Ms ROSOL – Great. Thank you. I have a question relating to some information that was in the Budget. There was performance information for Disability Services in Table 9.9 of budget paper 2. It’s on page 283. There’s a projection in there that in 2024‑25 restrictive practices will be authorised at a rate of 1 per cent of Tasmanian NDIS participants, which equates to 154.6 authorised restrictive practices for the year. When I went back and did the maths on the previous numbers of authorised restrictive practices over previous years, that figure that’s projected is almost a doubling of the 2023‑24 actual number of authorised restrictive practices. Given restrictive practices by definition restrict the rights of people with disability, and we’re working to move away from them, and that’s what the whole Disability Inclusion and Safeguarding Bill is about, continuing with managing that and making sure that we’re doing the best we can as a state to ensure people’s freedoms, I’m curious as to why there’s that projected almost doubling in the number. Can you explain why you’ve planned for more authorisations of restrictive practices this year?
Ms PALMER – Yes, I looked at that and asked the exact same question of my team, who sorted it out for me in about 60 seconds. I will pass to Ingrid Ganley to explain that to you.
Ms GANLEY – The target that we’ve set is based on our assessment of the active NDIS participants and knowing what occurs in the sector, what we would anticipate we need to be authorising as restrictive practices. Part of the work we’re doing is ensuring that organisations are actually complying with our legislation. We think there’s room for improvement in the organisations complying with restricted practices. Through our new inclusion bill, we will be broadening the scope of restrictive practices that our organisations need to apply for. It’s accounting for both bringing up compliance and broadening our restrictive practice definition.
Ms ROSOL – You’re saying, potentially, that number of authorised restrictive practices, or unauthorised restrictive practices, are happening and so it will be a matter of bringing them into an authorised space. Thank you.
Ms GANLEY – Yes.
