Peter Boyle spoke to Graham Matthews, the Socialist Alliance spokesperson on disability rights, about the proposed cuts to the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) in the Anthony Albanese Labor federal government’s upcoming May 12 budget.
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What are your comments on Labor’s cuts to the NDIS?
In short, it’s a massive betrayal. It will have a catastrophic impact on people with disability, in the first instance on the 160,000 people who will be tossed off from NDIS, but also to their families and broader society.
It’s an open secret that younger people with a psychosocial disability will be particularly affected. They will lose all support completely and it will have a dramatic impact on what they are able to do with their lives.
Withdrawing support in that way and leaving people to fend for themselves is also a recipe for social disaster.
People with disabilities deserve the same opportunities as able-bodied people and anybody else in the society. That’s all that we ask for and that’s all that NDIS was ever intended to do.
The myth that NDIS is “welfare” that somehow it’s giving people with disabilities something that the rest of society doesn't have is a lie. All NDIS gives us is the opportunity to live our own lives and pursue our goals.
I didn’t experience the disability system before NDIS. I came to disability late in life, at the age of 50, and NDIS has been all that I’ve known.
It’s a deeply flawed system but, nevertheless, it provides a foundation for people with disability to be able to access a community and have social support, But it also provides people with the basic care and daily living they require to be able to be functional human beings in society.
The federal Labor government justifies its proposed NDIS cuts with the arguments that it costs too much and that there’s allegedly widespread rorting of the system by some service providers. How do you respond to this?
In terms of the cost, it’s around about $50 billion a year at the moment, which is well below what Australia spends on the military. And the government is intent on ramping up military expenditure in a practically uncontrolled way over the next 10 years, or more, to well over $100 billion a year. Yet there is no comparable questioning of that!
Budgets are choices about not only what’s spent, but also what’s taken in and how the taxation system works.
In terms of providing a social system in which we all deserve, there are opportunities and choices the government could make.
The Greens have been calling for a 25% tax on gas corporations and the Socialist Alliance calls for the nationalisation of the fossil fuel companies, which would give so much wealth back to society.
The Australia Institute is calling for a wealth tax of just 2% for those with assets of over 5 million, which is a tiny fraction of this society. That would raise tens of billions of dollars a year, which could then be used to fund the kind of social services we need, whether it’s NDIS, a better unemployment support system or a better aged-care system.
Unfortunately, rorts are endemic to the way that NDIS was set up as an uncontrolled for-profit system. It is dominated by large corporations, which make millions out of the total spend.
There are estimates that somewhere between 20% and 40% of the total NDIS budget is simply becoming profits for corporations. It’s completely unsustainable.
The way that the government set up this as a privatised system is unnecessary.
The Greens have pointed out that while the government is complaining about the rorting at the same time it won’t properly fund the NDIS workers to investigate fraud.
There is an alternative to this kind of for-profit system where frankly, over time, small corporations have been overtaken by larger corporations.
I’m a multiple amputee and rely very heavily on a prosthetics industry that is dominated by two multinational corporations which charge absurd amounts to NDIS for some of the simplest prosthetic devices you could imagine.
The alternative is to reorganise NDIS and make it more community focused and give control back to people with disability.
Socialist Alliance believes that NDIS should be under the democratic control of people with disabilities and their families. It shouldn’t be controlled by bureaucrats serving a system which is primarily designed to make profits for large corporations.
The kind of cuts being proposed will favour some of these bigger for-profit providers against smaller and community-based ones.
The NDIS was set up in 2013, but there were trials up until 2016. Over the last 10 years, there has been a growing concentration of providers. You even see corporations, like the for-profit health funds, buying up some of the more profitable sections of NDIS, such as support coordination and plan management.
It’s not in our interest for these major corporations to dominate the sector.
There needs to be a transition away from this, governed by people with disability, so as to retain the choice and control that NDIS has, at least, partially delivered, but expanding control and flexibility for people with disability to be supported in a way that suits them wherever they fit on the wide spectrum of disability.
It’s not rocket science. There is a thriving community sector in this country and there’s a great wealth of knowledge there that can be drawn upon.
Most people who work in NDIS are deeply committed people who wish only the best for NDIS participants and have an interest in ensuring that NDIS workers are properly paid, have fulfilling work and are well supported.
While the federal government is determined to cut NDIS spending, state governments have made it clear they don’t want to take back responsibility for disability services. Has disability funding become a political football between different levels of government?
It is utterly appalling. This is part of the neoliberal crunch where state governments are not properly funded to be able to provide the kinds of support needed by people with disability, particularly young people. This will soon be noticed in areas like child care, schooling and youth work.
There is a real potential to create a lost generation of young people with disability, who will no longer be able to access NDIS, will receive nothing from state governments and who will therefore fall through the cracks.
Where do they go? They will have to rely on their families.
NDIS was set up not only to allow the fuller lives for people with disability, but also for their families. Let’s be honest, the burden falls particularly on the women who look after people with disabilities. They too will be denied choice and fuller lives.
By cutting back NDIS, the government will throw that responsibility back on the home and on women, in particular. This is completely outrageous, unsustainable and unacceptable.
It’s untested what the other impacts on society will be, but it will certainly be a massive loss of potential for many people.
People with psychosocial disability are not lesser than anybody else in the society. One thing that NDIS — in its own distorted way — has shown is that by providing those supports to people in that situation enables them to do amazing things.
Taking that away not only threatens the social fabric, but it also takes away that massive potential of what people with psychosocial disability can give to society.