- by M Santos
- The Guardian
- Issue #2177
Graphic: wannapik.com (CC0)
In 2024 the Albanese Labor government passed the Getting the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) Back on Track No. 1 Bill which had the aim of cutting costs. It has so far exceeded expectations by cutting budgets for plans and knocking participants off the scheme. Now they are using robo assessments of applications and for reviews of existing plans.
The Guardian warned at the time: “Getting the NDIS Back on Track Bill No 1 Bill, the first in a series of bills, aims to gut the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) and arbitrarily cap costs by kicking people off the scheme, making cuts to existing participants’ plans, and making it harder to join the scheme.” (“Bill to kill NDIS,” #2103, 17 June 2024)
Not only would the legislation destroy the essence of the NDIS, but it would also ruin thousands of lives. “What we’re watching unfold in the NDIS space is an extraordinarily cynical play. The government is trying to make sweeping changes that will kick disabled people off the scheme and cut critical supports. All on the premise that the scheme is being weaponised by crooks,” Greens Senator Jordon Steele-John posted on social media.
SAVAGE CUTS
These warnings proved too true. Rick Morton, writing in The Saturday Paper, reports that since May 2025 tens of thousands of participants are now on reduced plans and many more have lost flexibility due to restructured payments.
Almost a third of participants in the NDIS whose plans have been reassessed since May last year have had their total support packages cut by an average of 22.5 per cent.
“The Australian parliament’s recent data related to the NDIS paints a picture of an agency using the full suite of its new powers and resources to cut costs, in a generational redesign that was sold as a mission to tackle fraud, but which has clamped down heavily on participant support,” Morton said.
MORE CUTS TO COME
Now parliament is considering another bill to cut costs. In this instance the bill is presented as giving the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission “more of the powers it needs to be more responsive to protect participants from abuse, neglect, and exploitation,” according to Senator Anthony Chisolm in his second reading speech.
The National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Integrity and Safeguarding) Bill 2025 includes increased penalties and even the possibility of jail time.
Senator Chisolm calls the increased penalties “a more proportionate, reasonable and effective response to these types of aggravated breaches of the NDIS Act.”
“At the same time, it will make minor changes that will support the NDIA [National Disability Insurance Agency] in improving the experience of participants,” he says, making an art of political spin and weasel words.
“The availability of a higher penalty aims to enable a more proportionate, reasonable and effective response to these types of aggravated breaches of the NDIS Act.”
Labor spent taxpayers’ money on pollsters RedBridge Group to find the best messaging to sell the biggest planned changes to the scheme. That messaging suggested a focus on fraud and rorting could increase “tolerance” to other, not so acceptable changes.
This latest bill contains at least one provision that would be extremely hard to sell on its own. Buried in the bill is a section giving the NDIA the power to adjust plans, and hence funding, without another assessment or even consultation or warning.
While Chisolm claims it could be used “if a participant receives a lump sum compensation payment that is relevant to NDIS funding which pays for a similar disability support,” there does not appear to be anything to prevent its abuse with arbitrary, unexplained cuts.
ROBO ASSESSMENTS
Academic Georgia Van Toorn, in Guardian Australia has reported on plans to introduce a fully automated assessment scheme that could approve and review plans for participants and applicants.
People with disability and their advocacy groups are horrified at the prospect of yet another impersonal, automated scheme. The wellbeing, health, safety, and even lives of people with disability are being put at risk in yet another inhumane system. Remember the horrors of robo-debt!
“Our concerns about the use of automation in New Framework Planning are compounded by changes to review pathways, which appear to narrow the grounds on which decisions can be challenged and limit the scope of the Administrative Review Tribunal (ART), which cannot vary a participant’s plan and can only trigger a reassessment by the original decision-maker,” a statement by 12 leading disability representative organisations says damning the proposal.
“This would significantly limit participants’ ability to correct errors or challenge flawed assumptions. At the same time, there is currently no clear guarantee that written evidence provided by participants will be considered in these processes. We are deeply concerned that these changes, combined with increasing automation, will create significant risks, particularly for people with the highest support needs.
“This is well-established across other sectors: algorithms built from ‘average’ cases consistently fail those whose experiences sit at the margins – including women, First Nations people, culturally and linguistically diverse communities, and people with disability.”
To put it another way, people with disabilities who urgently need help could be arbitrarily booted from the NDIS by an algorithm.
‘Average’ cases that fail to adequately take into account complex cases and other critical factors lay the foundations for yet another means of cost-cutting.
The statement continues: “Computer-generated decisions also cannot explain how they reached a conclusion, what assumptions were prioritised, or whether the model was designed to minimise cost or standardise prices across vastly different geographic, service contexts and thin markets. People cannot meaningfully challenge a decision if they cannot see or understand how it was made. When this opacity is combined with weaker review rights, participants face the real risk of being unable to contest flawed assumptions.”
PUNITIVE & CRUEL
The NDIS system is being rorted to the tune of billions of dollars a year and instead of addressing the source of rorting – large for-profit corporations – thousands of vulnerable participants and would-be participants are taking a hit.
Spinal Life Australia, a disability and care advocacy group, warns that foreign-owned private operators and private equity firms are grabbing a growing share of the NDIS and other care services, using government subsidies to generate profits that never return to Australian communities.
Spinal Life Australia CEO Mark Townend says the situation is undermining the long-term sustainability of the entire system. “Successive federal governments have struggled to manage the growing cost of Australia’s care economy – yet little has been done to address the fundamental problem.
“Right now, taxpayer money that’s meant to support Australians with disability, older Australians, and working families are being turned into profits for foreign shareholders. That’s not just unsustainable – it’s unacceptable.”
Townend notes that the billions of dollars are being syphoned offshore in profits is money not spent on support workers, therapy, home care, training, quality improvement, or community infrastructure.
“Every dollar that leaves Australia in profit is a dollar not spent on improving care quality, growing the workforce, or delivering better outcomes for participants. It’s public money – not private capital – and it should stay here.”
Rorting and profiteering is built into the system. Nationalising the NDIS could save billions of dollars more than punishing and cruel cuts to participant funding.
