Kurt Fearnley appointed NDIA chair — and is the first person with a disability to hold the position

When Bill Shorten was appointed national disability insurance scheme minister, he promised to change the way the agency is run — starting with its board. 

Today a new board has been announced. Paralympics champion wheelchair racer Kurt Fearnley is the new chair, making him the first person with a disability to hold the role. 

Former disability discrimination commissioner Graeme Innes, former NDIA chairman and Victorian premier Denis Napthine, and Australian Network on Disability board member Maryanne Diamond have been named directors, while former Victorian Department of Justice and Community Safety secretary Rebecca Falkingham has been named the new NDIA CEO — the first woman to hold the role. 

Who is Kurt Fearnley? 

Fearnley is best known for his gold medals, first taking home two silver medals at the 2000 Sydney Paralympic games, before going on to win gold medals at the 2004 Athens and 2008 Beijing Paralympics in the marathon T54 events.

He’s also won gold and two silver Commonwealth Games medals, seven world championships, and has completed more than 30 marathons around the world. He also crawled the 96-kilometre Kokoda track on his hands and knees (which, unsurprisingly, he described as the “toughest thing” he’d ever done). 

Fearnley was born with sacral agenesis, a disorder where the lower spine doesn’t fully develop in utero, with doctors telling his family he likely wouldn’t survive past a week. Raised in Carcoar in central-west NSW, he said he crawled around the bush and his childhood home and started playing sports at a young age.

In 2020, he pivoted from sport to media, hosting the ABC program One Plus One where he interviewed prominent people about their lives. He was also the host of SBS’ What Does Australia Really Think About docuseries on disability. 

Interestingly, Fearnley isn’t an NDIS participant. He said ​​during a press conference this morning that he wishes he was, but that he had previously chosen not to be in order to advocate for it “from the other side” of the scheme. Between 2013 and 2016, he was on the NDIS’ Independent Advisory Council.

What about the others? 

Denis Napthine was appointed NDIA chair in April this year under the previous government and served for just three months before being asked to step down so that Fearnley could take his seat. 

Innes is also leading a task force to clear the backlog of NDIS participants fronting the Administrative Appeals Tribunal about aspects of their funding plan. 

Falkingham is an interesting appointment. The Victorian Ombudsman is investigating a firing and re-hiring spree at the department under her leadership, where 37 executives were hired in a span of just two hours in 2019. The investigation is part of a broader probe into stacking the public service with former Labor advisers. 

What’s the MO? 

Former NDIA CEO Martin Hoffman resigned in June — the week after Shorten was sworn in — following vocal criticism by the minister. Shorten had previously promised to put more people with disability on the agency’s board.

But trust between NDIS participants and the agency has been eroded over time following allegations of cutting participant’s funding, high legal spending to deter people with disabilities from challenging their funding in the tribunal, and allegations of neglect by NDIS companies. 

Fearnley said trust was critical for the scheme to succeed. 

“The relationship between a participant and a scheme is something that is so important … it is allowing them to be them,” he said. 

“I will do everything within my power to engage with the people who I have fought alongside, who I have engaged with, for the last decade, when it came to the advocacy of the scheme.”