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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-09-08 Daily Xml
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Disability Funding

The Hon. C.M. SCRIVEN (16:16): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking a question of the Minister for Human Services regarding disability funding.

Leave granted.

The Hon. C.M. SCRIVEN: Quarterly report figures provided by the National Disability Insurance Commission show that, as at 30 June 2020, the South Australian portion of the NDIS funding has been underspent by $728,475,000, with just 65 per cent of South Australian funds being spent in the 2019-20 financial year, down from 68 per cent in the previous financial year. My questions to the minister are:

1. How many jobs would an extra $728 million per annum support, and what is the minister doing to recover unspent South Australian funds and provide them to groups like the Royal Society for the Blind that have lost funding?

2. With around $2 million going unspent every week, what excuse is there for people like Annie Smith to have had only one carer for a few hours every day?

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK (Minister for Human Services) (16:17): I thank the honourable member for her question. She has I think mixed up quite a few issues in that particular question. If I can go to the matter of the single carer that she has raised, I don't think it is relevant to raise that in the context of the NDIS underspend. It has been an issue that was identified very, very early on when the news of Ms Smith's horrendous circumstances were made public.

The fact that she had had a single support worker going back for some years is something that has been identified by a number of the different investigations that have taken place, both in terms of the task force and indeed the report that was publicly released recently by the Hon. Alan Robertson, the retired Federal Court judge. When these matters were first made public, the Quality and Safeguards Commission, even though it is not an express breach of the NDIS practice rules, did seek to contact all providers to ensure that they didn't have a single support worker in this situation, so to conflate that with an issue of underspend is not really relevant.

If we talk about the situation of why the NDIS was created in the first place, it was because states and territories that had been responsible for disability services for some time were struggling to continue to fund them. There were annual unmet-need lists that were published in terms of the lack of services that people were able to receive. It has been a chronic situation that has gone on for decades, which is why the advent of the NDIS was brought into effect and which meant that the commonwealth is responsible for 50 per cent of the funding and takes the risk if the scheme goes above their share.

In terms of the original predictions, it was predicted that in South Australia it would go from the 16,000 people who were in the Disability SA system to some 32,000 participants—which is the language of the NDIS—and it is in fact actually much higher than that. I think it's over 35,000 South Australians who are now receiving NDIS supports. That is quite significantly higher than was originally predicted. The prediction in relation to jobs was that they would increase from some 3,000 disability-related jobs to 6,000 as a result.

The utilisation rates are of great interest to the Disability Reform Council, of which all state and territory ministers are members, in conjunction with the commonwealth and the relevant agencies, because clearly we are very keen to make sure that people are accessing all of the supports in their plans.

It does vary depending on geography and what is often referred to as 'thin markets'. Where you don't have a large number of participants and a large, robust market, people are less likely to be able to access their particular supports, which is a function of those market issues. It varies considerably by support type and we have pleasingly seen that the utilisation rate has increased as the more complex NDIS clients came on at full scheme. They are people who need support at home with a lot of their daily living skills, what is called supported independent living (SIL). Amongst that group of clients it is 83 per cent compared to 59 per cent.

I note that the utilisation rates have increased and while it has been below the national average there has been a 19 per cent increase from the same time last year for particular planned utilisations, and it is something that we turn our mind to. South Australia, according to my data, at the fourth quarter 2019-20, was at about 65 per cent which compares to the national average of 67 per cent.

Some other jurisdictions have been keen to have some of the funding, which should be contributing towards plans, returned to those states. South Australia's position is a little bit unique in that there is some funding under what's called, I think, a 'cap', which the state has been utilising particularly for some inclusion initiatives and for the continuation as we transition into the NDIS and as people get used to the new system.

The PRESIDENT: Before the member rises for a supplementary: that was a very broad area of questioning and the minister gave a very comprehensive answer. I think in future probably we wouldn't have an answer quite as lengthy as that, but it did cover a great deal of ground. I go to the supplementary question from the Hon. Ms Scriven.

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