Labor’s trying to push poorly thought-through changes to the tax and disability systems as part of the budget process. A better approach would be to consider them individually, because the result is increasingly looking like a poorly thought-through mess.

Advocate Ebe Ganon-Davey was quick to point out a central problem with the entire disability reform package. Health Minister Mark Butler unveiled.

She pointed out the accompanying ‘fact sheet’ presented as a neutral document, appropriately designed in an easy read format. In fact it was neither.

“Nowhere in this factsheet are participants told that their social and community participation funding is going to be indiscriminately cut”, Ganon continued. “Readers are misled by the positive framing throughout this document.”

The reality is that this reform is not driven by the need to improve the scheme - it’s origin is the desire to save money.

That would be ok if government had sought to involve the community in these changes. It began doing so; only to suddenly ignore work to reform the scheme that had begun listening to the voices of people with disability.

Then the advocates, medical experts, industry leaders, and community shapers were ignored, just as they were begining to make progress. A real team was replaced by technically sharp lawyers, informed (poorly) by the NDIA’s own institutionally-driven agenda.

Labor can’t pass its tax savings measures because it plotted them in secret. It was a numbers-driven agenda, searching for cuts rather than the best outcome. It should come as no surprise the government can’t get its parliamentary numbers right, either.

[continued from the abilityNEWS newsletter]

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Language is revealing

Ganon’s analysis was so powerful precisely because it was so dispassionate.

“Regardless of your position on the proposed changes”, she wrote, “I think we can agree that it is misleading to present much of what’s included in these documents as incontrovertible fact. The silences and omissions are also telling.”

She was deconstructing the announcement, but in doing so revealed something far more fundamental had been missing from the beginning. Voices.

Specifically, an attempt to achieve the best reforms possible by incorporating the views and ideas of people who knew something about the scheme and what the reforms were designed to achieve. The result has been a disaster.

Yes, the terrible headlines of vulnerable people insisting they feel traumatised and broken by another change that leaves them exposed. That’s a terrible look for any government that’s pretending to be concerned about people with disability. But, sadly, Labor could probably wear that criticism because it will pick up the votes of people who think too much money’s being spent on disability.

What’s far more devastating for Labor’s brand is the incompetence that’s now being revealed in the way the so-called ‘reforms’ were designed.

Who designed the package?

Health Minister Mark Butler has become rightly identified with these reforms.

He is the one who commissioned them, unveiled them, and is pushing them.

When she became NDIS Minister, Jenny McAllister had also begun to look for savings - but in a very different way. She commenced her push by involving the sector; consulting with others and engaging widely.

It appears that process, originally envisaged as two-years of staged reform, was suddenly circumvented by a sudden need to save money in order to keep the budget in the black.

PM Anthony Albanese wanted all the reforms - both the tax savings and the changes to the NDIS - wound up in the one document. He knew the changes were contentious and thought it was better to squash them all together as part of the budget.

His political instinct was to push all the changes through at once to minimise the squeals.

It wasn’t good policy.

It hasn’t been good politics either.