel really powerless. I don't trust that, when I give someone information, it's going to be heard or taken into account. It could come back to bite me. It's a terrible experience. That's not what it was meant to be. Even when you ring the 1800 number, you get a different person each time and you get a different answer each time. It's frustrating. I don't trust very much that's said to me.
Many of the concerns raised in evidence to the committee regarding these challenges relate to the culture of the NDIA and the capability of its workforce. In fact, evidence to the committee from over 200 submitters as well as witnesses at 13 public hearings across the country, revealed that the ethos of the NDIA, which characterises its interactions with participants and their families, is premised on a deficit model of disability. Ms Swift from Queenslanders with Disability Network articulated these concerns regarding the NDIA to the committee at its public hearing in Brisbane on 3 March 2023:
There's a lot of anxiety around the planning meetings and the reviews. Because of the culture, people go into it thinking that it's an assessment of them, rather than an assessment of their needs. It's very paperwork heavy, very medical model heavy, not so much a social and human rights model.
In Chapter 2 of this report, the committee focuses on specific areas which exemplify the ways in which this approach is disempowering for NDIS applicants and participants and has led, in some instances, to the creation of policies and practices based on administrative convenience which are not only inflexible for participants but can be detrimental to their wellbeing.
The report also details the ways in which this culture underpins all interactions with participants and their families, directly impacting the quality of service and supports provided to them, as well as the extent to which the human rights and dignity of participants is upheld. In this regard, the committee has investigated key services including the Information, Linkages and Capacity Building program, respite care and supported residential services.
In this report, the committee has fulfilled a commitment it made in its March 2023 interim report to consider a number of key matters. These including recognition of deafblind as a single disability and the impact that an administrative distinction between primary and secondary disabilities has on participants’ lives. It also considers guardianship and financial administration arrangements, revealing the ways in which such arrangements can undermine the level of choice and control that NDIS participants are able to exercise. In particular, it brings attention to a worrying trend whereby some service providers seek public guardianship arrangements in relation to NDIS participants.
Consistent with a commitment in its interim report to make the ‘NDIS experience easier and better’, in this report the committee provides several recommendations directed at improving the participant experience with the NDIA so that it can provide participants with the support necessary to make and communicate decisions that affect their lives.
The recommendations relate to:
definitions of 'primary disability' and 'secondary disability';
improving NDIA staff knowledge and acceptance of invisible, episodic, rare and psychosocial disabilities;
deterring, investigating and prosecuting fraud;
improving the Early Childhood Early Intervention approach;
protecting the rights and autonomy of participants under guardian and trustee orders;
improving the performance of the Information, Linkages and Capacity Building program; and
improving access to respite services for participants and carers; and improving pathways from family care to supported independent living.
These recommendations are designed to complement the recommendations contained in the committee’s March 2023 interim report. It should also be noted that they also complement recommendations that the committee has made over the last decade as all such recommendations are directed at improving the lived experience of people with disability.
The committee would like to acknowledge the witnesses and submitters who have written and spoken to the committee during this inquiry. The committee appreciates the effort they have made in contributing to the inquiry and providing evidence about their often uncomfortable, personal, frustrating, and emotionally draining experiences with the NDIA. The committee would like to remind those witnesses that their efforts do matter, and their evidence does count.