Health Minister Mark Butler has refused to rule out introducing means testing for the National Disability Insurance Scheme as pressure grows on Labor to deliver a federal budget that contains significant reforms to the cost of the system.
Butler’s comments come as the scheme is expected to cost more than $50 billion for the first time this financial year and, on the current trajectory, will cost more than $100 billion annually within the next decade.
It is one of the five most expensive items in the federal budget, prompting questions about the scheme’s rapid growth. The national cabinet agreed several weeks ago to slow the growth rate of the scheme from about 10 per cent per annum to 5-6 per cent per year, a potential saving of billions of dollars each year.
On Friday, Butler said slowing the scheme’s growth would be one of the major savings items in the May budget – as this masthead reported on Monday – and said the process of finding savings and considering what changes to still being decided.
“If there is significant reform to the scheme – and there will likely be significant reform – then obviously, that would be conducted in a way that brings the disability community with us,” he said.
“And I’m very much committed to the philosophy of this scheme, which is, ‘nothing about us, without us’.”
“I’m not going to rule in or rule out any of the different measures that people are suggesting in this debate. I welcome the debate, but I’m not going to comment on one measure or another.
“We’re working through this in a deliberate, orderly way. Full means testing is one of the options that’s been raised by colleagues and been raised more broadly in the community, and I welcome the debate.
“I’m not going to comment particularly on that idea, or on the many other ideas that have been raised by colleagues.”
But opposition NDIS spokeswoman Melissa McIntosh accused her counterpart of targeting the most vulnerable to find savings, rather than those rorting the system.
“The Albanese government’s solution to fixing the expenditure blowout of the NDIS is to go after the vulnerable Australians who rely on it,” she said.
“In his press conference today, Minister Butler made not a single mention of how he will address the fraud or rorting that has infiltrated the scheme. Not a single mention of addressing the inflationary pricing or ‘NDIS tax’ being charged for services.
“No, his answer is to go straight for the jugular and rip the funding and supports away from the very people we are supposed to be protecting, rather than go after the people who are ripping off taxpayers.”
Butler said the scheme had made a huge difference to the lives and living standards of people with disabilities, and making it sustainable for the long term was the government’s primary focus.
“It’s pretty clear that if you are going to manage the growth in the NDIS, in the way that premiers and the prime minister have tasked me with, there are a couple of pathways you can go down,” he said.
“One, you can constrain the number of people who are on the scheme so the eligibility for the scheme, or you can constrain the growth or the cost of particular plan budgets, or a combination of those two things and that’s really the work that we’re undertaking right now.”
The NDIS was founded by the Gillard government in 2013, and it has grown significantly beyond the original projections for both the number of participants and the cost to the taxpayer.
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James Massola is chief political commentator. He was previously national affairs editor and South-East Asia correspondent. He has won Quill and Kennedy awards and been a Walkley finalist. Connect securely on Signal @jamesmassola.01Connect via X or email.