“DisabilityCare” – The new dumb name for NDIS
26.03.13
We have lost little sleep over the new name for NDIS now “DisabilityCare Australia”
It is a dumb name and not a good name but marginally better than the predecessor NDIS.
By picking a dumb name it just reminds us again how this once in 50 years chance to fix the national disability crisis is being mismanaged as people try to focus on playing politics not superior disability service outcomes.
Instead of getting bogged down as the sector has been known to do in rhetoric and semantics over names and political speak, we just want to urgently see genuine quality service delivery under a world class disability support program. We don’t really care about the name and despite what the sector thinks the non-disability sector community will at least get some basic understanding that it is about supporting people with disability. We would have just called it the National Disability Scheme!
The scheme is however being further dumbed down it seems nearly every day.
The draft legislation has very serious problems within, some really dumb, not surprising given the mad rush to get the pilot scheme going and the slipshod manner in which it has been put together. Consultation has been pretend, timelines dumb and a sense of déjà vu has overshadowed the whole preparatory process which is really not smart.
If you Google NDIS Draft Rules and go to “Assessing proposed supports, Part 3, page 7 of 23”, it is just plain dumb, scary and suggests what we always expected “DisabilityCare” will not genuinely give broad consumer choice! For example
“Part 3.1 In deciding whether the support represents value for money in that the costs of the support are reasonable” Does it mean that the government will decide what is good value, not you spending your own funding as you see it??
How dumb is that? And even worse
“Part 3.3 in deciding whether the support will be, or is likely to be effective and beneficial for a participant, having regard to current good practice, the CEO is to take into account, and if necessary seek, expert opinion.”
Oh my God! Do they think people with a disability are really dumb? Or do they think no dumb ideas have ever been put forward by academics??
While you may think you know exactly what you want after a lifetime of lived experience the government will allow the experts (who have stuffed plenty up in past decades) to decide what service styles you can develop. Where is the nutty professor hiding now??
Don’t they understand this academic driven, unimaginative, economic management of disability services of the last three decades has been despised by consumers??
Repeating the mistakes of the last thirty years is really……………… dumb!
What has happened to consumer choice, control, flexibility and personal responsibility, the supposed foundation of DisabilityCare??
Across the country people are scratching their heads at a new dumb plan that leaves more questions than it answers. Just one communication from The Tweed Valley Early Childhood Intervention Service Inc. Tweed Heads NSW. 2485 , Email: distributed as a missive this week confirms many consumer doubts. (their not dumb!) They are just one of many who want BIG BIG changes to the draft plan.
If Julia Gillard wants my personal vote on September 14th and trust me, without doubt my mind is a long way from decided then she needs to do three not dumb things very urgently starting in the May 2013 Budget
1. Make the federal government assume full financial responsibility for long term DisabilityCare funding (leave the states out) . Such a joint partnership has been a complete failure in the past as the not dumb Productivity Commission dutifully reported 2. Introduce an immediate national 1% DisabilityCare levy. To do that would show tough and strong leadership, not the toughness Gillard pretends for winning the cream pie chucking contest in caucus last week where she had more mates than her former buddy. That’s not toughness, that’s narcissism at play! 3. Rewrite properly the DisabilityCare Rules so they actually deliver what consumers want. Sack the expert committee who have talked themselves into a lifetime role, sack the public servants that they think know better what value is than consumers and promote choice, control and flexibility above all else in DisabilityCare.
The Federal Election is a long way from decided and last week’s events may ultimately be very beneficial to the Government.( ignore today’s polls and watch the budget and bookies odds?). DisabilityCare will ultimately deliver lots of votes to whoever delivers the best genuine disability plan.
Bringing the national roll out from 2018 to 2015 would seal the deal for many and that is doable if the Prime Minister really has as much ticker as she would like to have us believe.
Winning in caucus or staring down Tony is chicken feathers compared to living with disability in Australia
Let’s hope Gillard is “dumb like a fox” and now focuses on the disability planning Australia really needs, not some of the dumb stuff that is currently being hawked around.
While marginally better than what we have had in the past it is not good enough.
