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The federal budget has landed, and once again, the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) is in the spotlight.
We’re hearing a familiar story with headlines shouting about “cost blowouts”, “unsustainable growth”, and “rorting”. The implication of this narrative is clear: disability support is the problem. But while disabled people are being asked to justify our needs, what’s actually happening behind the curtain?
Over the last decade, corporate profits in Australia have surged, with around one in three large corporations paying no tax. Billions continue to flow into fossil fuel subsidies, and defence spending under AUKUS is projected to exceed $368 billion.
So when the government talks about “hard choices”, we must ask: hard for who?
Now I’ll be the first to admit there are inefficiencies in the NDIS. Participants are well aware of them as they contend with lengthy administrative procedures, expensive legal disputes, and rising costs from private providers delivering essential services. But these issues are structural, and with the $680 million spent on reviews, inquiries, and audits of the NDIS, they should have been addressed without sacrificing the lifeline that many vulnerable individuals depend on.
Regardless of the physical consequences, cutting support doesn't reduce costs. It simply shifts them onto already stretched families, carers, emergency services, and public health systems.
Manifesting in unpaid labour (predominantly by women), burnout, and people falling through the cracks.
This budget also signals something deeper than efficiency. The planned reductions to social and community supports strike at the heart of inclusion. These supports aren’t optional extras; they are foundational to our wellbeing, identity, and belonging. In addition, there are growing concerns about forced registration, changes that centralise decision-making, shifting power away from participants and toward organisations that decide which services are available.
This shift contradicts the scheme’s core principle: choice and control.
Supports are not interchangeable. Providers enter our homes and support us in deeply personal ways. The ability to choose who provides that care is about safety, dignity, and trust. Moving back toward impersonal, large-provider models risks undoing the years of progress we have made towards community-based, relational supports.
It also threatens our ability to participate as active citizens, working, socialising, studying, raising families, and contributing to our communities.
These are not luxuries; they are what it means to belong and live a meaningful life. What we’re seeing is a quiet reallocation, away from individual agency towards systems that determine what kind of lives disabled people are allowed to live.
That’s why co-design matters. Policies that affect disabled people must be shaped with us, not imposed on us. “Nothing about us, without us” is not just a slogan, it’s a principle of justice that must be at the centre of every decision that is made impacting the lives of people with disabilities.
We know the reality of the cost-of-living crisis. Still, rising costs aren’t driven by disability support, they’re shaped by corporate power and a system that protects profits while forcing blame onto everyday people.
So the question isn’t whether we can afford the NDIS. It’s why we’re choosing not to raise revenue where it actually exists.
A meaningful tax on gas exports could generate tens of billions in public revenue. Closing corporate tax loopholes and addressing price gouging would go further.
The federal budget should reflect the kind of society we want to build: one where wealth and power continue to concentrate, or one where everyone shares in the promise of the ‘lucky country’. Because if we’re serious about fairness, we don’t start by asking who we can afford to cut, we start by asking who isn’t paying their fair share.