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The NDIS isn’t the only program costing the budget money. The Productivity Commission estimates a visa scheme for 8,500 aged parents adds between $2.85 billion and $3.49 billion to the budget each year.

It’s easy to put a price on people. Too easy.

According to the Productivity Commission and Treasury, each elderly parent granted permanent residency in Australia costs the taxpayer somewhere between $335,000 and $410,000. With 8,500 parent visas allocated in 2024–25, that’s a potential $3 billion bill in net present value terms. And yes, that’s a big number.

But numbers by themselves are meaningless. So are rankings of government programs by cost. Defence, the NDIS, aged care—every initiative costs billions. The question isn’t how much any program costs. It’s what we get in return.

The aged parent visa is easy to caricature: elderly migrants arriving late in life, adding pressure to hospitals, aged care, and the pension system, while never contributing through taxes and yes, that’s the reality. It costs real money that taxpayers have to stump up.

This scheme exists to reunite families. It’s used by citizens and permanent residents who’ve built their lives here but whose parents remain abroad, often isolated and vulnerable.

The deeper question is about the kind of country we want to be. If we define ourselves as a community—as a society—then keeping families together becomes not just a cost, but a value. Of course, parent visas shouldn’t be unlimited. Of course, there are trade-offs. But nothing is just a line-item in a budget spreadsheet.

The NDIS faces similar criticism: too expensive, too open-ended, too hard to control. Both programs are born from decisions. The real task for policymakers is to weigh cost against benefit. To ask not what something costs, but whether it’s worth it.

In their search for votes both parties have questioned the rorts in NDIS. These urgently need to be addressed. But this isn’t the only government program costing money.

Let’s be honest here. What’s at stake isn’t just money: it’s what we value.