The federal government’s $37.8 billion in NDIS cuts drew swift and pointed criticism from disability rights organisations, who say the numbers tell a story the government would rather not highlight.
When Treasurer Jim Chalmers rose to deliver the 2026-27 federal budget on Tuesday night, the single largest source of savings in the entire package was not a crackdown on multinational tax avoidance, not a clawing back of fossil fuel subsidies, and not a tightening of superannuation concessions. It was cuts to the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
At $37.8 billion over four years, the NDIS savings dwarf the next biggest measure and sit at the centre of a budget the government has framed as responsible, equitable and future-focused. Disability advocates are not buying it.
“This budget is relying on 60% of its savings coming from people with disability, when we are only 25% of the population,” said Megan Spindler-Smith, Acting CEO of People with Disability Australia (PWDA). That single statistic has become the sharpest piece of shorthand for what advocates describe as a fundamentally skewed set of priorities.
A political choice, not an inevitability
The government has been consistent in its messaging. NDIS Minister Mark Butler, speaking at the National Press Club last month in what amounted to an advance preview of the budget’s disability agenda, argued that the scheme “costs too much and is growing too fast” and that without significant changes it would lose its social licence. Treasurer Chalmers has framed the cuts as restoring the NDIS to its “original purpose” of supporting people with significant and permanent disability.
There is a legitimate debate to be had about the scheme’s trajectory. When the NDIS was designed, it anticipated around 410,000 participants. Today there are more than 760,000. Annual growth, once running at 22%, has been a persistent source of tension between the Commonwealth and state governments. National Cabinet agreed in 2023 to bring that figure down to 8%. The government now wants to land at 2% annual growth, a rate that, with inflation running above 3%, represents a real-terms reduction in the scheme’s purchasing power.
But advocates argue that acknowledging the need for reform is very different from accepting the particular choices this government has made.
“Budgets are about choices,” Spindler-Smith said. “This budget chooses to directly cut the supports people with disability rely on to get out of bed, go to work, care for their children and participate in community life. You cannot build an inclusive community with budget savings that damage people with disabilities’ basic rights.”
What is actually being cut
The most immediate impact will fall on social and community participation funding, the component of NDIS plans that supports people to leave the house, engage with their communities, attend group activities, and build skills and confidence. The government plans to reduce the average plan from $31,000 to around $26,000, with social and community participation budgets facing reductions of up to 30%.
Butler acknowledged these changes will have a “material impact” on participants. Critics say that is a considerable understatement.
As a partial replacement, the government has allocated $200 million to a new Inclusive Communities Fund, available to mainstream and disability organisations to develop group-based participation options. But as analysts and advocates have noted, this represents a fraction of what is being cut from individual plans, and it marks a significant philosophical shift: away from personalised, participant-directed support and towards organisations deciding which services exist.
“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,” Spindler-Smith said.
The sequencing problem
Perhaps the most consistent thread running through advocacy responses is the concern not just about what is being cut, but when. Social and community participation reductions are expected to begin as early as October 2026. The Foundational Supports that are meant to catch those who lose access to the NDIS or experience reduced funding are, by the government’s own admission, not yet designed, not yet funded in any meaningful operational sense, and not yet available.
For the Australian Capital Territory, for example, the Commonwealth’s annual contribution to alternative foundational supports amounts to $5.2 million per year. Advocates describe that figure as nowhere near sufficient to absorb the caseload being redirected out of the scheme.
“You cannot responsibly remove support first and work out the alternative later,” Spindler-Smith said. “That is how people fall through gaps, end up and stay in crisis and lose trust in the system entirely.”
Nicolas Lawler, Chief Executive Officer of Advocacy for Inclusion, put it plainly: “The defining feature of this budget for people with disability is not what it gives. It is what it takes away, and the speed at which it does so before anything credible exists to replace it.”
States and territories have themselves been signalling that they lack the capacity and funding to fill the gap. Advocates warn this creates the conditions for what they are calling a postcode lottery, where access to support varies significantly depending on where a person lives.
What the budget missed entirely
Beyond the NDIS, advocates point to a broader absence of measures targeting the lived experience of people with disability outside the scheme. There is no increase to the Disability Support Pension beyond standard indexation. There is no disability-specific energy relief, despite the well-documented reality that many people with disability face substantially higher electricity costs due to medical equipment and increased time at home. There is no accessible housing investment, and no new independent advocacy funding commensurate with the scale of reform now underway.
PWDA President Jeramy Hope said the budget had “failed to meaningfully address the growing poverty experienced by many people with disability during the cost-of-living crisis.”
“People with disability outside the NDIS seem to be absent in this Budget, including people relying on income support payments that remain well below what people need to live with dignity,” he said.
A welcome, with caveats
Advocates were not uniformly critical. PWDA welcomed $15.9 million over four years for Disability Representative Organisations to support engagement in the reform process. Fraud and compliance measures, including $280 million for the Fraud Fusion Taskforce and $358.5 million for a new digital payment system, received cautious support. Exploitation of NDIS participants is a genuine problem, and most in the sector do not dispute that.
But the welcome came with significant qualifications. Hope raised ongoing concerns about the future of independent appeal rights, the lack of clarity around proposed functional capacity assessment tools, and what he described as the absence of genuine co-design with people with disability.
“Funding engagement does not mean people with disability support these reforms or believe community concerns have been resolved,” Spindler-Smith said.
The pressure continues
More than 14,000 people have signed PWDA’s Reasonable. Necessary. Ordinary. campaign petition calling on the government to halt cuts until equivalent alternatives are in place. The government has signalled that legislation to implement some of the changes will be introduced to parliament during the current budget sittings.
For many in the disability community, the budget lands as confirmation of a fear that had been building since Butler’s National Press Club address last month: that the most significant and coordinated government action on disability since the Royal Commission would turn out to be a cuts package dressed in the language of reform.
“It is devastating,” Hope said, “that the most coordinated and focused government action since the Disability Royal Commission has been to cut the supports that are proven to reduce the abuse, neglect and exploitation our community has and continues to be subjected to.”
The government, for its part, maintains that reform is necessary and that the alternative supports will come. The question advocates are asking is simple: what happens to people in the meantime?
I can only hope that every person who has a disability and is excluded from social and community participation fights back clogging their legal system. There is no justice here it is only JUST US. Who is going to vote for them now ? People with disabilities need their own political party one that actually respects and understands them.
I have long questioned how some NDIS social and community participation funding was being used. The intent of the funding was to reduce isolation, improve independence, and support genuine community inclusion — not fund what at times appeared to be lifestyle choices or taxpayer-funded holidays.
To witness participants attending the Australian Open, going on cruises and overseas holidays with support workers — some of whom were their own parents who conveniently became paid carers just for the trip — was difficult to reconcile with the concept of “reasonable and necessary” supports.
Equally concerning were examples that appeared to border on outright rorting:
– non-therapeutic pets having grooming and veterinary expenses paid,
– luxury accommodation and extensive travel being funded,
– support workers travelling separately and staying in separate rooms at significant cost,
– meals and travel expenses reimbursed for lengthy trips,
– and expensive interstate travel being justified under vague claims of social or cultural connection.
One example involved an NDIS participant travelling around Tasmania for two weeks “to connect with his mob,” accompanied by a support worker travelling in a separate vehicle, staying in separate accommodation, with four-star lodging and meals reimbursed throughout the trip. Another involved veterinary and grooming expenses for two coon cats that were not recognised assistance animals.
Supporting people with disability to participate in community life is absolutely important. People with significant disabilities should not be excluded from travel, events, or social activities simply because they require assistance. However, somewhere along the way, the line between legitimate disability support and publicly funded lifestyle enhancement became blurred.
That blurred line damaged public confidence in the scheme and overshadowed the genuine needs of many participants who struggled to access basic supports, equipment, therapy, or home modifications.
The issue is not whether people with disability deserve quality of life and inclusion — they absolutely do. The issue is whether there are clear boundaries, accountability, and consistency around what taxpayers are being asked to fund.
Second comment to address support services and purpose.
I have increasingly questioned the purpose of some support services. To me, the best outcome should always be helping a person become as independent as possible and no longer reliant on ongoing supports where that is achievable. If a person is capable of using public transport independently, organising and attending social activities themselves, preparing their own meals rather than relying on takeaway, and understanding appropriate behaviours, then those skills should be encouraged and strengthened.
Instead, I often see services relying on private vehicle transport, with participants being picked up and dropped off door-to-door for activities they could potentially access more independently. There seems to be an assumption that because a person has a disability, they must always be transported and accompanied, rather than supported to build confidence, practical life skills and autonomy.
Too often, support services appear to encourage dependence and ongoing reliance on the service itself, rather than focusing on building capacity, increasing independence, and reducing the level of support required over time. This can then contribute to a growing sense of entitlement and an expectation that everything should be funded or provided, with little emphasis placed on developing independence, personal responsibility, or the motivation to try and do things for oneself where capable.