Now that the news cycle has (hopefully) moved on from hyperventilating about the cost of the NDIS, I think it may be a good moment to understand a small part of what is happening to the NDIS spend.
My daughter is a bit bookish; a favourite of hers is JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series.
For the uninitiated, the story contains a character – Voldermort – ‘he who shan’t be named’.
The characters fear naming him: if they do, they might give a vessel to all their fears.
I compare this with the NDIS in some respects.
An unintended consequence of the NDIS is it is giving us visibility over a whole raft of public expenditure, which we would not normally see, clumping it together and giving it a name.
Now that the expenditure has a name, anger and outrage can be directed towards it.Before it existed, the costs were so dispersed and varied that no politician, commentator, or media outlet, could feasibly draw a line between much of it and capture it all in one simple word.
Therefore, the criticism grabs the headlines.
Let’s take the ‘interface’ between the federally funded NDIS and the state-funded prison system as an example.
This is one rarely publicly discussed but real all the same.
To preserve anonymity, I have used an example of a participant who lives in another state and given them a pseudonym, but this example is repeated across the country.
“Sam” has a total NDIS plan just under $500,000 a year. He has a significant mental health diagnosis, along with an intellectual disability.
Through his life, he has been starved of care and support that understood his disabilities, that saw his potential and that gave him a future.
This has contributed to a life of drug addiction and crime. In fact, he has spent most of his life in prison, often for violent offences.
He requires 24-hour supervision, and medication. He remains at high risk of causing violence to people around him.
There are rays of hope for Sam though. Since joining the NDIS in supported living three years ago, he has not reoffended.
Through the caring and nurturing of his provider, he has turned a corner.
He has discovered a sense of self-worth and place, that he has a talent for music making (and has been making an album) and, in short, he is leading a life which has meaning for him and is, for the most part, peaceful.
The NDIS covers all of this through his plan and this figure goes into the ‘sky rocketing’ cost of the NDIS.
But hang on a second. If Sam was not in the NDIS he would be, without doubt, bouncing between homelessness, hospital and prison.
The average cost of a stay per night in a Western Australian hospital is more than $3,000.
The average cost of a stay per night in a WA prison is up to $1,200.
This also ignores the damage Sam has a history of causing when he is not in a supported environment.
It is estimated society broadly pays $65,000 for a serious assault and $7,300 for theft of a car.
So, assuming Sam is not on the NDIS, spends 120 days in hospital and 240 days in prison (ignoring further mental health supports while there) and commits an assault, the cost to the state government would be around $700,000.
This is well beyond the cost to the federal government of his NDIS plan.
I must emphasise, I am not suggesting the NDIS keeps people with disability out of prison.
Rather, my point is the NDIS is part of a much broader system, which includes public heath, housing, education and prison.
If we curtail the NDIS, those “costs” don’t disappear, they simply show up in another part of the system.
Unlike with the Rowling novels’ eponymous hero, destroying the NDIS does not defeat the cost problem.
The question is how do we make sure the NDIS is sustainable and what is the role of state and territory governments in supporting people with disability?
Before answering this, there needs to be a much broader conversation about the contribution the NDIS makes to the economy, to employment, to our cultural life and our communities.
Only then will any conversation about the purpose, cost and value of the scheme be sensible.
I acknowledge the contribution of Andreas Geronimos, aged care, disability and seniors living lawyer, to this article.
- Amber Crosthwaite is a commercial lawyer specialising in seniors living, aged care and disability.
