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[Photo: Facebook\/People with Disability Australia]<\/p>\nThe Australian Labor government is stepping up its assault on disability funding, as Health Minister Mark Butler prepares to announce further cuts and sweeping changes to the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) in the coming week, ahead of the May federal budget.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Central to the government\u2019s plan is to nearly halve annual NDIS spending growth. Such savings cannot be achieved without forcing out large numbers of the roughly 760,000 participants currently on the scheme and slashing support for those who remain.<\/p>\n
[Photo: Facebook\/People with Disability Australia]<\/p>\n
In late January, Butler established a new NDIS Sustainability Taskforce, headed by senior public servant Anthea Long. Described as a \u201crazor gang,\u201d it has been tasked with identifying and enforcing the cuts required to slash spending growth to a 5-6 percent growth cap from the current 10 percent.<\/p>\n
For a program costing roughly $50 billion a year, this translates into immediate cuts against previously projected spending of between $2 and $2.5 billion, with deeper reductions to follow.<\/p>\n
The implementation of these measures is being accompanied by an escalating political and media campaign, led by Labor figures and the corporate press, to present the NDIS as an overextended scheme that must be \u201creined in.\u201d<\/p>\n
Labor MPs Michelle Ananda-Rajah and Mike Freelander, both physicians, have been prominent in advancing this line, lending it a veneer of clinical authority. Speaking to the Sydney Morning Herald in early April, they argued that the scheme has expanded beyond its original purpose and now includes too many people with so-called \u201cmild\u201d or \u201cmoderate\u201d needs, particularly children with autism and developmental delays.<\/p>\n
Ananda-Rajah described the NDIS as a \u201cfundamentally flawed program,\u201d warning that \u201cthe scheme will lose its social licence unless we can make it affordable.\u201d It is \u201crobbing us of the fiscal space to make long-term investments,\u201d she declared.<\/p>\n
In reality, the government is painting hundreds of thousands of autistic children and their parents, whose needs have been professionally assessed, as sponging off the public purse in order to justify drastic cuts to make space for its top priorities\u2014military spending and corporate subsidies. In other words, it is the government that is undermining the \u201csocial licence\u201d or legitimacy of the scheme in the eyes of the public.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese himself weighed in on Sunday, declaring, \u201cIt wasn\u2019t intended that you\u2019d have classrooms with four out of 10 kids on the NDIS\u201d\u2014a figure he did not substantiate. \u201cIt was about providing support for people with permanent disabilities that needed that support to fully participate in society.\u201d<\/p>\n
Albanese also repeated a theme being ramped up in the media that \u201csome people, a small minority, have abused the system.\u201d<\/p>\n
Various media reports have recycled assertions that 6 to 10 percent of NDIS spending is \u201cnon-compliant, fraudulent or incorrect,\u201d as the excuse to crack down on \u201crorts\u201d and impose greater \u201cdiscipline.\u201d The figure originates from a 2025 Australian National Audit Office review of the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) and misleadingly conflates administrative errors with deliberate fraud. The review found that the NDIA only examines 0.4 percent of claims by dollar value, a very small sample size.<\/p>\n
Since coming to office in 2022, the Albanese government has used claims of \u201cfraud\u201d and \u201coveruse\u201d to justify tightening eligibility and advancing new assessment mechanisms, including moves toward government-appointed \u201cindependent\u201d assessors to decide who will access NDIS.<\/p>\n
Initial measures passed in October 2024 have already narrowed eligibility and restricted the supports that can be funded. Implemented from May 2025, these changes are now translating into concrete cuts. According to the NDIA, among participants subjected to new three-month funding reviews, roughly one in five had their plans reduced, with average cuts of 22.5 percent.<\/p>\n
These measures are already having a devastating impact. One family described an \u201coverwhelming sense of doom.\u201d Bonnie, in her 30s, whose sister Claire has a degenerative condition, told the Guardian in February that she fears Claire will be \u201cleft to rot\u201d in a group home as her condition worsens.<\/p>\n
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