Page 3485 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 22 October 2014
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As I understand it, applications are now being taken for the early intervention programs—a list, so to speak, of young children that are coming into this space. They will be assessed and provided with information, and there will be the opportunity to meet these new providers on 17 November.
Mr Wall needs to be clear about this. I do have an obligation to support Canberra families; I am supporting Canberra families—working with the National Disability Insurance Agency, with Disability ACT and with Therapy ACT to make sure that this transition is as seamless as possible. I have absolute regard for the families with young children in the early intervention programs, because I recognise and value the difference that quality early intervention can make to those children and to the families.
But Mr Wall also has an obligation to Canberra families. His obligation is to not put out misinformation. I would ask him, when this tender is announced within this next week, to get behind the organisations that are standing up and are prepared to deliver these services, and to cease his ongoing commentary that there will be no services in 2015. There will be services ready for Canberra families in 2015.
The NDIA is committed to that; we are committed to that. Those services will be known within a very short time and provided to Canberra families in readiness for them to meet first hand and discuss with them the best arrangements that suit their family. Those opportunities will come into place on 17 November this year, in readiness for the school year in 2015.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (4.30): I thank Mr Wall for the motion today. I have some sympathy with why he has put it on the table; in the minister’s statement on Monday there perhaps was not the clarity and the certainty that some were expecting at the start of term 4 and that many were hoping for. I understand that for parents there was not the clarity that they were perhaps hoping for either. It is not unreasonable of parents to want to have this information very soon, because there is very significant change coming with the implementation of the NDIS. They now have one term in which to investigate and choose new providers for the delivery of their children’s programs for next year. Parents were probably expecting to see a list of providers—the list of providers—delivered with some certainty, but they have been told that there is another process underway and that the information they want is not available yet. So I do appreciate that there is a level of concern and frustration there.Having said that, I also have sympathy for the minister and the directorate on this. They have always been clear that they believed it was very important to vacate the field of providing these services in order to encourage other providers to enter the game. Ultimately, under the NDIS, we know that that is what is going to be needed. If we wanted the government to stay as a service provider, we should have thought twice about signing up to the NDIS. But we did sign up, and everybody at the time said: “The NDIS is exactly where we want to go. It is the thing that is the major reform for disability services in Australia.”
I have watched with great interest the shift in this debate over time. In the lead-up to the agreement to the NDIS, everybody supported it very strongly. What has been very
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