Category: Media Releases and Statements

The ACT Disability Directed Advocacy Caucus, which includes Advocacy for Inclusion ACT, Women with Disabilities ACT and ACT Down Syndrome and Intellectual Disability has welcomed today’s debate on disability reforms in the ACT Legislative Assembly and called for continued transparency, engagement and actions to ensure that Canberrans with disability receive adequate supports during rapid service transitions. 

The debate concluded with the carriage of a Private Members motion by Chiaka Barry MLA which provides for a 6 monthly progress update on reform to the ACT Assembly. 

We acknowledge and appreciate the efforts that the ACT Government and Minister Orr have made to reach out to the disability community and seek feedback on essential design principles. 

We also appreciate the attention and focus to the pressing needs of people with disability and families today by the ACT Shadow Minister, the ACT Greens and Ms Carrick as well as the need for accountability to Canberrans with a disability. 

In our advice to government, we have highlighted the need for the new service system to be locally responsive and controlled, and for design work to be adequately resourced – the ACT government has made a welcome start to this by setting aside some funding for co-design and consultation and we look forward to working with Government on the next steps.  The Caucus welcomes the commitment to work with us on these things. 

As several speakers in today’s Assembly debate made clear, progress on the new system is slow and fragmented. With changes to the NDIS already in motion and supports being withdrawn or reduced, foundational supports must accelerate rapidly to ensure people are not left behind.  We agree with comments by a number of speakers that the ACT is a vitally interested partner in the progress of reforms.

We are already receiving significant evidence of service removal, cuts to plans and reductions of services for people in Canberra.  Some Canberrans with disability have lost almost all of our services. 

The ACT is at particular risk due to historically thin services, service withdrawal, and a lack of sustainable locally grounded providers.     

We have urged the ACT Government to be a proactive partner and ensure that this new system does not replicate past issues in the NDIS rollout. We agree that the ACT needs to retain an interest and a stake in the Federal reforms.  The ACT is a funding partner with the Commonwealth and the current disability reforms are highly consequential for Territory funded healthcare, education, justice and other community services. 

Foundational Supports must be rights-based, person-centred, and locally controlled – and most importantly, services must be designed and governed in genuine partnership with people with disability.

In relation to Thriving Kids, the Caucus has welcomed funding but raised significant concerns about implementation risks, funding adequacy, workforce capacity, and the need for tailored rather than “one-size-fits-all” approaches. 

The case has not been made for removing children with autism into a parallel program outside the NDIS which is shaping up to provide less certainty and less choice and control.

We have instead called for an ‘orderly reform process’ where changes and reassessments of people’s NDIS supports are better aligned to the timing, growth and scope of new support systems.  

This should also include adequate engagement with the ACT disability community and requires that the ACT must continue as a strong and assertive partner with the Federal government. 

It was surprising and disappointing that the States were not made aware of these changes prior to them being announced.  This points to a need to ensure that there is better engagement by the Federal government with the States and Territories including the ACT government in reforms going forward.  While there are complex issues at play within the multilateral discussions, some additional Assembly attention and oversight of the intergovernmental discussions is welcome.  We also acknowledge and appreciate the existing efforts of government to work with the community and keep us informed.

The ACT Disability Directed Advocacy Caucus, which includes Advocacy for Inclusion ACT, Women with Disabilities ACT and ACT Down Syndrome and Intellectual Disability has issued a statement following a major speech at the National Press Club today where Federal Health and NDIS Minister Mark Butler outlined Government’s priorities for the NDIS and disability policy. According to Caucus representatives:

“There is a lot in these announcements so the disability sector here in the Territory will be taking time to analyse their implications over coming days

We note that a new Thriving Kids program will be created for children aged 0-9 with developmental delay or autism. We welcome the prioritisation of more support to children with developmental delays and autism. It is not clear to us if all children with disability in the 0-9 age group will access the Thriving Kids program or if some will remain on the NDIS.

While the idea of additional supports for children is positive, we do have some concerns:

• We have questions about the plans for a ‘single nationally consistent program’ as described today by the Minister, and that targeted programs suited to the state and territory level are not being considered. A ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach will not be able to ensure tailored supports in different jurisdictions, responding to their individual contexts.
• Some children with complex and lifelong disability will require access to consistent ongoing supports through all life stages and these supports need to be available and seamlessly accessed within a new system.
• We would flag some implementation risks. The inability to design and stand up the Foundational Supports system in a reasonable timeframe, including in those areas where the Commonwealth has responsibility, has contributed to an understandable scepticism about how they will now stand up a quality and fit for purpose program in a timely way.
• We have questions about the capacity to build the new program and whether the services needed to deliver it exist. For instance, it is not apparent that the funding or infrastructure to support these families outside of the NDIS exists. At a practical level it’s not clear where the speech therapists, occupational therapists and professionals who will deliver Thriving Kids will come from.
• There are also questions which will need to be answered including how Thriving Kids will work with NDIS, allied health, community-based programs and the early/childhood and education system including how it will be funded and the funding relationships with these other systems.

There will be a steep hill for the new program to climb so we need a moratorium on cuts to plans and support types for people in the NDIS in the meantime.

Beyond Thriving Kids we also need clarity and reassurance on the intention to deliver a wider system of Foundational Supports and a clear roadmap to funding and constructing these supports outside the early childhood cohort.

We hold concerns about the new growth target of 4-5% and stress that this should not be achieved by excluding people from the NDIS without other support lines being available. The first few years of a child’s life are the years where families need the most support for their child with disability.

We hold grave concerns about the framing of these NDIS conversations and the implications that people with disabilities are unproductive, that families are over-claiming supports, and that the growth of the NDIS should be curtailed at the expense of people with disabilities receiving the supports they need.

Instead we note that the existing NDIS changes and new more stringent approaches to funding plans and support across 2025 have exposed other gaps and shortcomings especially people trying to exit the healthcare system into suitable supports and appropriate housing.

There is still a pressing need for action and funding to progress the other foundational support elements for people outside the scheme including so called General Supports. These include a focus on information and referral, capacity building and self-advocacy.

For instance, in the information space, we need more than another website or a mirror of the Carer Gateway or the My Gov portal. We need an accessible and approachable human centred service run by people with disabilities with strong local accountabilities. These must be designed with people with disabilities in the ACT and not just formed from the remains of the former ILC program.

We look forward to continuing to work with Federal and ACT Governments to form a consistent and considered approach to disability reform that protects and safeguards the NDIS while leaving no one stranded without supports”.

You can download a copy of this release below.