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The Human Rights Commission President is warning of the danger states and territories might not step up to fill the emerging gap in service provision that will come with the changes to the NDIS.

“I worry about the impact on people”, President de Kretser told the National Press Club yesterday. “We need to make sure the states are shouldering their part of the load, because the states are at risk of retreating from this.”

Responding to a question from abilityNEWS, de Kretser noted that there are still not enough details about how the state governments will move in to provide services to replace those currently offered by the NDIS.

The Human Rights Commission head emphasised the concerns of people on the scheme during this interim period as the new system is introduced.

“We need to make sure that those people who are currently on the NDIS are properly supported,” de Kretser said.

Health Minister Mark Butler has said the federal government will gradually stop committing money to particular services, but state governments have not yet detailed how they will fill this emerging funding gap.

“There is a need to look at reforming the NDIS to make sure it’s achieving the result originally intended.” de Kretser continued. “Our worry is there are thousands of people now, people with disabiliyt, their families, there carers, their parents, who are worried about losing the support that they currently have.”

The HRC head pointed out that there is an ‘information gap’ that’s accompanying the move to reduce the federal government funding for the NDIS.

“There’s not enough information about how the federal, state and territory governments working together are going to provide appropriate support to people who are going to no longer be in the NDIS under these rule changes,” de Kretser says.

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