This was Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott altering political history on a whim on 28 March 2015:
Mitch Fifield, the architect of the National Disability Insurance Scheme, who will deliver a genuinely insurance-based scheme which will benefit a half a million Australians with disabilities and everyone who cares for them and which will have its head office in Geelong.
Mitch Fifield, the architect of the National Disability Insurance Scheme, who will deliver a genuinely insurance-based scheme which will benefit a half a million Australians with disabilities and everyone who cares for them and which will have its head office in Geelong.
Perhaps someone should remind Abbott that the Australian Parliamentary Library clearly identifies who set the National Disability Insurance Scheme in motion and laid out its basic structure:
On 30 April 2012, the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, announced that the Government would fund its ‘share’ of the cost of the first stage of the NDIS in the 2012–13 Budget.[10] The Government’s NDIS media release accompanying the Budget states that its share includes ‘the total administration and running costs for the first stage of an NDIS’.[11] In addition the media release says that ‘states and territories that host the initial locations will also be required to contribute to the cost of personal care and support for people with disability’. At this stage, it is not clear what the Government has in mind as ‘locations’ for the first stage of the NDIS but the Commission’s proposal was for ‘regions that each contained a modest number of people who were likely to be eligible for the scheme (say, around 10 000 per region)’.[12] Commencement of the NDIS in 2013 is one year ahead of the timetable proposed by the Commission.
The $1.0 billion to be provided by the Australian Government includes:
* $342.5 million over three years from July next year for individually funded packages for people with significant and permanent disability
* $154.8 million over three years from July next year to employ Local Area Coordinators to provide an individualised approach to delivering care and support to people with a disability
* $58.6 million over three years from July next year to assess the needs of people with a disability in the launch locations
* $122.6 million over four years to start preparing the disability sector for the new way of delivering disability services
* $240.3 million over four years to build and operate an NDIS information technology system and
* $53.0 million over four years to establish a new National Disability Transition Agency to coordinate implementation and manage the delivery of care and support to people with a disability and their carers in the initial launch locations from 2013–14.[13]
During the final days of the Gillard Labor Government ABC News reported on 3 June 2013:
During the final days of the Gillard Labor Government ABC News reported on 3 June 2013:
...the regional Victorian city has been chosen as the headquarters of the new DisabilityCare agency.
All states and territories - except Western Australia - have signed up to be part of the scheme, formerly known as the NDIS.
Once DisabilityCare is fully rolled out, the national headquarters in Geelong will employ 300 people, in addition to 150 people in the regional office......
The Barwon region of south-west Victoria, which includes Geelong, was chosen last year as one of the sites where DisabilityCare would be trialled.
The trial will start on July 1 and involve 5,000 people.
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