.jpg)
The NSW government has agreed to increase its annual funding for the $22bn National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) by a further half percentage point, as it becomes the first state in the country to officially sign up to the full scheme, providing it access to $3.1bn in locked funds.
The news comes nearly a month after the NDIS was delayed by at least half a year in South Australia.
Last week, Malcolm Turnbull and NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian announced the deal, which will lift the NSW government's $3bn commitment in 2018-19 by 4% each year, as proposed by last year’s Productivity Commission review into scheme costs, The Australian reported.
When the Medicare levy was raised by half a percentage point, from 2 to 2.5% of taxable income, in 2014, the money was diverted to the DisabilityCare Australia Fund (DCAF). This fund could only be accessed by states once they met key rollout milestones and agreed to a full NDIS launch.
“The agreement will enable NSW to access $3.1bn of DCAF payments between 2018-19 and 2023-23,” Turnbull told the publication. “Over 84,000 people in NSW are already benefiting from the NDIS, including more than 16,000 people who had not previously accessed government-funded specialist disability supports.”
The balance of NDIS costs in NSW, expected to be at least hundreds of millions of dollars a year, will still be shouldered by the commonwealth, but the state and federal governments will also set up a “shared fund” to create an NDIS reserve “to provide greater flexibility” to manage the scheme's sustainability, the report said.
Related stories:
Ex-IAG tech chief moves to NDIA
NDIS to create 1,300 jobs in NT by 2020
