{"id":672078,"date":"2026-05-15T07:10:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T07:10:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/672078\/"},"modified":"2026-05-15T07:10:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T07:10:13","slug":"labors-budget-relies-on-ndis-cuts-growth-in-the-scheme-just-blew-out-again-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/672078\/","title":{"rendered":"Labor\u2019s budget relies on NDIS cuts. Growth in the scheme just blew out, again"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Natassia<\/p>\n

Updated May 15, 2026 \u2014 2:50pm,first published 12:00pm<\/p>\n

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Labor\u2019s efforts to control the NDIS have gone backwards this year and growth is picking up speed, raising the stakes for Health Minister Mark Butler as his new laws to cut costs by $38 billion within four years meet fierce resistance from affected participants.<\/p>\n

Fresh data in the National Disability Insurance Agency\u2019s March quarter report, published on Friday, shows the annual rate of NDIS growth has jumped from 10.3 per cent to 11.3 per cent in three months as pressures keep weighing on the $56 billion scheme. It added 13,000 new participants last quarter.<\/p>\n

\"GreensGreens senator Jordon Steele-John alongside NDIS advocates during a post budget press conference at Parliament House.Dominic Lorrimer<\/p>\n

The blowouts underscore why Labor is seeking dramatic new powers<\/a> to put a quick brake on runaway spending by allowing the minister to make sweeping cuts to funding or therapies across entire sections of the scheme.<\/p>\n

Overhauling the NDIS<\/a> and getting cost growth down to an average 2 per cent will be crucial to delivering the majority of the $64 billion in savings that Labor baked into Tuesday night\u2019s budget to improve its bottom line.<\/p>\n

But the vast expansion of ministerial powers, contained in the bill that Butler introduced to Parliament on Thursday, is generating pushback from participants whose budgets could be driven down even when they have been assessed as needing a higher level of funding.<\/p>\n

The Every Australian Counts campaign group \u2013 which led to the creation of the scheme 13 years ago \u2013 has warned the laws will break the central promise that underpins the policy.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen governments established the NDIS, they made a promise to people with disability and our families that we would receive the reasonable and necessary supports we need to live ordinary lives safely and with dignity,\u201d said the campaign group\u2019s chair, George Taleporos.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis bill risks undermining that promise by allowing the minister to cut whole categories of NDIS funding, even where those cuts leave participants without enough funding to pay for reasonable and necessary supports.\u201d<\/p>\n

Butler says he will use the powers to cut social and community participation budgets,<\/a> which have tripled overall to $12 billion in four years, and lower average therapy allocations from about 72 hours to 68 hours a year. The bill also includes tighter eligibility criteria and more rules to deal with fraud.<\/p>\n

Michael Brennan, chief executive of think tank e61, said it was the first time savings from a single program had dominated the budget so heavily. \u201cPerhaps never before has the entire fiscal strategy rested so heavily on the successful implementation of one budget measure,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"Mark<\/a><\/p>\n

The closest example was former treasurer Joe Hockey\u2019s budget, which sought to cut $80 billion in future spending on health and education. But while Hockey\u2019s changes could have been made with the stroke of a pen, Brennan said: \u201cThe NDIS save is different\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt does not have the usual set-and-forget quality. The implementation task will be constant and complex \u2013 a daily grind of hard decisions at the coalface. If the current and future governments are unable to achieve the full save, the fiscal outlook worsens materially,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe recent history of NDIS cost revisions is not encouraging. [It] is one of actual spending consistently exceeding projections. Time and again, governments have forecast a flattening of the curve, only to see actual spending continue on its steep upwards trajectory.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even if the NDIS grew at 5 per cent over the four-year forward estimates, rather than the projected 2 per cent, Brennan said the deficit at the end of the decade would decline by $6 billion \u2013 the combined effect of Labor\u2019s major changes to taxation of trusts, property and capital gains.<\/p>\n

NDIS Minister Jenny McAllister said the $350 million blowout contained in Friday\u2019s quarterly report showed why the government\u2019s changes were urgent. \u201c[It] makes it clear that the fundamental barrier we face when it comes to sustainability is the design of the scheme itself,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Labor will need Coalition support as the Greens have joined disability advocates in fighting the laws, which were on Thursday sent to a Senate committee that has one month to turn around a report.<\/p>\n

While the government is promising to consult the disability community, the speed and scale of cuts have caused anxiety. Every Australian Counts is conducting surveys, supporting protests and encouraging people to email MPs in a campaign against the cuts.<\/p>\n

Taleporos, the chair, said people appreciated the scheme\u2019s financial sustainability was important but that \u201cit cannot become a justification for reducing essential supports to people with disability need\u201d.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThe NDIS was created so people with disability could live ordinary lives, leave home, participate in the community, work, study, build relationships and have choice over our supports,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf passed, this bill risks changing reasonable and necessary supports from what people with disability need into only what government decides it can afford… Our lives and safety are at stake here. This bill needs proper scrutiny and cannot be rushed through.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"NatassiaNatassia Chrysanthos<\/a> is Federal Political Correspondent. She has previously reported on immigration, health, social issues and the NDIS from Parliament House in Canberra.Connect via X<\/a> or email<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Updated May 15, 2026 \u2014 2:50pm,first published 12:00pm Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":672009,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-672078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=672078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672078\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/672009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=672078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=672078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=672078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}