NDIS cuts could create unsafe environments and domestic violence risks, inquiry warned
Rosemary Kayess was among those to give evidence on the second day of the Senate inquiry. ( ABC News: Billy Cooper )
In short:
The second day of public hearings into the government's generational NDIS changes has kicked off in Canberra.
The inquiry heard concerns the proposed changes could create a number of unintended consequences that would disproportionately affect women.
The government says it is monitoring the inquiry and maintains the NDIS needs a structural reset to keep it sustainable for the future.
Planned cuts to National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) community participation budgets could leave participants in unsafe environments, including increasing their risk of domestic violence, advocates have warned.
Senators are presiding over the second of three days of public hearings into draft legislation paving the way for the biggest-ever cuts to the now-$50 billion scheme.
The sweeping changes aim to make the NDIS more sustainable, due to concerns it was growing faster than Medicare, contained structural deficiencies, and was being exploited by criminals.
A key proposal would give new powers to the NDIS minister to reduce funding for whole categories of support, starting with 50 per cent cuts to social and community participation budgets.
This category covers things such as hiring support workers to take participants out of homes and to appointments, the supermarket, work, or outings.
Asked by independent senator David Pocock if the "power to cut people's budgets indiscriminately" could leave participants in unsafe situations, Disability Discrimination Commissioner Rosemary Kayess said "we know" it would.
She said the disability royal commission repeatedly heard over its four-and-half-year run that the worst abuse of people with disability occurred in closed settings and when they were isolated from the rest of society.
"That's how they become vulnerable. They end up in either closed environments or isolated environments, and they are at risk of violence, abuse and exploitation," she said.
Women With Disabilities Australia chief executive Sophie Cusworth said these were among several "foreseeable risks", including the potential for more domestic violence.
"Imagine a woman whose social and community participation support is the only regular contact she has outside home. It helps her to attend appointments, access community and be seen by people who know when something is wrong," she said.
"For women with disability, community participation is a safeguard. Under the bill, this category of support is reduced without regard to her circumstances and her isolation grows … the risk of violence increases and becomes easier to hide."
Sophie Cusworth says the bill could have serious adverse affects on women and girls. (Supplied: Women With Disabilities Australia)
The proposed cuts to social and community participation, in addition to a 10 per cent reduction to capacity-building budgets (which fund things such as therapies and training), is expected to account for about a third of the $38 billion in projected savings over the next four years.
The bill's explanatory notes state that "specific controls over funding are needed to put the scheme back on a sustainable footing", and that when making cuts the minister would have to consider participant safety.
The Senate inquiry received more than 4,000 written submissions in just over a fortnight.
Yesterday it heard from disability advocates who voiced concerns about the extra responsibility that could fall onto parents.
Ms Kayess said the expansion of what was considered a parental responsibility would most negatively impact women, who had "overwhelmingly born the burden of the carer role".
"A major factor with the development of the NDIS was being able to unlock that productivity and ability of women to be able to go back into the workforce," she said.
"This is a bit of a complete turnaround from where the founding fathers … of the NDIS's design and development was trying to get to."
Ms Cusworth said the bill should not proceed without a comprehensive gender impact analysis.
"We believe that the bill risks shifting greater responsibility onto families and particularly mothers," she said.
"Many families and mothers, including mothers with disability, are already at breaking point due to inadequacy of support."
Alternate supports 'not ready'
If passed, the proposed changes would result in about 300,000 people either being removed or prevented from accessing the NDIS over the next four years.
To counter that, the states and territories, who shut their disability services when the NDIS began in 2013, have agreed to set up new ones.
Part of that is the Thriving Kids program for some children with developmental delay and autism that will progressively roll out from October this year, but little else has been confirmed.
"This bill proceeds as though an alternative system is ready. It is not," Ms Cusworth told the inquiry.
This morning NDIS Minister Mark Butler told reporters in Queensland he was "very confident we will have systems in place" in 18 months' time, when Thriving Kids is expected to be fully up and running.
"States are busy rolling out or developing their Thriving Kids program. We'll be ready to roll out our investments as a Commonwealth very, very soon," he said.
Mark Butler is "confident" new disability services will be operational soon. (ABC News: Matt Roberts)
Mr Butler said the government was monitoring the Senate inquiry, which is expected to hear from the Department of Health, Disability and Aging tomorrow.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said NDIS reform was complex, but the proposed changes were "sensible" and went "to the heart of what the NDIS was for".
"I'm really proud of being a part of a government that introduced the NDIS. It needs to, though, be sustainable if it's going to have a future," he told ABC News Breakfast.
"When we came to office [the NDIS] was growing at 22 per cent annually. You cannot have any program increase in costs by 22 per cent annually."