Linda Reynolds says NDIS is too reliant on ‘natural empathy’ of public servants
Linda Reynolds #LindaReynolds
Linda Reynolds has argued the national disability insurance scheme is too reliant on individual public servants’ judgement and “their natural empathy”, as she defended the government’s controversial proposal to introduce independent assessments.
Fronting a parliamentary committee on Tuesday, the NDIS minister repeated her claim that the scheme was on an “unsustainable growth trajectory” but acknowledged some disability groups were “very angry” and felt left out of the government’s decision to overhaul the scheme.
Related: Girl who uses wheelchair deemed to have no mobility concerns by NDIS independent assessment
She confirmed the government would bring forth legislation this year to implement the policy, though its design would be informed by an ongoing trial and Reynolds’ extensive consultation with disability groups.
Reynolds also said the government still intended to pursue a redefinition of the “reasonable and necessary” legal test for funding as part of an overhaul of the NDIS Act, which will likely eliminate some supports.
She said confusion over the meaning of “reasonable and necessary” meant planning staff were unable to make decisions “accurately, consistently and fairly” in a “timely manner”.
“We’re relying, I think, too much on individual public servants’ judgment and also their natural empathy,” she said.
The National Disability Insurance Agency has said it believes people’s treating specialists may be affected by “empathy bias”, though it has not previously suggested, as Reynolds did on Tuesday, that the same concept applies to public servants creating plans in the scheme.
The government has proposed independent assessments carried out by contracted allied health companies to replace the evidence provided by a person’s treating specialist because it says the current process is inconsistent.
However, disability advocates believe the reform is aimed at cost-cutting, a fear heightened by the government’s increasing rhetoric about “scheme sustainability”, as well as leaked documents recently reported by Guardian Australia.
Asked by the Labor MP Alicia Payne about the fact the disability community was “completely united” in opposition to the policy, Reynolds said the “sector itself is not always homogenous”.
“There are concerns about how we are implementing it, or how the trial has been conducted and communicated,” she said.
“We’ve had some fantastic suggestions from the disability community already on how we can improve that process. So I completely, utterly reject your assertion.”
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Payne said she was reflecting the overwhelmingly negative view of the policy from disability groups who have provided submissions to the NDIS joint standing committee examining the proposal.
The committee heard that under the government’s proposal, participants and applicants would undertake a series of questionnaires – known as assessment tools – and perform a task for an allied health professional, who will use the data to allocate various scores to the person according to their functionality.
Hoffman said those scores would then be “used to determine a plan budget”, subject to a planning meeting.
The committee heard that a person’s scores would be fed into one of 400 “reference groups” that considered disability type, age and other factors and this could then decide what a “typical, flexible plan budget should be”.
Critics of the proposal, such as Bruce Bonyhady, the NDIA’s inaugural chair and a former architect of the scheme, have labelled this process “robo-planning”.
But former productivity commissioner John Walsh, another original architect of the scheme, told the committee on Tuesday he backed independent assessments.
Walsh, who lives with high-level quadriplegia, said they were part of the initial design and should have been implemented much earlier in the scheme’s roll out to ensure it was “sustainable”.
“The introduction of independent assessments will be difficult and a complicated undertaking,” Walsh said. “Far harder now than had it been implemented at the start of the scheme.
“But done well, it is a critical component of the recovery and success of the NDIS.”
The committee also heard that there was no guarantee assessors would have expertise in the disability of the person being assessed.
Oliver Bladek, the NDIA deputy chief executive, said assessors would receive an extra 24 hours of training in the assessment tools and the NDIS Act, which would complement their tertiary degree.
Related: ‘Utterly unconscionable’: NDIS agency looks to reduce costs by increasing ‘participant exits’
“So a speech pathologist … with 24 hours additional training will be sufficiently qualified to assist someone with cerebral palsy or with spine injury or a range of other disabilities?” committee chair Kevin Andrews asked.
Hoffman said no one was pretending people were going to a “medical expert” in the nature of the participant’s case. “We’re talking about an assessment of functional capacity,” he said.
Reynolds and the NDIA chief executive Martin Hoffman were also quizzed about the case of nine-year-old Eliza Tape, whose trial independent assessment stated she had no mobility concerns. This was despite the fact she uses a wheelchair, which was noted in other parts of her assessment.
Hoffman said there was a “learning on one particular question and how that should be used”.
Ross Joyce, chief executive of the Australian Federation of Disability Organisations, told the committee “trust is now broken” between the disability community and NDIA.
Damian Griffis, chief executive of First Peoples Disability Network, told the inquiry the agency had made little effort to ensure the assessments would be culturally appropriate for people from an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander background.
Under questioning from the Greens senator Jordon Steele-John, Hoffman also confirmed that a marketing contract with Hall and Partners to help the agency spruik its reforms cost $84,000.