The meeting on Monday,held at 5pm,resolved to ask Shorten to delay the draft law because the scope of the plan was inconsistent with the national cabinet agreement last December.
The meeting was convened by South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas,who chairs the Council for the Australian Federation – the forum for premiers and chief ministers for talks that do not include the prime minister.
In a sign of the concern over the draft law,the meeting resolved that Malinauskas would write to Shorten to ask for the bill to be delayed.
In one policy note circulated among the states and territories,officials warned that there was not enough consultation on the way the proposed federal law would remove the current requirement for the states and territories to be consulted on funding changes.
“The amendments fundamentally change the nature of the NDIS and will increase pressure on other services,” it said.
The new state and territory disability system will be called “foundational supports” and is intended to service about 2.5 million Australians with a disability who need less intense support than the NDIS,which services 646,000 people.
In the December agreement,Albanese said the Commonwealth would cover half the costs of delivering new services through state systems,mainly health and education,while states and territories would pay the other half.
The aim is to ease demand on the NDIS bystepping up state and community-level servicessuch as home support,aids and equipment,and psychosocial services for people with mental illness outside the scheme.
But it will have a particular focus on boosting help through schools for children with autism and developmental delay,who have beenjoining the scheme in rising numbers due to a lack of support in the mainstream education system.
More than 9 per cent of five- to seven-year-olds have joined the NDIS because they can’t get sufficient help outside it.
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Children with developmental delay were the main drivers of the scheme’s growth last quarter,with 11 per cent more joining than had been forecast just months prior. The average payment for those children over the six months – $14,000 per participant – was also 19 per cent more than expected.
The proposed changes are central to the stated federal goal of limiting the annual growth in the NDIS to 8 per cent. The $42 billion scheme is one of the federal government’sfastest-growing budget pressures and is forecast to cost more than $100 billion in a decade unless the system is changed.
But there are reservations about the capacity of state education systems to step up support for the roughly 20 per cent of Australian children who have learning difficulties or developmental concerns,given schools are already struggling with workforce shortages and stretched resources.
The head of parent organisation Autism Awareness Australia,Nicole Rogerson,said states were facing an enormous task in taking on more responsibility for children with disabilities,but she was not convinced they all understood the scale of the task.