Already and this is the Daily This is the Daily OS. Oh now it makes sense.
Good morning and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Thursday, the eleventh of July.
I'm zara, I'm sam.
Should NDIS funds be able to be used on sexual services? That's a question being debated this week after NDIS Minister Bill Shorten said access to those services would be removed if draft legislation is passed in the Senate. In today's deep dive, we're going to explain why the government is making changes to the NDIS, the arguments for removing access to those sexual services, and why some disability advocates are against the move. But first, here's what's making news today.
The federal government has announced a new scorecard system to rate employment providers for people with disabilities. The measure services will be given a public rating out of three based on their quality, efficiency and effectiveness. Performance will be reviewed every three months. Social Services Minister Amanda Rishworth says she wants to see quote continual improvement from employers. The measure is aimed at boosting employment opportunities.
Two men are face court over smuggling more than two hundred and forty kilos of drugs into Australia concealed inside furniture and appliances. Federal police sees two hundred and eleven kilos of cocaine and thirty kilos of ketamine across multiple searches. The drugs are believed to be linked to an international crime syndicate and have a combined estimated street value of over seventy five million dollars. The men, aged thirty nine
and twenty three, appeared in court in Sydney yesterday. Police say they're facing a maximum sentence of life in prison.
Tropical storm Beryl has killed at least eight people and caused major dammage in the US states of Texas and Louisiana. The hurricane battered parts of the Caribbean last week before moving north, bringing gal force winds, heavy rain, and severe flooding to America's southern states, where millions still remain without power. It's been downgraded to a post tropical cyclone as it moves northeast, with intense rainfall expected.
And today's good news, a man in the US has received a new voice box in one of the first successful transplants of its kind after being diagnosed with larynx cancer. Treatment meant the man lost his voice and could only breathe through a hole in his neck. Four months after an experimental larynx transplant led by the Mayo Clinic, he's now able to speak, swallow, and breathe. The patient signed up for the trial and the hopes of being able
to read bedtime stories to his granddaughter. People with disability will no longer be able to use National Disability Insurance Scheme. So that's NDAA funding to access what's called sexual services, and that is under a series of reforms to the system. It was confirmed this week by NDIS Minister Bill Shorten, who said on Sky News that sex work would be removed from the list of approved services if the proposed legislation to quote tidy up the scheme passes Parliament.
This is a topic that when I've been reading online about it over the last couple of days, has really strong views on both sides. I want to go into what those views are. But before we do, I mean tidy up the NDIS. There's a couple of terms being thrown around. We need some clarity on give me some context on the actual NDIS itself.
Yeah, absolutely so. The NDIS, as I said, is the National Disability Insurance Scheme. It provides support and services for Australians with disability. The way it works is that individuals are allocated a personal budget and that's calculated on what is reasonable or necessary for each person. Funding includes access to things like community services, transport, vehicle modifications and help
with kind of data day activities. It was launched in twenty thirteen and it was completely rolled out only in twenty twenty. There are now over six hundred and ten thousand Australians to receive support from the NDIS.
And I get an interesting perspective on this story because I'm married to somebody who writes NDIS reports and I kind of see how much paperwork goes into the back end of these. So I have sex work services been available then for people who get through the qualification process and do qualify for the NDIS.
So not the whole time. Specialized sex services have been available through the NDIS since twenty twenty and that was the result actually of a court case that was brought by a forty year old woman with multiple sclerosis who was denied funding for a trained sex worker. She then launched a legal challenge to that rejection and she argued
that the NDIS Act doesn't explicitly exclude sex services. Ultimately, the Federal court ruled in her favor, and it found that there was no implied exclusion of such activities, and in our opinion, the better view is that they are intended to be included. So that being a direct quote from that Federal court decision.
Can you give me a sense of like how prevalent this is in the NDAs, Like, is this rolled out to everybody?
Yeah? I think that's a really important thing to focus on because I think when we talk about stories like this on a national stage and people have very strong opinions, it kind of seems like it's widespread, it's everywhere. That's absolutely not the case. So I do want to give you a sense of the numbers. And that's just going off Bill Shorten, As I said, who's the NDIS miniesot
what he has said this week? He told the ABC that there have been two hundred and twenty eight requests for sexual activity support in the twelve months to the end of April, but that he and I'm going to quote here, said none of them were granted.
Right, So in a pool of six hundred and ten thousand people receiving NDIS funding. There were two hundred and twenty eight requests and we don't think, according to the minister, that any of them were granted. Correct, So why is it a topic for us to talk about today.
So the reason that we're talking about it is because the government is trying to pass this legislation through the Senate, and that legislation is kind of a suite of reforms that's broadly aimed at cutting costs associated with the NDIS. The federal budget has predicted that NDIS costs will rise from forty four point three billion dollars this year to more than ninety billion dollars by the end of the decade. That is a huge, huge spend when it comes to
the government's budget. And so right now the Albanese government is looking at those costs and trying to figure out ways to bring down those costs across the board, and that's why they've introduced this legislation that I said is currently in the Senate, and that's aiming to save fourteen point four billion dollars over the next four years. And the way that the government is looking at really bringing down those costs is by doing a number of things.
That includes streamlining the goods and services that people can access with NDIS funding.
And so if we zoom out a little bit and look at the broader context of where this discussion is taking place, I remember in the budget address by Jim Chalmers there was discussions about waste in the program and an aging population and there's clearly those projections you've just taken us through and they're kind of trying to tighten the belt.
Here exactly, and that's the context that this conversation has emerged. So Bill Shorten, as I said, confirmed this week that sex services don't pass the test, is what he said directly, and that they will be cut from this NDIS funding as part of these cost saving measures. I'll quote him here. He said, what we do want to do is make sure people have the ability to get things that are reasonable and necessary. The rules have been a bit loose at the margins, I think for a number of reasons.
That's been picked up across the board by the media, by other politicians and has become a bit of a focus in politics. This week we heard from Barnaby Joyce, who is the Coalition. He made his position pretty clear this week and We included this in a newsletter this week. He said, you don't want to pay for someone to have a wild all night between the sheets on the tax payers ticket, right.
So there's very clear perspectives from within the halls of Parliament House in Canberra as to why sexual services should be excluded from the NDAs in this effort to cut down how much this program costs. But that's only one side of the argument. The other side of the argument is why people think it's a necessary part of the program. What are those arguments?
There are a couple. I'll start with what Women with Disabilities Australia has said. So they believe that the NDIS should support the sexual expression and autonomy of people with disability. They said, I'm quoting here, people with disabilities should be able to access funded supports that enable us to realize our rights to sexual health, information, sexual pleasure, expression, association, freedom, autonomy and self determination. And I think the realizing our
rights part is really interesting. There are a lot of comments when we uploaded this story to Instagram about people talking about access to sex and access to safe sex as a right. So that's something that's been reflected here by this advocacy group. I think if we take a step back more generally, some of the arguments that are emerging is advocates pointing to examples of people with psychosocial disabilities who learn about safe and respectful relationships in these settings.
And if you're removing that ability, what is left Where can they be learning how to have safe sex, how to have respectful relationships, all of these things. So that's another argument. Another one, and I saw this again a lot in the comment section, is about what advocates believe is a double standard. Ok. So, viagra, which is an erectile dysfunction pill, is supported by the Australian Pharmaceutical Benefit Scheme.
So that basically means that indirectly taxpayers are subsidizing cost of viagra.
Exactly, so the PBS subsidizes that drug, And the logic that follows for these advocates is that if taxpayers are subsidizing that cost to help men have better sex, then why are people with disability treated any differently?
Interesting in the.
Walls of Parliament, you said before that we have got this pretty clear image. The Greens depart from that view. So we heard from the Green spokesperson Jordan steel John this week. He said that the reforms are deeply unpopular and damaging, and that they fail to acknowledge the needs of people with disability, said Minister Shorten is supposed to be supporting disabled people and their families, not cutting their services.
I think the other view that is worth mentioning is some of the content that I've read that represent the view of people who work in this space specifically trained to facilitate good experiences with people with a disability, and their view of the fact that it takes sensitivity and it takes particular skills to sure that those people have positive experiences. I think that's a perspective worth including as well.
Definitely worth including, and definitely a really interesting topic. I guess where the response to that lies is should that be taxpayer funded or should that be privately funded by the individual themselves.
Yeah, it's a really interesting topic playing out. I mean, I just keep having that number in my mind of the under three hundred requests that you said had been filed in the last twelve months in this program of over six hundred thousand people.
Me too, and I had this kind of inner dialogue about whether we should do a podcast episode on this, but I wanted.
To ask you like, yeah, why are we covering it?
The place I got to and I think some people might criticize this, and I think that that's fair. The place I got to is that a lot of people have seen headlines about this, and a lot of people are going to see headlines about this, and I think that taking the time to explain it is really important here so that people don't come to conclusions that aren't based on fact. But there is a lot to be said about the fact that, you know, the NDIS does
so much good, It is so important. There are lots of people who aren't getting what they need right now, and perhaps you know, focusing the media cycle and focusing you know, political attention on this is taking away from the attention that is needed for so many people across the board, and also at times could be distracting from that great work.
Okay, and just quickly, just so we all have clarity on it. This is still yet to pass.
Correct, So the bill is in front of the Senate at the moment. The Greens and Coalition voted to refer it and its amendments to a committee for a review. But that's a fairly standard thing that just means interrogating it a bit more. We did hear from Barnaby Joyce that despite voting to have that bill reviewed, the Coalition is likely to support it. If that does happen, then
the legislation will become law. Anything can happen, who knows, but it does look fairly likely that it will pass the Senate.
Thanks for taking us through that, Zara. A very interesting topic about a kind of area of policy that has so many complexities and I'm glad we could explore some of those perspectives and thank you for joining us today on the Daily ODS. Really appreciate you supporting independent media in Australia, particularly youth media and what's been a difficult
couple of weeks for youth media across Australia. If you enjoy this podcast, I'd love if you could just throw it in the group chat, open your WhatsApp, open your slack, if you're at work, maybe Facebook and share this episode with people around you who you think trust your judgment to send them some good stuff. We'll be back again tomorrow. Until then, have a good day. My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda Bunjelung Kalkuttin woman from
Gadigol country. The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait island and nations. We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present.