Change Agents: Rhonda Galbally and Bruce Bonyhady on the birth of the NDIS

Rhonda Galbally and Bruce Bonyhady were both instrumental in the creation of the National Disability Insurance Scheme. Alan Porritt and Julian Smith (AAP)

This is the first program in a new podcast series, Change Agents. It will focus on examples of ordinary people who have brought about profound social, political and cultural change, celebrating their success and explaining how they did it.

The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) is the biggest social reform in Australia this century. By 2022 it will help half a million people access comprehensive disability support at a cost of around A$25 billion.

On this program, two of the NDIS’ founders explain how they developed something so radical and comprehensive and then won support for the idea. Bruce Bonyhady is the chairman and Rhonda Galbally is a board member of the National Disability Insurance Agency, the body that implements the NDIS.

You can read the transcript below.

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Andrew Dodd: Hello, I’m Andrew Dodd and this is Change Agents, a series about change and the people who make it happen. Today, the birth of the National Disability Insurance Scheme. The National Disability Insurance Scheme is Australia’s biggest social reform this century. By 2022 it’s estimated half a million people will be using it to access better disability support. By then, it’ll cost around $25 billion a year, funded in part by an increase in the Medicare levy.

Today we’ll meet two of its founders: Bruce Bonyhady is the chairman, and Rhonda Galbally is a board member, of the NDIA, the agency that runs the NDIS. They told a forum at Swinburne University that the idea has been around for a long time, as far back as the Whitlam years.

Bruce Bonyhady: Whitlam, following the introduction of Medicare, wanted to have a national compensation scheme. A similar scheme was introduced in New Zealand, but covering just people with disabilities who acquired that disability through an accident – so, it was a narrower scheme than what we have now.

But the idea that you could take the thinking that applies to workers’ compensation or motor vehicle compensation schemes and apply that to disability more generally dates back to then, and in fact is part of a movement that started in the 1890s when the first compulsory workers’ compensation schemes were developed – in fact in Germany.

AD: Am I right in saying it was on the books at the time the Whitlam government was dismissed, and that the Fraser government decided not to carry through with it?

BB: Yes, it was due to be debated in parliament on November 11, 1975, and then Fraser decided not to carry on the reform.

AD: So obviously then there wasn’t the bipartisanship that characterised what happened with the NDIS later.

BB: No, there was no bipartisanship around that, and in fact there was no bipartisanship at that stage around universal health insurance either.

AD: I’ve read that it was scuttled in part because the insurers saw that it was against their interests to support something that would undermine their business models. So, they were opposed to it.

BB: I don’t know that detail. I think the point about the NDIS, though, is that it provides insurance where there was no insurance before. There is no private insurer who will insure someone who was born with a disability, or acquires a disability through a progressive medical condition, and will insure catastrophic risk.

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