PRODUCTIVITY COMMISSION SUBMISSION

1.	A National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) will help resolve an injustice, whereby people’s entitlement to support depends on how (e.g. motor vehicle accident) and where (e.g. at the workplace) they received their injuries.  A more appropriate criterion is the level of need, rather than the context in which that need has arisen.
2.	An NDIS will have significant costs for the community, however there are offsets that also need to be taken into account:
a.	An NDIS will absorb or greatly reduce numerous smaller and partial compensation schemes throughout Australia.  It would not be simply an add-on to existing schemes.
b.	An NDIS would liberate unpaid carers (usually family members) to re-enter the workforce, as well as creating employment for new carers. 
c.	An NDIS may enable some people with significant disabilities to be productive, thus enabling their contribution to the economy that would not otherwise have been possible.
d.	Assistive technology has the potential to reduce care costs and also increase the productive potential for people with significant disabilities.  This technology should be included in the NDIS.
3.	There is an important issue of justice involved.  Every person born into our society is an equal inheritor of the physical and social capital existing at the time of their birth.  It belongs to us all. There is an economic rent applicable to this capital that should be paid by those who make economic gain from it, and part of their taxation obligation should be seen in this way.  This is an economic justification for the welfare aspect of an NDIS.  People born with a disability are entitled to a share from the economic rent component applicable to the physical (roads, bridges, rail lines) and social (systems of government, law, etc) capital they inherit at birth.

Dr Graeme W. Smith
Executive Director
Ability Technology Limited