When they announced cuts to the NDIS at the National Press Club, I was live whatever-not-tweeting-but-posting-on-bluesky is called. Sorry, my brain still calls things live tweeting because that was a heyday name/action in my brain.
Anyway, I hate how things disappear and are hard to find on social media when you want to relate to them later, so here are my live not-tweets on Mark Butler’s press club speech, as well as some posts from the days after.
There are a few key points that I feel people haven’t spoken about enough, and those will be emphasised in quotes.
Feels jerky to have been threatening the disabled community and then start with aged care. Just to make people suffer the uncertainty a bit longer…
Cherished…uh huh.
“Costs too much” … but that’s literally made up. It’s a choice. You can afford it. We’re a rich country.
So he says PWD aren’t scammers, but also in recent weeks the government said it’s (the NDIS is) undermined by the people who use it!
He mentioned the research but didn’t say if the people asked were disabled. I asked him about this and never got a reply.
He says ART restricts the scheme… no wonder they want to restrict access to ART!
If reviews give a 20% plan increase then the original planning was bad.
Social and community participation… sounds like they’re referring to segregated activities, assuming disabled people only interact with other disabled people.
Comparing to the PBS is weird. PBS is also underfunded, I can say this because most of my meds aren’t on it!
“Take people back to 2023” …so… cutting them off from society?
“Move quickly to improve quality”. Quality takes time. I always want to see implementation plans for stuff like this. This is one where detail really matters.
Hmm, moving to only government approved suppliers in one area.
“Significant and permanent”. Sigh. They have this so wrong, always have had this wrong.
Functional capacity assessments… sure, will it include PEM? I’m housebound and can’t get federal or state supports because they don’t believe MECFS is real.
It’s not the citizens responsibility the government miscalculated how many people with a disability exist in Australia. This “wrong number” approach bothers me.
Side note: they did know the numbers. In government data.
My concern of “less significant needs” is that we all get funnelled into impersonal group programs and don’t get individual supports outside of NDIS.
I don’t need a buddy, I need done for me, not done with me. I know HOW to do things, but shock horror, my disabilities have disabled me, so I can’t do some shit anymore. How this is beyond some disability support programs don’t get this pisses me off.
OMG they have the audacity to say nothing about us without us, while LITERALLY announcing things decided WITHOUT US.
How can states plan when states don’t get info? I’m no defender of the states, they’ve treated me like shit, but they need info to do their part too.
They really need to understand what a permanent and significant disability is. I wonder if that flaw will ever be fixed. I don’t think they want to fix that.
Material impact is bad language. It covers up what they are doing.
“There’s no particular area of diagnosis that will be treated differently to others”. Cool, so pwME can have access to the NDIS?
Channel 7 with a good question, who are the 100k or so who will leave the scheme. Humanise these numbers. We are not discardable.
$4 billion to Thriving Kids with $6 billion for the rest of us. Definitely not going to provide individual supports ad the non NDIS level with that little amount.
Means testing wouldn’t deliver much… actually a good comment. Wow. So they CAN apply knowledge to the disability community when it suits their argument.
That was the end of the live not-tweeting, but there are a few more posts I want to highlight.
You know, it’s a slippery slope to ugly law type philosophies. Given the media misinformation about “paying for haircuts” etc, why not just tackle that misinformation instead of locking more of us at home? Why are they so keen that disabled people not be in public? Are we doing this for the comfort of non disabled people? Is hiding us at home part of keeping the “social licence” of the scheme; hoping non disabled people will forget we exist? I’m not asking rhetorically, I want to know.
So if there’s no requirement for a diagnosis, just a functional capacity assessment, how do we prove the permanent part of significant and permanent? They already don’t believe most “health conditions” are permanent, even when it significantly disables people. Is this how they will get to 2% growth? By claiming no one is permanently disabled?
“Decisions in the Federal Court and Administrative Review Tribunal have restricted the Agency’s ability to implement scheme changes to ensure the scheme serves and supports those it was built for.”
I think this is one of the most troubling parts of the speech today. Framing procedural rights to review as restrictive is hugely problematic.
And quite possibly, undemocratic.
Does Grattan have any disabled people who work on their disability policy or “think” pieces? They never sound like they’ve lived a day in our lives; because they always think the government is being “reasonable”, which makes me think they are utterly clueless son the actual impacts.
“The government says it will set up a $200 million Inclusive Communities Fund for community organisations to provide similar services for less money. Mr Sandell-Hay says it is critical those services do not just turn into day groups in which people with a disability are put into a room together.” From this article.
So it’s not just me who was getting segregated activity vibes from the press conference…
“It will be the tool that governs reassessment of people, which happens at the end of their plans.” From this article.
I’d like to know how quarterly funding blocks, introduced about a year ago, play into this. Is it a sneaky way to be able to reassess people faster than annually?
I don’t say this to fear monger, I say this because I don’t trust government processes. I think it was in estimates late last year when someone said to the government if they want to make the NDIS work better, they could just follow their own rule, which are already established. That’s the kind of sentiment that makes me ask this type of question. Because logically, no, a quarterly disbursement (for lack of a better word) shouldn’t be seen this way. But it would be so easy for them to rewrite the rules on themselves to make quarterly a “plan” because thy want to.
I think it was also in estimates where an LNP member on the panel (board? whatever it’s called in this context) said the level of reassessments was too much, citing the “has your leg grown back?” type of ridiculousness. And now it seems like they’re going against their own idea of fewer assessments and will do way more.
WA Premier Roger Cook said that he was concerned the federal government was cost-shifting.
I’ve been saying this for about a year now: stop shuffling, start designing.
Victoria Attorney-General Sonya Kilkenny said “I think it’s really important that any Australian living with a disability must be at the centre of these reforms.”
They haven’t even centred the states, I think we’re very far down the priority list.
“At that rate by the end of the decade, spending on the NDIS would cost more than Medicare and the PBS combined, the backbones of our universal healthcare system.”
That part got stuck in my head while I was doing some editing at work, and I think what the public may be missing from this is that these costs are needs, not wants.
If the government can’t afford these needs, how on earth are disabled people supposed to be able to afford them?
Disabled people need up to 102% more income to cover our needs.
“The question remains: Who will be the arbiters of what constitutes a qualifying candidate going forward? Different states have different legislation, standards, procedures, and budgets.” From this article.
I highlighted the need for national consistency a year ago in an interview at my then-day job.
I feel like most of what I’ve said this week is “Oh, look how I predicted/wrote about this a year ago”. It’s the most fucking boring frustrating way to be correct. I want to be correct on something cool and fun. Not correct on predicting how the government will harm us.
Any other cynical person thinking about how it’s convenient to announce trashing the NDIS on Wednesday, knowing that Saturday the news cycle will be elsewhere (racists interrupting Anzac Day)? No? Just me who doesn’t trust people? Ok.
Oh hey, this supports what I said:
“However, establishing permanence and functional capacity is still required by the legislation. In practice, this is difficult without reference to a specific diagnosis, meaning it is likely to remain a key point of assessment.” From this article.
If Butler says PWD aren’t the fraudsters, why are he and McAllister constantly repeating that PWD get access to the NDIS on a diagnosis, implying it’s very easy to access the scheme?
It keeps making the failure of the design & processes within the NDIS sound like it’s the fault of PWD.
They have very disingenuous talking points right now. From speeches such as this, this, and this, though nearly any speech either of them gave in the week after the NPC speech included this type of sentiment.
The government wants to scream about fraud, but they literally don’t even measure it.
“Mr Dardo said the scheme did not measure the amount attributed to the ‘technical definition’ of fraud alone.” From this article.
