The federal executive Government of Australia led by the Prime Minister of Australia, Scott Morrison of the Liberal Party, has defended how the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIS) handled participants during the COVID-19 pandemic even as the opposition Labor has demanded more detail on how the crisis is impacting on Australia’s disability community.
Opposition spokesman for NDIS, Bill Shorten says while government data includes breakdowns for aged care, there is nothing on how many people with disabilities have died or been infected.
“The system of reporting aged care contagion and deaths is imperfect, but at least a system exists,” he said in a statement on Sunday.
Mr. Shorten is calling on the minister for the NDIS, Stuart Robert, to order the National Disability Insurance Agency and the NDIA Quality and Safeguards Commission to publish data on Australia’s disability community.
He wants data on the locations of outbreaks in group homes and other facilities, the number of NDIS participants who have contracted COVID-19, and the number of NDIS participants who have died from the disease.
“It would be a huge improvement on the current information blackout,” Mr. Shorten said.
But a spokesman for Mr. Robert said the priority is to ensure NDIS participants, providers and workers in Victoria get a continuity of services, and that anyone attracting the virus receives appropriate care and support.
‘We continue to monitor the situation, working closely with Victoria and other states and territory governments, to take appropriate actions in response to changing circumstances,” the spokesman told AAP.
“We’d caution against treating NDIS participants and people with disability like statistics for morbid political point-scoring, particularly when Australia’s world-leading disability support system through the NDIS cannot be compared with other countries.”
