On Tuesday morning, when Parliament meets for the first time since the election, Labor will have more politicians assembling to take their seats than ever before. Ever. It’s hard to understand both how dominant the party has become. Its priorities will change.

Why dependent? Well, even though it has once undreamed of majorities in the upper house, the government will still require ten Senate votes to pass legislation. This means it remains dependent on either the Greens (alone), the Coalition (alone), or ten of the eleven independents if it wants to get things done.

But don’t fall into the trap of thinking that Labor will rely on the Greens.

Before the last election Peter Dutton would constantly talk about the “Labor/Greens government”, as if they were one party. They’re not. There are some very significant differences in the fundamental approaches of the two parties to critical areas of policy.

Disability is likely to become the area where these differences become most apparent.

Labor’s primary need over the coming 18 months is to balance the budget. This means not simply stopping the growth of the NDIS (ignore the comforting rhetoric that it will continue to expand at eight percent) but shrinking the total cost of disability care. This is what’s behind the transfer of Foundational Supports to the states.

These assertions do not come from thin air. No government members will say these things publicly, but these are the imperatives that are driving the party.

Labor is in government and it wants to remain there. It can’t do that while allowing runaway growth in any area. Although the figures were always fudged, there was general acceptance that spending on the NDIS might grow to (a maximum of) $30 billion by 2030.

It’s currently scheduled to hit $50 billion next year.

That’s a huge discrepancy: one that can only be achieved by significant cuts.

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The problem for Labor is both simple and political. The central problem is the NDIS has been so successful it’s grown too fast. The government needs to find a way to both guarantee the NDIS and cut spending growth.

It now thinks it’s done this by transferring responsibility for the fastest growing areas of the scheme - its increased take-up by young children - over to the states. The other advantage in doing this is that it significantly reduces the cost by insisting that Foundational Supports represent a more than adequate way of addressing these needs.

Huge savings can be achieved simply by not insisting that everybody needs an individual plan, with individual care to follow. And that’s what’s driving these changes: the need to save.

This doesn’t mean they’re not appropriate - it simply means we need to recognise what’s driving their adoption.

The need to save money is, quite genuinely, critical. Labor’s first priority is to govern, and to do that it needs to balance the budget. If it doesn’t manage to do this the politicians know they will never get re-elected.

This is the meaning behind what’s happening in Canberra. If Labor doesn’t achieve its desired reductions now, it will simply find other ways to slash the scheme in future.