Up to 160,000 people are expected to lose NDIS funding with social and community support to be hit hard as the federal government attempts to rein in spending for disability assistance.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers in his budget speech said cuts to the NDIS would prevent the scheme, which last year cost $50 billion, from blowing out further.
“A big part of our savings package will restore the NDIS to its original intent and secure its future, so it grows in a sustainable way in line with programs like Medicare,” he added.
Spending on the NDIS is growing at a rate of 10 per cent annually, meaning that by the end of the decade it would have cost more than Medicare and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme combined.
Federal Health Minister Mark Butler recently told the National Press Club for the NDIS to be growing sustainably it would need to slow down its growth rate to 5 per cent a year, which Chalmers described as a “difficult but necessary reform”.
Five years ago social and community support, just one stream on the NDIS, cost the government $5 billion a year, however over the 2025-26 financial year it almost tripled in growth, coming in at $12 billion.
Butler noted “this one stream of NDIS is costing the same as what we spend in net terms on the entire pharmaceutical benefits scheme – if left alone the spending will skyrocket to around $20 billion just for social and community participation by the end of the decade”.
However, these cuts come at an extreme cost to those who rely on social and community support streams.
Hannah Murphy from Bronte in Sydney relies on NDIS funding to support her 18-year-old non-verbal, autistic son.
“The federal government doesn’t understand the gravity of being left without funding even for a short period of time,” Murphy said.
Murphy said day support programs are crucial, especially for school leavers.
Hannah Murphy and her son Will. Photo supplied.
“I have already noticed financial support for these programs reducing in recent plans of families we know,” she added. “Especially since our son left school and left that support system.
“Not only do the young people and adult persons with disability require these support systems for their wellbeing, so too do the families require that support so as to enable them to work.
“Those families whose children cannot be left without supervision, let alone progress to working after school, are now facing a major risk to their being able to retain their income or even earn an income at all in some cases.”
Murphy said the federal government should consider the material and tangible impacts felt by Australian families if more day support services continue to disappear.
“The side effects of having a child with such high needs and losing NDIS funds often falls on women,” she said.
“In recent months I know women who have had to quit their jobs or end their careers because they have had funding cuts or have not received adequate funding under a new plan to support their severely disabled children after school finishes.”
Howver, Dr David Cullen, a professor of healthcare at Macquarie University’s Centre for the Health Economy agreed with Chalmers on the need for structural changes within the NDIS to prioritise sustainability.
“I think it is important to understand that this scheme is bigger than it was ever supposed to be and is supporting more people than it was ever supposed to support,” he said, adding that the Federal Government’s plan to reduce average participant cost from $31,000 to $26,000 per year would help better distribute gross domestic product.
“Twenty years ago we were spending 0.3 per cent of GDP on disability services which was way too low so the plan was to increase that to about 0.8 per cent of GDP.
“We are now at 1.5 per cent going towards 2 per cent. With the government only spending about 25 per cent of GDP, this is a lot.”
Dr David Cullen. Photo supplied.
He warns “the people who will feel these changes in spending the most early on will be the people who will not get on the scheme who would have in the past,” due to new eligibility requirements, moving away from a diagnosis based system.
Butler announced new standardised evidenced-based assessments to determine NDIS eligibility which consider a person’s functional ability.
“The diagnosis gateway has funnelled people onto a scheme that was never designed for them,” said Butler.
One Sydney mother and speech therapist who receives NDIS funding for her primary school-aged child with autism, agreed with the new eligibility framework.
“I think the rates of autism within the NDIS have been driven up substantially because the only way you can get funding under the age of seven, unless you’ve got an intellectual disability or a physical disability, is through a diagnosis of autism,” said the woman, who wished to remain anonymous.
“So a lot of people have just been seeking that diagnosis. And the reality is you can go to a paediatrician and you can say all the things that would tick the boxes and then receive funding.
“I think the benefit that everyone’s missing is that the children who really need the help, but don’t have a label, are actually going to be able to access funding.
“I’ve worked with kids with genetic disorders and I’ve got kids that have had a stroke, for example. They don’t fit into any of the NDIS’s current labels, whereas if you actually look at their functional ability, their needs are higher than some of the kids with autism.”
Main image by anjan58/Flickr.
