Ex-NSW Labor minister and NDIS campaigner says Albanese government can't rush scheme changes

A former New South Wales Labor powerbroker and state disability minister pivotal in advocating for the establishment of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) has warned against rushing through sweeping changes to it.

John Della Bosca, who was the New South Wales health and disability minister in the mid-2000s and later became a champion of the NDIS, said without a clear plan there were risks in moving support services back to states and territories.

Mr Della Bosca said cost blowouts and the huge number of people entering the NDIS, especially children, were obvious problems with the way the scheme was initially set up.

Last week, the Albanese government introduced legislation to kickstart its suite of ambitious cost-cutting plans to save $36.2 billion over the next four years, which includes removing about 160,000 participants over that period.

The government forecasts that will see the scheme's annual growth drop from 10 per cent to about 2 per cent until 2030, before returning to 5 per cent.

Those targets rely on states and territories, which closed their disability services when the NDIS began, creating supports outside the scheme that do not exist yet.

Mr Della Bosca said the states were never supposed to shut their disability supports completely and blamed the "rushed, incomplete policy work" during the implementation of the NDIS.

"Many state governments … saw it as an opportunity to withdraw from disability support [and that] is a major contributing factor to the dilemma that we have now," he said.

With the state systems needing to be rebuilt almost from scratch and the Albanese government's changes forging ahead on an ambitious timeline, Mr Della Bosca said work needed to begin now but the process could not be rushed again.

"The federal government sees it as an urgency to repair their budget and sees the NDIS as a major problem that needs to be solved almost immediately," he said.

"The point is that in policy terms and human relations terms, you won't be able to solve it immediately … it needs to be planned out carefully with people with a disability in mind."

It is not the first time in recent weeks that senior bureaucrats have criticised a rushed rollout of the NDIS.

Last month, the head of the NDIS's anti-fraud taskforce told a parliamentary inquiry the level of rorting and non-compliance in the scheme could be traced back to the speed with which the scheme was rolled out.

Mass showers, squalid conditions

In taking on the state disability portfolio in 2005, Mr Della Bosca inherited a state-run system of supports he described as underfunded, inconsistent and based on a set of ideas "around the inferiority of people with a disability".

Mr Della Bosca said the now-defunct state and territory systems did not see people with disability as having rights, but simply as "people to be contained".

He recalled touring various services during his time as minister where he was shocked to see people living in squalid institutions.

"All of the institutions had serious problems in terms of their ability to give people dignity and allow people to be supported in a way that gave them some control over their lives," he said.

"[There were] things like mass showers … people undressing in front of other people, all sorts of things which people who don't live with disability would not even contemplate."

He described one institution, Peat Island, as "Dickensian", where residents addressed any adult male as "dad" and any adult female as "mum".

"That was their only way of relating to that very important relationship.

Mr Della Bosca said the state systems needed a "massive overhaul", but there was not enough resourcing to execute it.

"New South Wales and other states did various things to improve our systems in the early 21st century. But both in terms of the capacity and the ability to attract enough revenue to a system, we were not able to do it."

Mr Della Bosca said he had "a bit of faith [and] hope" the new systems could be set up with the spirit of the NDIS behind them.

"We will have done the whole exercise for nothing if we end up going back to a system that's rigid and doesn't treat people as individuals and doesn't give them choice and control."

'Cannot be set up overnight'

At more than $36 billion over the next four years, the cuts to the NDIS were by far the single biggest savings measure in last week's federal budget. The next largest was forecast to save about $4 billion.

The federal government has repeatedly acknowledged its cuts are unpopular in parts of the community, but stresses they are necessary to secure now before the growth of the NDIS becomes unsustainable.

In a statement, a government spokesperson said the Commonwealth, states and territories continued to work together to finalise the national and local services to be delivered for children under Thriving Kids and confirmed the funding set aside for other Foundational Supports.

"The government listened to advice from the disability community that more time for consultation would improve the delivery and be less disruptive for participants and their families," the statement said.

"That's why Thriving Kids will start from October 2026."

The Commonwealth has allocated $10 billion over 10 years for re-establishing assistance outside the scheme, $4 billion of which is going towards the Thriving Kids program.

Exactly how the remaining $6 billion will be spent remains unknown.

People with Disability Australia acting CEO Megan Spindler-Smith said the disability community was feeling overwhelmed by the lack of clarity.

"This is a huge reform map … and there's such a short period of time to get this done," they said.

The states, worried about their own budgets, have criticised the Albanese government for a lack of consultation through the change process.

Queensland is still yet to formally sign onto Thriving Kids.

Mx Spindler-Smith said it was critical the "states and territories [came] to the party" soon "to fill gaps getting bigger every day".

"We need to know what is going to be built … and that doesn't mean going back to an old way of doing things that we know didn't work and that were segregating many of us."