00:00Kurt Fearnley, thank you for joining me. Talk me through some of the changes that are coming
00:06into effect.
00:07There are a lot of changes coming into the scheme but some of them are now, some of them
00:12are going to come into place over time. For the ones that are coming in now with the legislation
00:18change there is the creation of a list which is called Section 10 that is there to help
00:24guide our participants to be able to make choices around what is and what isn't in their
00:28plans.
00:30What if someone needs an item that is directly linked to their disability but it's off the
00:34list?
00:35So if there is the ability to be able to find an experience or a product that is of equal
00:44value to the list but it is, it gives greater outcomes then you are able to go through an
00:49alternate process that is the substitutions list.
00:53Some people are very worried about racking up debts if they spend the money incorrectly.
00:59What mechanisms are being put in place to prevent this from happening?
01:03One of the great things that has come through the legislation is the ability to be able
01:07to waive a debt when it comes to somebody's disability. There is also a 12 month period
01:12of time where we will have an education focus. And there were also issues with this adversarial
01:17nature with the scheme being a line by line argument, a fight over every single column.
01:22And that's one of the exciting things that with the creation of the list that we are
01:26able to go down that path of the top down budget settings.
01:30One of the other changes is to allow the agency more powers to intervene, particularly if
01:35there is suspected fraud in relation to someone's plan. I have spoken to some people who have
01:41already had this happen in recent time and have said that in the end after an investigation
01:47there was no fraud that had been found but they had still had distressed cause to them.
01:53How can people trust that the agency won't act in haste here and will do the right thing?
01:58Unfortunately, I have also heard the other side of that discussion where I have heard
02:03from participants who have been the victim of fraud. They want anybody who is in the
02:07scheme, who is defrauding the scheme to be rooted out of the scheme.
02:10The government and the agency keep saying that they are consulting and there is ongoing
02:15co-design with the community but some in the community have criticised that process saying
02:20it hasn't been done well enough. What's your response to that?
02:25Since I have come into the agency we have rebuilt the agency. We have made sure that
02:28disabled people are at every layer. The voice is heard at every layer of the agency. There
02:33are more people at senior leadership than ever before in the agency that are disabled
02:37people.
02:39These are some of the biggest changes in the NDIS since its inception. Some in the community
02:45have argued that the government and the agency have mishandled this entire process. What's
02:51your response?
02:51I think that whenever disabled lives are taken into what is a robust adversarial parliament
03:00then it can feel like your voice is diminished. But I would just say to see that process on
03:06its own I think doesn't do justice to the amount of change that has happened over these
03:10last two years.
03:12Kurt Fearnley, thank you very much for joining me.
03:14Thank you for having me, it's been a pleasure.
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