Disability Advocate

The Hon. R.P. WORTLEY (15:05): My question is to the Minister for Human Services. Will the minister detail the consultation process surrounding the appointment of the South Australian Disability Advocate. What advocacy service or support organisations were consulted, and will the minister detail precisely what the purview of the South Australian Disability Advocate will be? Will Mr Caudrey's role focus entirely on the transition towards NDIS or will every South Australian living with disability, regardless of their NDIS status, have access to Mr Caudrey as the Disability Advocate?

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK (Minister for Human Services) (15:05): I thank the honourable member for his question. As we stated in the media release, which I don't actually have in front of me at the moment, Mr Caudrey will be focusing on systematic matters. As I've outlined in this place on many occasions in the past, there are a range of ways that people can advocate in terms of assisting or obtaining some assistance for their particular matters with the NDIS.

At a national level, we have the Disability Reform Council, which consists of all state and territory ministers and the federal ministers. We have a senior official working group, which also discusses a range of matters, particularly in relation to interface matters going forward. We have a quarterly check-in, which is largely for providers of disability services, which takes place quarterly. We had one a couple of weeks ago, and there were matters there that we raised for providers.

In terms of individual matters, the honourable member may have been away when the briefing was that I organised in conjunction with the National Disability Insurance Agency. The National Disability Insurance Agency for some time has had a members and senators contact office—or MASCO is the shorthand—which federal members and senators have had access to, as has the minister of the day and the shadow minister of the day. I think, when she was a member, the Hon. Kelly Vincent often used that service.

We are very grateful that that service has now been extended to all state members of parliament. So 69 members of this place are now in a position to directly contact the National Disability Insurance Agency on behalf of their constituents. It's the sort of service where they can get information about where someone's planning meeting and those sorts of decisions are at quite quickly. In the time that it takes for a member of parliament to write to a minister they can just get on the phone and turn those around very quickly. I have had initial feedback from some electorate officers in particular that that service has been quite useful, because they are able to assist people much more rapidly.

We are all in this place individual advocates, I trust, as are our colleagues in the federal parliament. I have to say that I was at one stage receiving letters from a federal member of parliament—not of my persuasion I hasten to add; it was a colleague of the members opposite—who was writing to me about the NDIS, and we had to contact his office to point out that it is actually a federal scheme and he has access to this specialised service, and perhaps he would like to do that in the interests of a more timely turnaround than hopping between offices. So we should all be advocates in this space.

Dr Caudrey's focus is much more on the systematic issues. Particularly as we are passing through to full scheme, those are the much more complex matters. Dr Caudrey has a great deal of experience in this space. He understands it very well, and we expect that he will be extremely useful to the state government as we pass through the last part of the NDIS transition.