Tuesday, 30 July 2024

Implementing the NDIS review: risks and opportunities for Indigenous interests

                                   Who seeks and will not take, when once ’tis offered,

                                Shall never find it more.

Anthony and Cleopatra, Act two, Scene seven

 

 This posts provides a link to a recent working paper of mine, Implementing disability policy reform: Challenges and opportunities, published on the Centre for Indigenous Policy Research (formerly CAEPR) website (link here) which takes as its starting point the 2023 Review of the NDIS (link here) and assesses the challenges involved in implementing that Review’s recommendations. While the paper considers the key mainstream recommendations of the Review, including their relationship with the complex shared funding arrangements with the states and territories, the Working Paper’s primary focus are the challenges that are embedded in the Review recommendations for Indigenous interests.

 

In particular, the design of the mainstream NDIS scheme, based as it is on the existence of private sector disability services providers, creates substantial risks for the effective delivery of disability services in remote settings. The Review made a series of recommendations for addressing this issue, however successful implementation will involve overcoming the significant risks of implementation failure.

 

The paper begins from an assumption that the Government will broadly accept the Review recommendations, and suggests that the implementation challenges and risks are formidable. In relation to the Indigenous elements of the Review implementation agenda, the working paper (inter alia) argues for a stand-alone cross-agency implementation capability incorporating Board or Advisory Council membership nominated by Indigenous interests to be established with a finite lifespan of say five years. The Working Paper argues that the risks of implementation failure are high and that effective and successful implementation will require sustained advocacy by Indigenous interests across all jurisdictions.

 

 

30 July 2024

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