Bill Shorten confident he will leave Parliament having set up NDIS for stable future

Bill Shorten is confident he will leave Parliament having set the NDIS up for a stable future as the scheme achieves a key milestone he promised in 2022.

A surge in “hospital wranglers” and State Governments stepping up with accessible medium-term housing options means the average time it takes National Disability Insurance Scheme participants to be discharged from hospital has dropped to a record low 20 days.

The NDIA — responsible for implementing the scheme — has doubled the number of people it employs to work directly with hospitals and fast-track the discharge process.

The Minister, who is retiring from Parliament in February, said getting the delays down had been a key promise he made to scheme participants during the 2022 election.

At that time, the National Disability Insurance Agency didn’t measure how long it took people to be discharged from hospital but the Victorian Government estimated it was 160 days on average.

“We came across someone in South Australia who’d completed a whole TAFE course while waiting for discharge. So of course, that’s horrendously expensive,” Mr Shorten told The West.

Not only did that mean a hospital bed was being filled unnecessarily, it cost taxpayers an average of $400,000 per person.

The Minister singled out the WA Government for being “quite innovative” in offering medium-term accommodation that allowed people with disabilities to shift out of hospitals.

On the most recent figures, there were 230 NDIS participants in WA hospitals waiting to be discharged.

Mr Shorten said the discharge times were the latest of new key performance indicators that were now being met.

“It’s remarkable, the drop (in discharge wait times) — that just has benefits,” he said.

“It’s also identified new problems in the system, which is lack of appropriate accommodation. But at least we’re clearing the decision-making, the bureaucratic log jam is getting cleared up.”

The mid-year Budget update released before Christmas showed the Commonwealth spending on the NDIS is now forecast to be $1.4 billion lower over the next four years than expected in May after new measures slowing the scheme’s rapid growth.

The latest financial sustainability report from the NDIS actuary shows the growth rate will slow from 12 per cent this financial year to the 8 per cent target governments have set by 2026-27, a year earlier than expected.

The annual cost is now projected to reach $92.7b over the next decade, lower than previous forecasts.

Mr Shorten said these figures showed “green shoots” from his plans to put the NDIS on a sustainable financial footing.

“I’m confident that we’ve set the train tracks for where to go, where the scheme needs to go,” he said, reflecting on what he would be leaving when he departs politics.

“I’m confident also that, essentially, there’s a broad level of consensus between the two major parties . . . and I’m confident that we’re working better with the States than we were.”

He nominated housing and continuing work with the States on developing services outside the NDIS as the two biggest challenges for his successor.

“The States are paranoid that somehow tens of thousands of kids are going to materialise, demanding better schools and more support,” he said.

“I don’t think their fears will materialise, but I do think we need to be a lot better at early intervention — and we can’t do that without the States and the school system.”

There is also a large job ahead in registering all providers in what is largely an unregistered sector at the moment, and probably tweaking to the new lists of what NDIS funds can and can’t be used for.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is expected to make a light-touch cabinet reshuffle in late January to nominate who will take on Mr Shorten’s portfolios of NDIS and government services ahead of the election.

Mr Shorten said the NDIS had been seen “as a bit of the black sheep of the Federal cabinet responsibilities” but he thinks that view is changing.