We've reached the limit of political support for growing the NDIS

This simple graph in yesterday’s Financial Review clearly displayed the fundamental problem with the NDIS today. It’s consuming too much money. The disability scheme was never meant to cost anything like aged care.

Governments have two simple media strategies when they want to implement change.

When money’s being handed out, politicians want fanfare and beautifully illustrated booklets, full of smiling people, given to reporters. When the money’s being taken away, however, it’s much harder to find politicians willing to be interviewed.

That’s not surprising. Psychologists say we feel the pain of losing things much harder than if it had never been there to begin with. That’s why politicians spend so much time ‘shaping the ground’ before they act. They don’t want to get too far ahead of the common consensus.

This is why the media is so important to politicians. It reveals where ‘the people’ are. Mainstream reporting is revealing something very important about where the NDIS is positioned today. People feel the scheme is too generous.

The truth really doesn’t really matter. It’s popular perception that counts, and this has changed with the growing cost of the scheme.

Any willingness to tolerate the continued, exponential growth of the NDIS has now vanished. And although nobody will say this publicly, even original supporters of the scheme have now effectively decided that if it is to be preserved it needs to change. The cost needs to be capped. Urgently.

There are three strands to this strategy: shame, shift and shave.

Whether these measures represent a carefully thought-through political strategy or not really doesn’t matter at this point. What is important is it clearly signals a new direction for the NDIS.

Change is coming and it’s coming now.

________________________________________

(continue reading from newsletter)

The first part of this strategy - shame - began when Bill Shorten was minister. He highlighted the “shonks and shysters” who were supposedly rorting the system. What he didn’t point out, though, was that the cost of this was more like a rounding error when compared to the compounding (and genuine) exponential growth of the scheme.

The idea, however, was built on a kernel of truth, and that’s all it needed to grow in public consciousness and justify more fundamental change.

The second measure, shift, requires finding somebody else who will take responsibility for funding the areas where unexpected growth has occurred. This explains why the federal government and the states have been deadlocked over who should take over responsibility for looking after the huge cohort of one in five boys under seven who now need funding.

The federal government insists their needs are better looked after by foundational supports provided by the states. Unsurprisingly, the states disagree. They want more money. Although the impasse will, eventually, be resolved, doing this will take time.

Which leaves the third option: shave (or, where possible, slash).

This explains the NDIA’s move this week to cut payments for NDIS-funded therapy. The money needs to be saved. Although this decision is both dramatic and arbitrary, it signals where the scheme is headed.

It will be difficult to build public opposition to these new fee schedules, simply because most people not on the scheme can’t afford such services. If they can’t afford say, physiotherapy or horse-riding, they don’t see why their taxpayer money should be spent on providing them for other people. And this is true no matter how much goodwill there is towards people with disability more generally.

This is why this week’s changes are here to stay. There will be screams from those who’ve been dramatically affected, and alteration around the edges. But nothing will alter the fundamental emphasis of the reforms.