Mob Caught Off Guard By Surprise Reform Designed To Fix Problem Nobody Asked Mob About

CANBERRA, Friday – First Nations disability advocates have cautiously welcomed Health Minister Mark Butler’s announcement of the biggest NDIS overhaul since the scheme’s creation, which will boot 160,000 participants off through a process designed entirely without them.

Minister Butler said this week that the changes would return the NDIS to its “original intent” – an intent the First Peoples Disability Network helpfully pointed out was never actually extended to mob in the first place.

“Usually when Canberra says it wants to return something to its original intent we start counting the silverware,” said a spokesperson for a First Nations disability peak body. “The original intent of most things in this country for mob was quite grim so you’ll understand the caution.”

Of 63,000 First Nations NDIS participants fewer than one per cent of providers are First Nations organisations. In remote and very remote communities more than one in three participants are already not accessing the supports in their existing plans. The Minister has pledged to close that gap by removing the plans.

Advocates noted the new reforms would transition mob off the scheme into culturally safe alternatives that do not yet exist assessed by a tool that has not been validated for mob delivered by a workforce that has not been trained.

“We’ve got a five-year strategy a Working Group a Champion and a co-design framework” said a Commonwealth official. “What we don’t have is any actual services past Katherine but that’s phase two.”