Quite deliberately, the NDIS is being allowed to plunge into existential crisis. from which it cannot emege unscathed.

The first pressure - the force that’s driving the change - is the issue of legitimacy.

It began with Bill Shorten talking about shonks exploiting the NDIS and ripping off users. He was attempting to reassure the public that he had the issue under control. The problem was the costs kept growing.

Although the exponential growth of earlier years had slowed to ‘only’ around eight percent, this was so far above inflation that it began eating away at the legitimacy of the whole scheme. This established the conditions under which change, dramatic change, would be seen not just as desirable but necessary.

The next block that had to fall into place was political. The government needed both the numbers in parliament to push through its desired changes and the time and space to transition through a period of angst and instability.

This moment in time has given Mark Butler perhaps his only chance to act in this term. The next election is so far away that he’ll be able to shove through the alterations and move to the new system before the normal problems of implementing a new system begins to derail it.

The third necessary condition for change is a willing bureaucracy and disorganised opponents.

The NDIA has known the current trajectory of the scheme is unsustainable for a long time - it just lacked the capacity (or a plan) to act. It still doesn’t have a map that will navigate us to the sunny uplands of a sustainable disability care scheme for all. That doesn’t matter, it will emerge.

At the moment the push is simply to act, to do something that will create the conditions for further savings. That’s why it’s moved to implement two radical changes with virtually no notice: slashing costs in the annual pricing review and introducing the three-month funding periods.

The NDIA is not out of control; it’s doing exactly what the politicians want. Administering a laxative that will purge the system and leave it so shocked and gasping for breath.

Soon everyone will be desperately attempting just to survive. Concerted opposition to the changes will become unthinkable.

_______________________________________________

(continue reading from newsletter)

Implementing Change is not a Plan

What is so dramatic about the way these changes have been introduced is that they aren’t being accompanied by that usual accomplice of government, a roadmap to the future.

Take the Foundational Supports, the fastest growing part of the scheme that’s being handed over to the states. We don’t know how these will work, how they’ll be funded, or when they’ll be in place. We only know they’re coming.

And yet this refusal to carefully plan a transition has become almost a feature of the program, rather than a bug. It’s like handing over a half-completed puzzle to a child and saying, ‘there you go, you finish putting it together’.

The good bits will continue and thrive; the dross will fall by the wayside; and, in the end, the system will work. It may be a messy way of arriving at your destination, but it sure beats months of difficult negotiations and political compromises before arriving at an unworkable proposal that fails to accomplish your underlying objectives anyway.

If a crisis is going to occur anyway, why not just bring it on?

It’s impossible to know if this is a deliberate strategy or just the natural working through of different sectoral interests, but one thing is certain. The disability sector is in the midst of a dramatic transformation.

In three years, the NDIS will look nothing like today. There will be no point in asking if it’s better or worse: it will still exist, but it will be different. Change is coming.