These NDIS cuts will hurt Australian families like mine

April 23, 2026 — 11:59am

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They say a society is judged by how it treats its most vulnerable. Right now, the Australian government is making its priorities devastatingly clear – pulling the rug out from under tens of thousands of people living with a disability, while simultaneously funnelling record billions into weapons and letting corporate giants off the hook.

Under the government’s sweeping overhaul of the National Disability Insurance Scheme, participant numbers are targeted to be slashed by 160,000 by the end of the decade. That is 160,000 vulnerable Australians – our family members, our friends, our neighbours – effectively kicked off a scheme that was designed to be their permanent safety net.

The government insists the NDIS is “unsustainable”. They claim that introducing new standardised functional assessments and reducing average plan spending are “hard but responsible decisions”. But for families like mine, who rely heavily on the NDIS just to survive day-to-day, these aren’t abstract line items on a treasury spreadsheet. They are our lives.

When politicians talk about “curbing growth”,........

© Brisbane Times