Disability Services Exchange

Speaker: Axel

Hello.

I'm Axel.

You might not hear my voice much in meetings.

Or at all, come to think of it.

But I've got a few things to say now.

See… for a decade, people like me have been told we have choice and control.

Turns out, that mostly means choosing between bad and worse.

So we're doing something different.

Disability Services Exchange – or DSX – is flipping the model.

We're building a movement where every participant—yes, even the ones with zero words and a doll named Kevin—gets a seat at the table.

Not the fake table with three pre-approved options.

The real one—where we set the agenda, the prices, and the standards that reflect our reality.

Through tech, we'll make it possible for every participant to contribute, not just the ones with strong WiFi and a law degree.

You'll tell us what works, what doesn't, and who deserves your trust.

And your voice will be part of the data that guides providers—not in five years. In real time.

Because the truth is?

Most of us have never had a voice.

Not in planning meetings. Not in pricing reviews. Not in any "co-design" that wasn't already fully designed by someone else.

But that ends now.

We're done asking politely for crumbs.

Together, we'll build something bigger and better: fair healthcare, inclusive housing, actual policy change.

Because when we rise up—quiet or loud, verbal or not—we don't just fix the NDIS.

We rewire the whole system.

This is nothing about us…

without ALL of us.

Even Kevin.

End of transcript

Speaker: Guy Turnbull

Hi my name is Guy Turnbull. I'm the founder and managing director of a mutually-based not for profit called Viva Mutual. We are a registered NDIS provider in Adelaide delivering support to people with complex needs and disabilities.

I've spent my whole career developing and operating mutually-based organisations - social enterprises, businesses – and they're all based on this idea that for me to win, you don't have to lose. It's about Us and Us, not Us and Them.

I believe we can develop businesses and markets where the business, the consumer and the workforce all benefit mutually from that kind of organisation.

Markets and businesses based on fairness not greed, openness not secrecy and collaboration not dog-eat-dog. And that I think was the original intent of NDIS, where we could all thrive in a mutually-based ecosystem. Where we could all achieve our goals and objectives in a fair and transparent manner.

Fast forward to now and we seem so far away from that original intent. And part of that is the headwinds facing small registered providers. Consolidation is certainly going to take place in the market. The big providers, the multinationals, the multi-hundred million dollar organisations are already acquiring and eating up the smaller providers.

At the other end of the market we've had a boom from 50,000 unregulated workers to 300,000 sole traders and I've seen first hand some of the issues that that can cause in terms of quality and support for vulnerable individuals.

But there is a third way. We can collaborate. We can work together to try and get back to more of the Us and Us environment. So I'm therefore delighted to be a founding member of Disability Services Exchange. Here we can work together as small registered providers, and consumers, to create a better NDIS.

So please join me and become a fellow traveller.

End of transcript