“This budget is a vicious attack on people living with disability,” said Graham Matthews, the Socialist Alliance spokesperson on disability rights.
Labor’s May 12 budget formalised the expected cut of $36.2 billion from the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) over the next four years, but without providing detail.
“Labor is smashing the future for some of the most disadvantaged, so it can avoid increasing taxes on the wealthy,” Matthews said.
“Labor has signed the death warrant for NDIS, but scheduled the execution for a later date, when they hope no one will be paying attention.”
The cuts include slashing almost 700 staff positions, throwing 160,000 people who are currently NDIS participants off the scheme and denying access to another 140,000 people who would be entitled under existing rules.
Matthews said “standardised, evidenced-based assessments of functional capacity” — that is roboplanning — will be introduced to reduce access to the scheme and significantly reduce offered supports.
Critically, the 300,000 people who will be denied access to NDIS will be forced to rely on state-run schemes which do not yet exist.
Two billion dollars will be set aside for the so-called Thriving Kids program to support children under nine years of age with autism, an additional $5 billion for Foundational Supports, which are expected to make provision for all those to be denied access to NDIS.
According to People with Disability Australia Acting CEO Meagan Spindler-Smith, the government has decided to reset social and community participation supports. Matthews said that means they will be “slashed”.
“It’s heartless to cut supports we need to leave the house, work and study at a time when the cost of living has dramatically increased and alternatives are simply not there.”