Within just 12 years, Australia’s NDIS has gone from a dream of generations of disability actvists to an entrenched and beloved national institution.
It’s a symbol of what our democracy can achieve when we put aside our differences and talk to each other.
It has and continues to deliver incredible care for Australians living with a disability.
The NDIS was established to support people with significant and permanent disability.
But the NDIS is now entering its adolescence.
Like so many teenagers, it has grown incredibly fast – and well beyond projections.
When we came to government in 2022, the scheme’s costs were growing at 22 per cent per year.
To put that in perspective, aged care is projected to grow by around 5 per cent per annum, notwithstanding the huge increase in demand projected by the ageing of the Baby Boomer generation.
“The rampant fraud in the sector of dodgy providers ripping off people living with a disability and taxpayers is too much.”
Medicare is expected also to grow by about 5 per cent per year.
Unlike Medicare and aged care – which touch most Australians – the NDIS supports around 1 in 40 Australians directly.
Bringing growth under control is not just a question of budget sustainability, but also to ensure the social licence for the scheme remains strong.
And, right now, that licence is coming under pressure.
The rampant fraud in the sector of dodgy providers ripping off people living with a disability and taxpayers is too much.
While our government has cracked down on fraud, more will need to be done to protect the NDIS and the people who rely on it.
And that work will require much more robust market stewardship, including a well-calibrated system of provider registration.
While there are currently more than 260,000 NDIS service providers, only 16,000 are registered.
Leaving far too much scope for poor quality service, conflicts of interest and precious little oversight.
Taxpayers deserve to know that the big investment made in the NDIS is paying for supports that are actually going to make a difference.
The NDIS was established to support people with significant and permanent disability.
And since the scheme’s creation, the number of people with disability entering the system has generally stabilised around initial projections.
Except in one area: children with developmental delay or autism.
Just under half of NDIS participants are children under 15, a share that rose again in this month’s latest quarterly report.
Tens of thousands of young children with mild to moderate developmental delay or autism are on a scheme set up for permanent disability.
It’s not their parents’ fault.
They are desperate to get their children diagnosed because we’ve made it the only way they can get help.
And, too often, they have to wait for ages and pay thousands of dollars just to get that diagnosis.
Families looking for additional supports in mainstream services can’t find them because they largely don’t exist any more.
The NDIS model just doesn’t fit their needs.
Individualised plans and budgets make sense for people with lifelong disability – giving them more choice and control over the support they receive.
Evidence-based support and therapy
But families with a young child who’s missing milestones aren’t best helped by receiving a budget and being expected to work out how to spend it.
Parents need guidance to access well-curated, evidence-based support and therapy – most of which existed long before the NDIS.
We need, as a matter of urgency, to create a better system that will enable our children to thrive.
A program for thriving kids.
And that’s the program the Albanese government intends to deliver.
What will that look like?
In community services, early years centres and schools across Australia, it is already happening.
Trained practitioners are facilitating play-based activities that are age-appropriate, challenging and interesting to support a child’s healthy development.
In my own electorate, Ocean View College Children’s Centre provides early learning and allied health supports in one location, building the capacity of staff to identify children at risk of developmental delay and supporting parents.
Developing key life skills
There is Triple P’s – Stepping Stones, which provides parents and families with free online courses to help their child develop the key life skills they need, to encourage their development, build their strengths, but importantly to build the parents’ confidence and skills to meet their own kids’ needs.
There are many examples of evidence-based services that guide parents and let their kids thrive.
And the Commonwealth is keen to work with the states to scale up these efforts.
We need to ensure parents have the information, tools and resources available to them.
We also know that we will have to step in and will closely examine a new Medicare item for bulk-billed 3-year-old health checks to pick up any developmental concerns at that crucial age for referral for appropriate support – a scheme that was scrapped by the Abbott government.
We can never take the NDIS for granted.
It’s been transformative for thousands of Australians.
And that’s why to ensure our world-leading scheme remains fit for purpose and there to serve Australians living with a disability for decades to come, it again turns to a Labor government to secure its future.
This opinion piece was published in The Australian Financial Review, Thursday, 21 August 2025.
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