KIM NAPIER: The headline yesterday was 160,000 Australians could lose access to the NDIS. Why should families see this as reform and not simply cuts?
JENNY MCALLISTER: Kim, this is a scheme that Australians are incredibly proud of, and it was hard fought by people with disability. Put this scheme in place. We want it to be here for the long term. And I think most Australians do understand that whilst this is a scheme to be proud of, it has got out of control. There is too much fraud. It's distorting other parts of the care economy and often not providing sufficiently high-quality care for participants. And truly it costs too much. It's servicing many more people than it was originally intended to do, and the announcements we've made yesterday are setting a path to get this scheme back on track. There are some things we'll do in the short term, but there's some longer term steps that we'll take as well, including clearly defining who will be eligible for the scheme in the future.
KIM NAPIER: Now you mentioned fraud, and there was a text yesterday afternoon to our Drive Program. The person said that they worked for an NDIS provider for a few years. Left the sector because I could no longer put up with witnessing the abuse of the system by some providers, mostly in the allied health service by allied health service providers, they were charging participants outrageous amounts of money, often for services of little use to them. And I'm glad that this is being looked at. Does that seem to be the universal view?
JENNY MCALLISTER: That is a really familiar story Kim, and it's honestly the thing that has troubled me the most since coming into the portfolio, I'm really pleased about the steps that we announced yesterday, which will make a huge difference in this area.
We’ll require registration for providers that deliver high risk services. We'll make sure every provider is enrolled with the NDIA so that we can see where the money is going, and we'll take some really important steps to reform plan management.
These are the middlemen who play a really important integrity role in the scheme. A lot of great providers, but unfortunately some really poor providers as well, and we're going to take some very significant steps to clean up that part of the system.
KIM NAPIER: And that is good news. I'm sure, you know, there's no one that would disagree with that, but people who lose access to the NDIS are being told they'll be redirected to state run foundational supports. But many, Jenny of those services don't yet appear fully established. Are families being asked to trust a safety net that actually isn't built yet?
JENNY MCALLISTER: The roadmap that Mark laid out yesterday will take some time to work through. So we imagine working with a technical advisory group and disability experts and advocates and people with disability over the next little while to build up this new functional capacity assessment. We don't imagine implementing it until the first of January 2028 there's time for us to work with the disability community to get this right. There's also time to work with the states and territories to make sure that proper supports will be available. We want everyone with disability to have support, but not everyone with disability is presently on the NDIS, and we want to make sure that the NDIS really is reserved for people whose disability is permanent and significant.
KIM NAPIER: Regional areas like Northern Tasmania, who you're speaking to right now, already struggle with Disability Services and workforce shortages. What guarantees can you give families here that they won't be left with fewer supports and longer waits?
JENNY MCALLISTER: I was in Northern Tasmania just recently, actually last week, and met with some really terrific provider organizations. I know that there are challenges, essentially in places where there are smaller populations, and Northern TAS meets that criteria. Yesterday's announcement really leans in hard to the quality providers in the system. We are, for example, going to examine commissioning SIL services, providing much more certainty to those high quality providers, so that we can be certain that we meet the demand for SIL services in communities where we've got people who are looking for support. The registration system also matters. It will make sure that high quality providers aren't being undercut by poor quality service offerings who are simply in there to make money. We want people who are offering services to disabled people to be doing it for the right reasons, providing quality services that are safe and offer real value to disabled people.
KIM NAPIER: All right, let's wrap up by just extrapolating, I guess, on families being asked to trust a safety net that isn't built yet. Critics, including disability advocates, the Greens, state governments around the country say these changes have been announced before key eligibility details are even public. So why release headline saving figures before families know exactly who will be affected?
JENNY MCALLISTER: We're committed to working on this with disabled people and their families. We need to start somewhere, and we've tried yesterday to level with people about the challenge. This scheme is growing too fast. It is at risk of losing Community Trust, we are determined to reform it so that it will be here in the long term, and we're setting the direction yesterday, describing the kinds of changes we intend to make and the work that we'll do with disabled people to put those in place.
KIM NAPIER: Minister Jenny McAllister, thanks for your time this morning.
JENNY MCALLISTER: Thanks for having me, Kim.