Meanwhile in WA…

Meanwhile in WA we are still talking publicly about why we need the NDIS in this state and we will keep on doing so.

6PR’s Andrea Burns spoke with WA Mums of kids with disabilities about their experience of the system here and how an NDIS would improve things.  This is an excerpt of a half hour session and features Jo Russell and Sue Ellen Bull, but not the other Mums who rang the  talk back line.  ndisaudio

The budget of a nation that ‘does what’s right’

The Federal Government handed down its Budget on Tuesday 14 May. In it Treasurer Wayne Swan outlined the Government’s plan to fully fund the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

See below the response from the Every Australian Counts team:

Media Release: THE BUDGET OF A NATION THAT ‘DOES WHAT’S RIGHT’ 

John Della Bosca, Every Australian Counts Campaign Director, said:

“The Budget rights a wrong that has existed for decades. Australia has failed people with a disability and those who care for them. Tonight’s Budget demonstrates that we are a nation that does what is right.

“Tonight’s Budget makes the dream of the NDIS a certainty.”

In 2019-20, the first year of full implementation, the NDIS is projected to cost $22.2 billion and provide support to 460,000 people with significant and permanent disability. The Commonwealth Government will contribute 53% of this cost.

John Della Bosca continued, “I have followed the Commonwealth Budget for decades. In some years you needed a microscope to find disability mentioned at all. Supporting people with a disability is at the core of tonight’s budget.

“The NDIS will mean people with a disability and their family and carers get the support they need when they need it. It will end the waiting lists, fund necessary equipment and improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of Australians.

“Tonight’s budget is a win for people who believe in justice for people with disability. The NDIS is a budget measure that appeals to the heart and the head.

“In 2011 people with disability, their families, carers and the organisations who support them got together – and a campaign was born. We knew it wouldn’t be easy, and that it would take time.

“So the disability community knocked on the doors of our politicians from all parties hundreds of times. We rallied around Australia in our thousands, out on the street, or around a cup of tea. We told our stories over and over again. We made them listen to our call for the NDIS – and we refused to give up.”

John Della Bosca concluded: “Tonight Every Australian with a disability knows that their fellow Australians are committed to them, and to making sure they have the same chances, choices and opportunities that most Australians take for granted. Tonight Every Australian Counts.”

NDIS Update: a summary of John Della Bosca’s Facebook Q and A

On Tuesday, 6 May the Every Australia Counts Campaign Director John Della Bosca held a Q and A on our Facebook page to answer supporters’ questions about recent developments in the campaign and what it will mean for people on the ground.

Some great questions were asked and we hope that everyone who participated got a lot out of the session.

However, we know that some supporters couldn’t attend the Q and A and some are not on Facebook, so we’ve created the below resource share with everyone.  

What is the NDIS all about?
Who is the NDIS for?
Will the NDIS be means tested?
Will people with disability over the age of 65 be covered?
What supports will be available under the NDIS?
Is there funding for capital items such as equipment or buildings?
How long after the launch sites begin would we expect to see the NDIS roll out to other areas?
How will funding be allocated and distributed?
Is the planner’s role different from the role of the local area coordinator (lac)?
Will the roll out of the NDIS affect the Disability Support Pension?
Will there be more funding for job training for people with disability?
How does an organisation become a registered provider of supports?
What are the long term arrangements for ensuring quality service providers?

Continue reading »

Queensland signs up to the NDIS

Fantastic news! 

Last week Premier Campbell Newman said Queensland was ready to move to full implementation of the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

Today he has signed an agreement with the Federal Government on the dotted line.

QLD Every Australian Counts campaigner Fiona Anderson and her son will be celebrating this latest development in the campaign for an NDIS and you should too!

What a week! 3 more governments sign up to NDIS

Disability campaigners today hailed the great leap forward with the National Disability Insurance Scheme (renamed DisabilityCare Australia), as three more agreements were signed off between the federal government and the ACT, the Northern Territory and South Australia.

Every Australian Counts national campaign director John Della Bosca says the surge in NDIS agreements shows that all levels of government and both major political parties accept they must commit to the NDIS and ensure people with disability and their families are finally able to get the support they need to participate fully in the community.

“There can be no doubt now that all the leaders and members of Parliament from every political party have got the message: hundreds of thousands of NDIS campaigners – people with disability and their families and carers – will not tolerate the NDIS being put on the back burner. The NDIS is underway.”

Mr Della Bosca was adamant that campaigners would not rest until every Australian in need was guaranteed access to the NDIS.

“The Every Australian Counts campaign calls on the remaining state and territory governments and the federal government to show their good faith and sign agreements to ensure the full NDIS operates across the country, as recommended by the Productivity Commission.”

This week’s agreements build on last year’s historic start to the NDIS, when the Coalition New South Wales government became the first state to reach agreement with the ALP federal government for full NDIS implementation beyond its launch site in the Hunter Valley region.

The ACT government today agreed to full implementation of the scheme by 2016-17, covering 5000 people with disability. The Northern Territory government signed up to a first stage NDIS launch site covering 100 people with disability in the Barkly region, with a mix of remote, regional and urban communities.

The South Australian government yesterday reached agreement with the federal government to roll out the full NDIS to 33,000 people with disability, following on from its State-wide launch of the scheme targeting children up to 14 years

The NDIS will provide funds for person-centred support to people with permanent significant disability, to improve their opportunities for social and economic participation and greater independence.  Each person will be individually assessed and will develop a plan linking NDIS supports to outcomes, with a focus on individual and family choice and control over the types of supports which best meet their needs.

MEDIA RELEASE : South Australia joins New South Wales in full National Disability Insurance Scheme roll-out

South Australian disability reform campaigners are celebrating the state’s announcement today that it will join New South Wales to sign up to the full National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), renamed DisabilityCare Australia.

South Australia’s decisive agreement with the federal government to ensure full implementation of the NDIS from 2018 takes South Australia beyond its first stage NDIS launch site role focusing on children under 14 years.

The sign-up to the full scheme will benefit about 33,000 South Australians with a disability by the end of 2018-19.

Every Australian Counts campaign director, John Della Bosca said

“The state-federal NDIS funding agreement announced today by the South Australian government means there is no turning back now from the NDIS”.

“The NDIS is transformational disability reform described just yesterday by former Victorian Premier, Jeff Kennett as “the defining social change of the 21st century.”

“Every Australian Counts NDIS campaigners applaud the South Australian government for joining the New South Wales government to ensure the full strength and support of the NDIS will be made available to all eligible people with disability in their states.”

“However the campaign warns that it will not stop until every state and territory has signed up to the full NDIS, which has strong support federally from both the ALP and the LNP”.

“Federal MPs across the country are already receiving an avalanche of phone calls wanting to know when the NDIS will be rolled out in their state, and demanding full funding commitment in the May Budget” Mr Della Bosca emphasised.

The joint investment in the NDIS by the South Australian and Federal government will rise to $1.4 billion by 2018.

Honour for NDIS advocate Trisha Malowney

Champion for the rights of people with disabilities and NDIS supporter Trisha Malowney has joined the Victorian Honour Roll of Women for her work advocating for women with disability.

Congratulations Trisha!

Since contracting polio at the age of four months Trisha has been a strong advocate for women with disability, and has been very involved in the Every Australian Counts campaign, giving a stirring speech at the Melbourne Make it Real rally in 2012.

She says the NDIS needs to change the way people with disability in Australia are treated – and we couldn’t agree more.

Read more about Trisha’s work here.

Community Cabinet coming up in Vic

Community Cabinet is an opportunity to bring your concerns directly to the Government.

Every Australian Counts supporters took their opportunity in WA last week to ask what the Federal Government was doing to reach an agreement with the state government to ensure the NDIS is rolled out in WA.

Victorians will have their chance next with one scheduled for Wednesday 17 April in Ringwood.

Unfortunately registration to attend the Community Cabinet has already reached capacity but you can still send your questions in here.

Details for the meeting are:

Date: Wednesday 17 April 2013
Location: Norwood Secondary College, Byron Street, Ringwood, VIC
Time: Ministerial Meetings: 4.30 – 5.30 pm (AEST), From 5:30 (AEST): Gates open for the Public Forum, Public Forum : 6.00 – 7.00 pm (AEST)

PM on WA & the NDIS

At last night’s community cabinet in the seat of Hasluck in WA, the Prime Minister met with EAC campaigners privately and gave them a good hearing about resolving the deadlock on NDIS negotations between Commonwealth and State.  In the public section of the evening she took the first question from Peter Darch, one of the best known EAC champions and a former young WA Young Person of the Year. He asked

” Many of us in WA have fought for the National Disability Insurance Scheme and are now involved in building it, but at this stage there is no plan for it here because of the disagreement between the Commonwealth and State governments over how it should be run. Yesterday you said you are looking forward to working productively with Premier Barnett.  Can you tell us what you are prepared to do from your side to do that and achieve a resolution on an NDIS in WA, and will you be making an approach to Premier Barnett while you are here?”

This is the relevant excerpt of  the Prime Minister’s response” We haven’t agreed to a launch site here in Western Australia and I deeply regret that.

In Western Australia actually the State govt has been on a big journey of reform in disability care and disability services and I want to acknowledge that they have done a lot of things on the fore front of what is happening around the nation.

So I don’t think it’s an absence of will and it’s not an absence of will from our end either.

We want to see the NDIS come here.

What we are having is a discussion, debate, argument about is the governance structure.

You might say that sounds boring as heavens know what…

Premier Barnett says he doesn’t want services run here remotely from Canberra and neither do I.

The NDIS will be about local service providers.  There will be local people engaged to help do the brokering between clients and local service providers.

No one wants that to be as far away as Canberra.

But what we do want is a governance model which means if you move from somewhere else in the country to WA and you are in the same scheme nothing changes for you.

If you move from another part of the country, you are in the same scheme.

That is what we want to achieve.

We don’t want to see a federation of state based schemes, because it was a federation of state-based schemes that ended up giving us different rail gauges that took us more than 100 years to resolve, and I don’t want someone standing here in 100 years time saying I wish I could make those disability support and services truly national.  We want to get it right, first time around.

So that discussion is going to continue, I genuinely think there is a bit of goodwill on both sides of the fence, and so I’d want to keep working through it.

I am not directly meeting Premier Barnett on this visit, but I will be seeing him very soon in the context of the COAG meeting and we will certainly be pursuing the conversation there.

Thanks for your question”.

NDIS Legislation Eclipse

Given the relentless media spotlight on the politicking in federal parliament this week you could easily have missed the fact that the NDIS legislation that you have fought for and consulted on so intensely went through both houses of parliament. An important milestone totally missed.

When ABC Mornings Host Geoff Hutchison opened up the talkback lines today he asked people to call in about something they were passionate about and EAC Coordinator Geraldine Mellet and champion Lesley Murphy… phoned it at different points in the program. Click here to listen to excerpts of the audio   Geri and Lesley