Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee, , 5:44:32 to 5:50:03
Officials explain the modelling assumptions used to estimate future scheme participation, including functional capacity tests and the net reduction in participant numbers.
Topics: Social services, Government spending
Speakers: Blair Comley, Senator Penny Allman-Payne, Anthea Long, Hon Jenny McAllister, Ellie Whiteaker
All right, thank you. Um his National Press Club address the Minister outlined uh that he'd set they'd set the figure of 160,000 people that would come off the NDIS. Um interested to know what level of engagement the department had in setting that figure. Um was it based on an assessment of the needs of NDIS participants, or were there other factors uh that came into that to get to that number?
Uh so Senator, we did modelling of the reforms in the budget context, uh, and that included modelling of all elements of the reforms, including the access changes. And so when it comes to the changes to substantially reduced functional capacity, we made uh assumptions around uh what a level of functional capacity would be for entrance into the scheme. These were high-level assumptions that we made as the the policy to determine the actual threshold is still to be determined. So there is an expert advisory group that are engaging and uh consulting around what that should be, and there will be advice to government. So I should stress that the numbers and the modelling that we did in budget were based on assumptions. Uh however, we worked with the information that we had at the time and we made the assumptions in order to determine what a possible impact would be.
Senator So Nord Payne, can I just um I don't want to be pedantic, but there are actually two press club speeches by Minister Butler, and it might be worth just distinguishing the two. The first one was from memory either August or September in last year. That was the one that announced Thriving Kids and the 0 to 8 uh cohort. Then there was a second press club announcement uh budget about three or four weeks before the budget, which had the further access changes. So I'm just trying to be helpful in terms of there were kind of two points at which there was two different sets of announcements of the the access arrangements.
Yeah, I guess what I'm I'm I'm I guess I'm trying to understand is is when the minister came out with the figure of 160,000. Was it the case that there was a decision made that in order to I guess um meet budget requirements? A number was looked at, and then you kind of worked backwards to say, okay, how do we how do we address that? Or was it the other way round saying we need to make changes, and if we make those changes, this will be the number that gets removed? Just interested in how that process worked.
I would describe it, Senator, that um it was what is the category of those that don't require access or wouldn't benefit as much from the nature of assistance with the NDIS, and then what number does that give you rather than starting with a target number and working back to what's the policy that delivers that.
So you would have looked at a range of changes and seen what kind of numbers they were to then say to meet our budget requirements, these are the best changes to make?
Well, I think there was two parts. The first part was the arrangements for thriving kids, which essentially was saying um children with low to moderate support needs with autism and development delay. Um, how many do we think is in that cohort from the ages of zero to eight? And then the second tranche of changes were what are the category of people that we don't think would meet a test of substantially reduced functional capacity, and that was based on looking at data held by the NDIA, which has an internal system that car categorizes people by the kind of level of impairment, and that's a 15-point scale, and those with the bottom five points were considered to be ones that would not were not likely to meet the substantial reduced functional capacity test. Now obviously we can go into more detail about that still to be defined because the technical advisory group is doing it, but essentially was starting with that philosophy and saying what do the numbers come out to rather than trying to retrofit those definitions to hit a particular budget number.
I will just make and I'm sorry you've been very patient, Senator Rollman Payne. Um but the number that Minister Butler used at the press club uh was that currently they were in the order of 780,000 participants, um, and perhaps it was 760 at that time, and by uh at the end of the reforms it would anticipate be anticipated that there would be around 600,000. It's not quite correct to say that that's uh reduction of 160,000 because that's a net reduction. Um obviously some people might naturally um exit the scheme for one reason or another, others might uh not join the scheme because of changed rules. So that 160,000 um number should be treated with a little bit of caution. I think the more relevant number is an end point of 600,000.
Okay, thank you. Thanks, Chair.
Thank you, Senator Allman Payne.