Kurt Fearnley: Can you take us back to that day when the NDIS bill was introduced into parliament. What do you remember?
Jenny Macklin: Ah hahah. It was, it was a very emotional day. Umm I'll get all emotional again just remembering it.
Julia Gillard - archive - (crying while talking) Over the past six years the idea of a National Disability Insurance Scheme has found a place in our nation’s hearts.
Jenny Macklin: These are huge moments. And to sit there in the parliament and to see every single person vote for it. That was pretty amazing.
Jo Berry: I felt like it would probably be too good to be true. It kind of felt like one of those pipe dreams.
Scott Taylor: It was a very proud moment for me. It was a moment where I probably for one of the first times, I really felt myself as an equal.
Debbie Chilton: It was like a victory. And, yes! We've done it! We have changed the law!
Jenny Macklin: And to know that all of that work had come to fruition. So it's a very, very special day.
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: On May 15th 2013, Prime Minister Julia Gillard introduced legislation to fund the National Disability Insurance Scheme - the NDIS.
Julia Gillard - archive - (crying while talking)“In March we gave it a place in our nation’s laws. Today we inscribe it in our nation’s finances.”
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: This was the result of years of research, advocacy and pleas from the community. The system supporting people with disability in this country was failing. This moment was one that would change the nation.
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: More than 7 years on, the NDIS is now available across Australia. More than 400,000 Australians with disabilities are accessing support through the scheme – more than one third of those for the very first time. It’s one of the greatest social reforms in Australia’s history. But the journey to this point hasn’t been easy.
Trish Jackson: The stress it caused me was just unbelievable. I've never felt stress like that before. I can honestly say that NDIS has broken my spirit.
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: But, there have been successes too.
Scott Taylor: I have got those goals and more. The NDIS has transformed my life completely.
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: I grew up in a time where the only hope for adequate disability support was if you were hit by a car. The system only supported people with disability after accidents, excluding so many who were born this way. When I first learnt about the NDIS, I didn’t just see an opportunity to change the system - but to change the way people with disabilities even see themselves.
I’m Kurt Fearnley and this is A Nation Changed.
In this 4-part series, we’re diving into the history of the NDIS – where it came from, its successes, where it’s fallen short, and how it’s performing in 2020.
Nas Campanella: A lot of people are quite worried that it's, it’s a way of weeding people out of the scheme.
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: You’ll hear from the people personally affected by the scheme...
Greg Bruce: I thought, wow, this is great. It sounds good. I could see a lot of opportunity to better my life.
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: ...And the people who made this once in a generation reform possible.
Julia Gillard: This was always a very emotional journey.
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: So, why are we looking at the NDIS? Because it’s a critical issue for each and every Australian.
Julia Gillard: I think the NDIS is important for everyone.
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: It’s important because it directly supports almost half a million people and their families . . . giving them choice and control over their own lives. And helping them to participate fully in society.
Bruce Bonyhady: With the NDIS, there was the prospect that the family could work, but also more people with disability could work because of the investment in their capability and capacity.
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: And important because any one of us - one day - could come to rely on it.
Jo Berry: Anyone could end up disabled at any time. No one thinks they're gonna end up in an accident or be diagnosed with a condition that's gonna, you know, disable them.
Jo Berry: I didn't think it would happen to me.
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: This podcast is a story about politics, procedures and process - but at its heart it’s about people.
Jo Berry: I want to feel like my life is as close to normal as any other 30-something year-old’s.
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: For the 4.5 million Australians living with a disability, it’s vital that we ask - is the NDIS living up to its principles?
That’s what I want to find out.
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(A door bell sound. A dog starts barking)
Jo’s mum: Hello?
Jake Morcom: Hello?
Jo’s mum: Hi.
Jake Morcom: Hey, how’s it going?
Jo’s mum: Good, and you?
Jake Morcom: Good, thank you. I’m Jake.
Jo’s mum: Hi, I’m Jenny.
Jake Morcom: Nice to meet you.
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: Before we jump to the NDIS that we know today, you have to understand what came before it.
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: That’s why we’re meeting Jo Berry. Producer Jake Morcom visited Jo at home, in Sydney’s Forest District.
Jo Berry: I'm Jo Berry. I'm 34 years old. I'm a social worker and I very much love to crochet.
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: Jo lives with her mum and dog Billy, who was pretty keen to get behind the mic himself.
Jo Berry: Sorry, that’s Billy (laughs).
Jake Morcom: That’s okay.
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: Jo has been on the NDIS since 2016, but she also received support under the previous system.
Jo Berry: Pre NDIS, the disability system was quite segmented and, and there was like a number of packages and projects that ran. And you really had to fit some quite narrow criteria for all of them.
Jo Berry: Like, it was about proving how disabled you were and what you needed.
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: Before the NDIS, disability support was massively different across the states and territories. Each had their own disability projects and packages.
Jake Morcom: What exactly was the package that you were applying for?
Jo Berry: I was on a program called Community Support Package or something, like that. That covered me for say about 14 hours of support carers per week.
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: Jo says the old system was like a messy patchwork.
Jo Berry: It was also quite hard to know where to know which thing you’d fit. So, there was a lot of need for, say, case managers and things like that cause they would know all of the various umm projects.
Jo Berry: I remember when I applied for the project that I ended up being on, it was, I think, like at least fifteen pages to apply. And then you just had to kind of wait around and hope that you fitted it.
Jake Morcom: What was included in that 15 pages?
Jo Berry: Oh gosh, it's going back a long time. But a lot of, you know, the technical stuff about what's wrong with your life, what's wrong with you, what their disability has an impact on your life. I mean the same sort of things as normal. And then, what do you want your life to be.
Jo Berry: It did do the essentials. But, at one point I remember there was a lot of people filling in the gaps themselves.
Jo Berry: There were also a lot of people that didn't fit very narrow criteria and therefore didn't get the support they needed.
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: Jo says one of the major problems with the old system was that none of her service providers talked to each other. Everything seemed to run separately. Also - and this is a big one - she had no choice or control over which provider she went with. Having no choice is something Kathy and her daughter Emily from Sydney’s North Shore also really struggled with.
Kurt Fearnley (asking Emily): What do you like about trucks?
Emily Herbert: This truck!
Kathy Herbert (asking Emily): What do you like about Mack?
Emily Herbert: Umm I like driving Mack!
Kurt Fearnley: Yeah, okay!
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: Emily, who has an intellectual disability, was at the whim of her service providers. Her mum Kathy felt like they had no control over her support needs.
Kathy Herbert: We didn't really have a choice. We didn't want Emily's life to be limited. Pre-NDIS, it was the, the big service providers that had all the control and, you know, and very little control for the families. Ah, you had no choice.
You just want your kids to be able to, umm achieve their full potential. And when a system actually limits that and tells you no, you've got a disability, so therefore you have to fit into this system. I'm sorry. Look, I'm a bit of a rebel in that respect and I challenge the system.
Jo Berry: I want to feel like my life is as close to normal as any other 30 something year old.
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: Here’s Jo Berry again.
Jo Berry: I wanted great support workers to get me up at night. And for other things. And I wanted to be able to go swimming. I wanted to be able to get in the water.
Jo Berry: And not to be reliant on mum, to be able to go away for a weekend away. Most adults get to go away for a weekend without their parents. I didn't have, like, funding for care for that. And also knowing that if Mum ended up in hospital, which she has along the way, that I could stay at home and and I'd have the support I need there as well.
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Kurt Fearnley: Ok, so disability support varied from state to state. But what was the national approach to disability support before the NDIS?
John Walsh: Well, there wasn't one.
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: This is John Walsh. What you need to know about John is that he is a genius with numbers. He’s an actuary - someone who works out risk through probability and prediction. John is also a quadriplegic -– he injured his spine playing football in his early 20s.
John Walsh: I had my injury in 1971 and I didn't receive any government support until about 1990.
John Walsh: My family and friends and community provided all the support that I needed to get me out of bed in the morning, go to bed at night. Help me in going to the toilet.
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: John says it wasn’t until the late 1980s, until Australia started seeing disability as a national issue.
John Walsh: That effectively was the start of what became the disability system. The states all then introduced their own disability legislation and there was an agreement called the Commonwealth State Disability Agreement.
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: But John says this agreement fell short. It failed to come up with a real plan to put disability on the national stage. This started to become obvious in the 1990s.
John Walsh: There was a big demographic baby boom of people born 1945 to 1960.Parents who are effectively looking after children born in that era were now starting to get too old. So they're wondering, what do they now do with their child? Pretty soon the states were finding that their costs were going through the roof.
John Walsh: Parallel to all of this, there was a big push around the world for rights for people with disability.
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: Here, in Australia, things were ramping up too.
Katrina Clark: I think what you'd like me to say is it felt energizing, but it felt like a slog.
Kurt: This is Katrina Clark. Katrina has worn many hats and written many papers in her 15 years as a disability advocate.
Katrina Clark: You had to battle to get seen or heard by politicians, by media. So we were really trying to build this up. I think the best thing I did then was following attendance at a seminar which had a speaker from Norway who spoke about the statistics in Norway and Sweden - I went home and just sat down, didn't move and wrote this paper. And I would suggest to anybody that wants to advocate for anything, you've got to put in writing what you want and some statistics to back it up. And then you've got something to give people. Even if they don't read it, you've got something to knock on their doors and chase them about. And that's what we did.
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: As momentum was brewing in the community, John Walsh received a phone call.
John Walsh: I got a call from umm John Della Bosca, who was the minister for disability at the time.
John Walsh: And he said, look, I want you to have an actuarial look at this problem, see what's happening with the numbers, and we can maybe think about a way to do something about it.
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: But John knew this was about more than the numbers. This was about systemic change.
John Walsh: I'd written papers on the concept of a system wide approach. The first paper was probably in 1984. Another one in 1995. And it, this was the first time that it started to become something that was actually considered, I guess, by governments.
John Walsh: And then the real trigger was in 2007 when the Kevin Rudd government appointed Bill Shorten as parliamentary secretary. He basically grabbed it and ran with it.
Jenny Macklin: Bill Shorten was my parliamentary secretary.
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: This is Jenny Macklin – she was a member of federal parliament for 23 years.
Jenny Macklin: Great to be with you, Kurt, today. Umm really looking forward to the conversation.
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: Jenny was a Senior Minister in both the Rudd and Gillard governments and part of her portfolio covered disability.
Jenny Macklin: And he was this very enthusiastic new member of parliament. And he and I really thought, oh OK, let's see where this idea takes us.
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: Bill Shorten, with Jenny Macklin’s support, formed the Disability Investment Group in 2008.
This group - also called DIG - brought together disability and numbers experts to brainstorm ideas for a new and improved disability support system.
Jenny Macklin: John Walsh was on that group and a few others. They started to think about, well, what does the notion of insurance in the case of disability support really mean.
Kurt Fearnley: So what was the point of the Disability Investment Group?
John Walsh: The remit of DIG was to look at innovative models to pull private investment into the disability system. So there were a whole bunch of ideas that would take private money and bring it into the disability sector. They all had problems.
Kurt Fearnley: And why an insurance scheme?
John Walsh: I think it gave the best opportunity of a fair system. So everyone is covered.
Bruce Bonyhady: The idea that if we all pay a small amount, then it's affordable for everybody.
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: This is Bruce Bonyhady. He was the first chair of the NDIA Board. The NDIA is the National Disability Insurance Agency – that’s the independent body whose job is to implement the scheme. He was a member of DIG too.
Yes, there are just a few acronyms wrapped up in the NDIS. It wouldn’t be a government policy without them! Anyway.
Bonyhady is often called the ‘architect’ of the NDIS. He says the scheme was a complete 180 from the previous system. Rather than disability service providers being paid by state governments to support individuals - people would get money from the government directly to spend with the providers that they chose. This was a crucial change – it meant power would rest with people and not the providers, giving people with disability choice and control: two things they’d never had before. Jo Berry says having choice means everything.
Jo Berry: So one of the great things I love about the NDIS is that you've got heaps more choice about that. It's really great having the freedom to choose.
Jo Berry: I feel like in the past, I only really ever saw that you got some bare minimum equipment that you’d need. You’d get the bare minimum care you need. The focus was intended to shift with NDIS to be, what can you do? What would you do with your life if you could do it?
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: Choice for Kathy and her daughter Emily is equally as important.
Kathy Herbert: Oh choice, choice is everything. Because it means that as an individual the possibilities are endless. And, and why shouldn't they be? Choice and control, I know that those words are used a lot. But truly it’s, it’s everything.
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: Bruce Bonyhady says the NDIS also signalled a change in thinking. Disability support was no longer a welfare system, it was about insurance and investment.
Bruce Bonyhady: As with any insurance policy, you hope you never have to draw on it. But you're happy to pay it because it gives you confidence that if something happens to yourself for your child or your grandchild, then they'll be able to be supported.
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: Bruce asked disability advocate Katrina Clark to address the idea of an NDIS at the Australian 2020 Summit. This was a big ideas convention, hosted by the Rudd government in 2008.
Bruce Bonyhady: There were many more people who wanted to attend that summit than were invited. I think in total there were a thousand people invited, ah but I wasn't one of them. So the only way I could influence the process was to write a submission and then lobby as many people as I could who I knew who would be attending the summit. And it was really in writing a submission that I came up with the idea and coined the term National Disability Insurance Scheme.
Katrina Clark: It was overwhelming for me. And there were so many very, very important people there. So that was scary. You'd be all trying to work together to come up with what we were told was only to be two or three ideas, which was impossible. Because the number of ideas that people came up with and from so many issues. I could see I had really tough competition when I got there. And I was just amazed at the end of the two days when the National Disability Insurance Scheme was able to make its way to the top ideas.
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: After the summit, the idea of an NDIS BLEW up.
Bruce Bonyhady: The NDIS was just slowly gaining traction, getting support from all sorts of different quarters. And I would be prepared to go anywhere (laughs) to talk about it. So I flew around the country, or met with people, or whatever was needed and spoke at whatever events I could to try and give publicity to this idea and slowly, but steadily, support for it grew.
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: At the end of 2009, the Disability Investment Group, or DIG, handed down it’s report. Then, John Walsh, our numbers guy, he got another call. This time, from Bill Shorten.
John Walsh: By the time Bill Shorten was Assistant Treasurer and he gave me a call and said, look, we're going to refer this to the Productivity Commission and we want you to be one of the commissioners.
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: Walsh took on the role as a commissioner. One of his first tasks was to take submissions from the public.
John Walsh: So we went around the country umm meeting people in all of the jurisdictions. People would come in and we'd invite them to tell their stories.
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: He spoke to over 500 people.
John Walsh: The two sort of stories, if you like, that came through for me most strongly were the desperation of people, particularly parents. When I say parents, I don't mean parents of children. I mean 70, 80 year old parents of 40, 50 year old adults who were desperate for some way of being able to die in peace. Desperate to know how that child would be looked after after they were dead. So there was a real failing of the system to provide any real sort of support and quality of life for a whole bunch of families. The system was failing and it was failing badly, and it was a disgrace.
John Walsh: The other thing that stood out for me was when we talked to people with disability and asked them what they needed, the overwhelming response was “we just need someone to listen to us and help us”. We were hearing that people needed aptitude and empathy. People who were prepared to listen, who were prepared to respect.
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: As the Productivity Commission was gathering stories, another hugely influential report on disability was about to drop.
Jenny Macklin: I don't think many Australians really understood just how bad it was, until all the detail of that came out through Rhonda Galbally’s report.
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: Rhonda Galbally is a respected disability rights advocate.
Jenny Macklin: She did a piece of work for us called Shut Out.
Bruce Bonyhady: The Shut Out report was incredibly influential. It pointed out that, you know, while the institutions in which people with disability have largely been closed in the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s, most people with disability were still shut out from a normal life. That picture, together with the solution that the NDIS offered, became the drivers.
Kurt Fearnley: So the Shutout and Productivity Commission reports are handed down, two very influential reports. The Productivity Commission report, though, included a number of recommendations. What did they say?
John Walsh: The famous quotation out of the report is the disability system is “underfunded, unfair, fragmented and inefficient” and people with disability have little choice to be supplied with the services they need.
John Walsh: We thought that that needed to change. And providing people with little choice, we saw that could be changed by recommending that the funding was allocated at a personal basis to individual people with disability or their agents. And they would have choice over what to do with that funding.
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: With the case for an NDIS laid out in front of them, it was over to the Federal Government to follow it up. Jenny Macklin took the lead.
Jenny Macklin: I was the minister responsible for the biggest spending portfolio because we had all the pensions and family payments and so on. So I was used to dealing with very, very big financial decisions. But this was the biggest of all.
Jenny Macklin: At the same time, we were having a huge fight inside the parliament and with the opposition about whether or not we would introduce a carbon price.
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: So things were already (laughter in voice) pretty tense between the Government and Opposition.
Tony Abbott - archive - Doesn't the prime minister's own fact sheet prove that whatever the spin, Australians will pay more for everything under her carbon tax? Hear hear!
Julia Gillard - archive - And the leader of the opposition increasingly will be exposed as someone who went about generating fear. The Member for Stirling is now warned.
Jenny Macklin: And so the whole discussion about what's a tax, and advisability or otherwise, having a tax to pay or to help pay for a new National Disability Insurance Scheme, I expected to be enormously controversial. So, getting that through the expenditure review committee and the actual decision to go for a new social insurance scheme in Australia was a massive decision. But as I say, we were enormously helped by the fact that the Productivity Commission had done such a good job.
Jenny Macklin: The important things they demonstrated was that if the existing system, the old system kept going, it would in fact cost more and deliver less to people with disability than a proper system of social insurance would, ah that was properly funded and gave people the support that they needed. And that was an incredibly powerful thing, because that said to the government, not just the federal government, but the state governments, who to a very large degree funded disability care and support, you can't just keep going the way you are.
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: But the NDIS was going to cost a lot too. It would cost an extra $6 billion dollars each year, on top of what the state governments were already spending. This ruffled a lot of feathers.
Jenny Macklin: At the time, Victoria and New South Wales were both Liberal. And getting them, of course, was essential. We had to get them over the line.
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: With a national roll out set for 2020, the Productivity Commission estimated the scheme would cost around $14 billion each year. In the end, Jenny Macklin and the Labor government were able to tow most states over the line.
Jenny Macklin: We got a very good agreement in the end with both the Liberal premiers. As well as Jay Weatherill in South Australia was great. We really did come to a terrific place.
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: Western Australia however, was pretty tricky.
Jenny Macklin: Western Australia was a, was a holdout. They had not agreed by the time we were taking the legislation through. So that was very difficult. A few years later we did get Western Australia over the line, but it took a long time.
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: Jenny Macklin says convincing the states wouldn’t have been possible without the advocacy happening out in the community.
Jenny Macklin: The other great campaign I should mention was the Every Australian Counts campaign. One of the best community campaigns I have ever seen. If not the best.
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: ‘The campaign got people out at events, writing emails - and making videos . . . like this one.
Every Australian Counts - archive - So people with disability, their families, carers and those who support them got together and a campaign was born. We knew it wouldn't be easy and that it would take time. We knew we had to show the rest of Australia what the problem was and how the NDIS would fix it. We gave evidence at the Productivity Commission.
Julia Gillard: I definitely remember going to, you know, huge Every Australian Counts events where, I mean, I've been in a lot of crowds in my life as a result of the political life that I've lived. But this was a very special crowd. Huge arenas filled with people with disabilities and their carers there to make a very public point about how they wanted the community to see them. It was incredible.
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: Julia Gillard was the Australian Prime Minister from 2010 to 2013.
Julia Gillard: Now, given you’re recording this and something's just gone, ding! I’m just going to… And there's another thing that's just gone, ding! I'm just going to mute... oop hang on. (Pause) There we go, done.
Kurt Fearnley: Why was the NDIS a priority for your government?
Julia Gillard: The NDIS was a priority because really it was an idea whose time had come. This was an idea that the nation had talked about for decades. And I think I and many other Labor people recognized the inherent fairness of it.
Julia Gillard: This was always a very emotional journey, an emotional journey and an intellectual journey. You know, you can't get the big things done in government if you are constantly swept away by the emotion. You've got to be very business like, very professional, very methodical. With all of that, when it did get to the big public moments, you know, you could let some of the emotion in. You could feel it.
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: One of these emotional moments came on the 21st of March, 2013. This was when the National Disability Insurance Scheme Act passed in parliament. Finally, the NDIS would become law.
Julia Gillard: I do remember feeling it when the legislation went through the parliament that there was a sense of relief almost, that after all of this work and preparation, we were getting there and doing something that would matter and matter for so many Australians and for the long term future.
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: When Julia Gillard announced an increase to the Medicare levy to fund the scheme in May, the Liberal Party pledged their full support.
Jenny Macklin: I was with Julia Gillard when she announced it and Tony Abbott came out on the day and said that he would support the increase to the levy.
Jenny Macklin: And that was the point at which we knew we were fine.
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: On May 15th, with the states, territories and Opposition all on board, Julia Gillard held back tears as she read the bill in parliament.
Julia Gillard - archive - (crying while talking) Over the past six years, the idea of a National Disability Insurance Scheme has found a place in our nation's hearts.
Kurt Fearnley: It seemed like it was quite an emotional moment for you. Why, why did it get you?
Julia Gillard: Well, I kind of surprised myself and I certainly surprised my colleagues. I remember after I gave the speech, sitting down and talking to Deputy Prime Minister Wayne Swan, who joked with me, God, if I'd had a bet on who was going to cry, I would have betted on Macklin! (laughs)
Julia Gillard: Because Jenny was more known in the Labor caucus for showing emotion during the big moments. I wasn't so much. I was reflecting back on the many people I had met and the big difference that this would make for their lives. And I'm speaking of people with disabilities, but also their families, their carers, the community members that supported them. I was imagining the faces of the people who were watching and for whom this was just a lifetime dream come true. And so that made it a very emotional moment for me.
Julia Gillard - archive - (crying while talking) The people who have gathered here today from around the country, to witness this debate, know what this means.
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: NDIS participant Jo Berry clearly remembers this moment.
Jo Berry: I was, like, stoked about it all.
Jo Berry: I think change is always scary because you at least know the system that you're on. But the idea of it - yeah it’s just this complete shift with disabilities. Like, we're not going to just provide you the bare minimum and sort of like keep you in a corner. It's like, no, go do things, be what you want to be and get the care you need.
Jo Berry: So it was pretty exciting when that all went through. I didn't think it would because it's such a big cost and, do they think people care enough about those with disabilities politically for it to be the right move? And I think it was.
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: Now in law, the NDIS was set to launch on the first of July, 2013. A number of sites were chosen around the country to put the scheme to the test. But just a few days before it was set to go live, Australian politics would tumble into chaos.
News archive - Australia’s first female prime minister Julia Gillard says she will resign from politics... they say revenge is sweet, and Kevin Rudd couldn’t have looked happier.
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: On June 26, 2013, Julia Gillard lost the Prime Ministership to Kevin Rudd in a leadership spill. And, just a few months down the track, an election was called, leaving the scheme’s future in murky waters.
In the next episode, the NDIS goes live. But how would these messy few months in Australian politics affect the scheme?
Jenny Macklin: I was pretty angry. Well I was very angry because people with disability were being used. And that made me very, very angry.
Voice-over [Kurt Fearnley]: Would this once in a generation social reform live up to its principles?
John Walsh: I wrote a letter to the Prime Minister's department that said, the scheme is not working. We've got to change it.
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A Nation Changed is hosted by me, Kurt Fearnley.
Our Lead Producer is Jake Morcom.
Jasmine Mee Lee is our Assistant Producer.
Jess Bineth is Executive Producer of the series.
This podcast is a collaboration between Hireup Australia and Audiocraft.
Subscribe to A Nation Changed wherever you listen to your podcasts.
Or listen to episodes individually at Hireup-dot-com-dot-A-U forward slash A Nation Changed.
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