A glimmer of hope at last?

The funding arrangements for the scheme most preferred by the members of the three person Commission would be via direct payments from consolidated revenue into a national Disability Insurance Premium Fund. Overseeing all this will be a (new) National Disability Insurance Agency.

Commencing in 'early 2014', the scheme would initially cover all new cases of significant disability and some of the groups most disadvantaged by current arrangements, such as

• Children under 5 with substantial core activity limitations

• Select groups for whom early intervention pilot programs look promising

• People who are now cared for by ageing Carers

• People who have been inappropriately placed in nursing homes

Thus, 'over the period from 2015-2018 the scheme would progressively expand to cover all relevant people with a disability.'

Yet a degree of nervousness pervades many of the households of Australians with disability, a nervousness driven by the often complex issues impacting people with disability and their families, and the pervasive focus on 'efficiencies' and the Orwellian bureaucratic language employed in the management (control) of people with disability and their families.

For instance the authors of the Report have recommended that the Disability Support Pension should be outside the NDIS. Covering some 793,000 people as at June 2010, the Commissioners argue that 'There are grounds for (further) reform of the Disability Support Pension, given that its design can significantly undermine the NDIS's goals of better economic, employment and independence outcomes for people with a disability."

The Report continues ...

Reforms would aim to encourage the view that the norm for many people should not be the long-term use of the Disability Support Pension (unlike the current 'until death or aged pension us do part'). Those changes would be mainly oriented to people with typically non-permanent conditions, like anxiety and depression, and at people who could have much higher hopes for employment participation (for example, those with sensory impairments or mild intellectual disabilities). Some policy measures could include additional payments for people to work, targeted rehabilitation, employer support, measures to encourage people to get even a small foothold into work (even if just a few hours a week), and temporary rather than effectively permanent entry to the Disability Support Pension for those with reasonable prospects of employment (with periodic re-assessments).

All perfectly rational and reasonable-sounding, particularly when augmented with a few 'flexibles', 'consumer choice' and 'alternative options' that would enable people to 'exercise power'. However given the epidemic of mass un-employment and under-employment adversely impacting the Rich Countries of the West, including Australia, the reluctance and failure of Corporate Australia – including governments - to employ significant numbers of people with disability, and the financial inability of many small to medium-sized companies to do so, the prospects for people on the Disability Support Pension and full-time Carers wishing to return to or enter the paid workforce

to secure well-paid employment and financial/economic security are severely proscribed, by the 'strategic initiatives' of the globally dominant Neo-Liberal or Economic Rationalist agenda.

John Foster is a retired former HR practitioner and university Tutor and community activist with an interest in politico-economic relations and social justice.