Article
Last weeks’ announcement of cuts to the NDIS came as no surprise to a community that’s been bludgeoned by the media for the past several months.
From reports of “razor gangs” tasked with reigning in costs, to the steady drip of commentary on disability support as excessive and out of control, to the wave of misleading and deeply harmful media coverage about people with disability.
The ground was set.
The general public was primed to swallow an artificially sweetened version of the reforms whilst disabled people are pushed to fight each other for scraps, under the guise of “not putting the scheme at risk for those who need it most”.
In the immediate aftermath, I watched comments pour in across social media on a video I made to help our community understand the changes. Slowly, the video got whipped into algorithms where commenters felt emboldened to tell me that they wished for me to lose all my funding.
It’s hard to feel frustrated at the commenters though, when that’s the story they’ve so successfully been sold. That slashing disabled people’s supports to live is necessary and responsible for the future of Australia.
But the economic inevitability is just that, a story. One that is reflective of the government’s priorities more than anything else.
A question of priorities, not cost
You would be forgiven for believing that Australia is a poor country based on the way the NDIS is currently discussed. The scheme is routinely framed as a threat to the economy, as though continuing to support disabled people with dignity would somehow tip the country into crisis.
But Australia is one of the wealthiest countries in the world. We are not too poor to support disabled people.
In 2025–26, Australian governments will provide $16.3 billion in fossil fuel subsidies. That is $31,020 every minute handed to some of the biggest and most profitable companies in the country, while disabled people are told support costs too much.
These subsidies are growing faster than the NDIS.
In 2025–26, fossil fuel subsidies rose by 9.4%. The NDIS rose by 7.6%. The statement that “the NDIS is unsustainable” is not a neutral one, its one about what the government is willing to fund, and what it is not.
At the same time as these NDIS reforms were being announced last week, the government was already turning its back on a well-supported revenue raising mechanism, a 25% tax on gas exports. This is in stark contrast to the fact that the Japanese Government makes more money on Australian gas exports that the Australian Government does.
In the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, disabled people and our families are already under disproportionate pressure, paying more for housing, healthcare, energy, and support. And yet the focus remains on reducing what little support exists, rather than questioning why billions continue to flow to industries that are neither means-tested nor treated as a burden.
Manufacturing a “loss of social licence”
There are 5.5 million disabled people in Australia, but only around 740,000 people access the NDIS. Most disabled people are not on the scheme. But public debate keeps treating disabled people as a financial burden, instead of asking why access to support is already so limited.
The idea that the NDIS has lost its “social licence” is now widely repeated, but that loss did not happen by accident.
Over the past year, media coverage has increasingly focused on fraud, “blowouts”, and highly selective examples of spending implying false claims that the NDIS funds haircuts or movie tickets.
At a time when many people are struggling to afford rent or groceries, it creates a sense that disabled people are receiving something excessive or unfair. It turns public frustration at the government’s lack of cost-of-living support into resentment and instead directs it at people with disability.
But it also raises an important question: what responsibility does the media bear in contributing to this erosion of trust?
The space for change exists
Disabled people are being asked to pay for political cowardice.
There is a clear shift toward more restrictive narratives about disability spending, narratives that increasingly align with those pushed by more conservative political actors.
But this is happening at a time when more people than ever are voting for Labor, the Greens, and independents.
The political space for bold, inclusive reform exists. The question is whether the government is willing to use it or whether it will continue to retreat.
I still have hope, and I know the disability community will continue to fight so nobody is left behind.
Disabled people are not a budget problem to be solved. We are not going to quietly accept being sacrificed