Page 1760 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 4 June 2014
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MS BURCH: Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. On price, the NDIA, the National Disability Insurance Agency, came very late to our officials and said that they will be applying the New South Wales pricing structure here for the ACT. That is not enough. Those structures and pricing are not sufficient. They do not compare to New South Wales; so we continue to have that argument with the NDIA. It is not for the want of trying, Mr Wall, to get that information out to the providers and to the families concerned. We are doing everything we can. We will continue to do that.
You made mention of AEIOU. You put the blame squarely on me. Can I tell you that they have sat in my office? We have had a discussion with them. They left my office saying, “We understand the NDIS and the constraints that that puts on a government.” We are not able to provide them with block and grant funding. They said to me, effectively, that they will come back when they can stack up the business case. They have not come back to me. They have not approached me since then. That is a decision for them. I will not stand in their way should they come into the ACT and establish a service.
I turn to the amendment. I want to thank Mr Rattenbury for some contributions he made to this amendment. It shows the work that we are continuing to do. As I said, I believe we are getting close to not necessarily a sign-off at official level between the first ministers on this, but certainly Senator Fifield has very clearly finally understood the need for us to get information out to our families.
In response to Mr Wall’s motion, I would like to point out that the transition to early intervention services provided by the Education and Training Directorate will phase out at the end of 2014 and Therapy ACT services will continue for another two years until December 2016. So I am a little confused about Mr Wall’s paragraph (2)(a) that calls on the government to continue to provide therapy services through Therapy ACT for a further 12 months from December 2014, when Therapy ACT will continue to provide services until the end of 2016. You should do your homework on that, Mr Wall.
We have made the decision to support the intent of the NDIS because Canberrans overwhelmingly support it. It is the right thing to do for our community. The early intervention services such as the intervention playgroups and the autism intervention units will continue to the end of this year. So we are very clear about the programs that we are talking about. They are early intervention playgroups for 2½ hours a week, early intervention units for five hours, language intervention units for 4½ hours, autism intervention, early childhood centres, early childhood units, and early intervention home education programs for children, in respect of which the hours are based on individual circumstances.
From 2015 support for children who have accessed the government intervention programs will be provided by non-government agencies. Importantly, programs for four-year-olds will continue as preschool programs at Cranleigh and Malkara where children meet the criteria for those schools. Programs and units for school-aged children that run in our public schools will continue as they operate now.
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