Claire Clutterham (Sturt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The National Disability Insurance Agency released its annual pricing review earlier this year, making recommendations designed to help refocus the National Disability Insurance Scheme on its primary purpose, which is to provide funding and support services to Australians with a permanent and significant disability.

The provision of funding and support services is targeted towards helping those with disability live as independently and autonomously as possible, helping them to be able to spend more time with family and friends. It's also directed at helping people with a permanent and significant disability access new skills, access meaningful work or access a community volunteering opportunity. It is firmly aimed at delivering an improved quality of life.

The NDIS currently supports over 700,000 Australians with disability to access the services and support they need. This includes approximately 80,000 children with developmental delay, ensuring they receive supports early so that they achieve the best outcomes throughout their lives. To be clear again, the services and support facilitated by the scheme are directed at persons with a permanent and significant disability. Supporting those persons is the purpose; it is the entire point. The Albanese Labor government is focused on making the National Disability Insurance Scheme the best and fairest it can be.

The National Disability Insurance Agency's annual pricing review contained new recommendations with respect to the way travel is charged by those providing support and services to persons with a permanent and significant disability. The updated travel-claiming rules create clear cost expectations for those persons, helping them to get increased value and efficiency from the funding provided to them. The new rules also encourage providers to implement more efficient scheduling and to seek to ensure that travel costs are proportionate to the services being provided. Travel costs must be itemised separately on invoices so that participants can clearly understand where the funding provided to them, pursuant to the NDIS, is being used.

The National Disability Insurance Agency learned during the annual pricing review that participants were finding that therapy travel costs were exhausting their funding faster than expected. In this respect, participants, whose needs the National Disability Insurance Scheme is designed to fulfil, were listened to and heard. What this means is that the updated travel-claiming rules encourage more efficient scheduling by providers and provide clear cost expectations for participants, to help them get better value from their funding.

A similar motivation exists for the changes to increment recording by providers. Displaying therapy price limits in 10-minute increments is intended to increase flexibility in billing and in service delivery. It aims to clarify that one hour is not a default or expected service length and that the length of service can vary, depending on the agreement between the participant and provider based on individual needs and circumstances, which may evolve.

What changed following the National Disability Insurance Agency's annual pricing review is that, from 1 July 2025, therapy providers, not disability support workers or other types of support providers, can claim half of the relevant price limit for their time spent travelling, which equates to around $90 per hour, up to the usual time-limit caps, depending on location. Other travel rules did not change, which means all providers may continue to claim non-labour travel costs, such as vehicle-running costs, parking costs and road tolls. It is also open to providers to negotiate with participants to include costs and accommodation associated with travel to remote and/or very remote and regional locations. Travel in remote and very remote locations, as determined by the Modified Monash Model—which is the model used by the NDIA to classify the remoteness of a location—has price limits and is not subject to time caps. Additionally, remote loadings of 40 per cent and 50 per cent for remote and very remote locations, respectively, remain unchanged. This government will continue to work with regional, remote and rural communities to trial different ways of delivering services to make it easier for people in remote communities to receive the services they need.

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