With the 2024 Paralympics on the horizon, I have been thinking about the recent headlines and commentary on the National Disability Insurance Scheme and the way the cost of the program is so often framed. or signup to continue reading On Sunday night, I read a particularly shocking post on Twitter/X that stated "#NDIS to cost $100b, exceeding the pension: #Unsustainable. Australia has become a welfare state, Govt [sic] producing low productivity, woke policies, pandering to minority groups, gross wasting of taxpayer monies & home grown sustained high inflation.
" This raised a number of issues for me and connected with several of the mainstream headlines I'd read over recent weeks. economics editor wrote in June that the NDIS is a "taxpayer sinkhole", having the program as demonstrative of a "lack of respect for taxpayer money in modern politics", inferring that Australia was becoming a welfare state in the likeness of the "European welfare states of Iceland, Finland and Sweden". Kehoe lays the blame of the "cost blowout" on more enrolments from children with autism and development delays, with "incredibly, some 12 per cent of boys aged 5-7 [being] on the NDIS".
With the unemployment rate in Australia holding at 4 per cent, it appears that the "dole-bludger" stereotype is being temporarily shelved and the new target for "the majority group" - or the privileged many as they could be also referred to - is the NDIS recipient. I cannot think of a more deserving member of Australia.