In yesterday’s Guardian, Greg Jericho provided the above graph which looks at the cost of NDIS spending on the budget’s bottom line. He added a comment.

“As for overall spending,” he said, “we have a range of commentators weirdly trying to compare the amount the government is spending now with how much it spent before the NDIS was introduced. Once we take that disability support, not only is this budget not a big-spending one, it is actually downright measly”.

The problem is this exposes the growing cost of the NDIS.

The Financial Review used this to take another line. It focused on exactly the disability support Jericho was pulling out, but this time labeling it as profligacy.

“The NDIS is still out of control. The 10 per cent increase in the past year in NDIS spending is higher than the government’s planned 8 per cent “cap”. Moreover, as teal MP Allegra Spender says, such a high level of continuing expenditure growth would jeopardise public support for the scheme. Whoever forms the next government must face up to the need for a combination of tightening eligibility rules and cutting per-person funding packages to make the NDIS financially sustainable.”

This poses an existential danger to support for the scheme.

Particularly before any election, opinion pollsters work overtime. One of their vital tasks is to work on framing, or how to present issues so the answer is ‘obvious’. Because defence is seen by most voters as being more important than disability care, this offers a very simple line of attack for the opposition.

Asking if Labor should be spending more on disability than defence exposes the government’s vulnerability on this issue.

When he was Minister, Bill Shorten focused on the need to crack down on ‘shonks’ supposedly exploiting the NDIS. The Liberals can use this to say it’s not the scheme they’re opposed to, but rather that the cost blow-out is directly related to fraud.

This delivers a dream political trifecta for the opposition. They can claim to be for the scheme and pro disability care, but insist the government is simply incapable when it comes to administering it. They can use Shorten’s words against Labor by pointing to ‘rorting’. Finally, they can bank purported savings and use them for tax cuts elsewhere.

This is a dangerous political vulnerability for the government and, by extension, the NDIS. The growing cost of the scheme is threatening its very existence.

When originally envisaged the scheme was just meant to support a small number of people in the community who had major lifelong disabilities.

“Labor’s reforms,” it continued, “hinge on diverting people with less serious conditions to alternative services. Something must be done to curb the unplanned expansion of the NDIS, which now provides services for 12 per cent of boys aged between five and seven, many diagnosed with mild autism.”

The truth or otherwise of these claims is not the point.

The effectiveness of this attack is to suggest that the country was doing the correct thing by backing the NDIS but that a good program has been corrupted. This allows people - voters - to feel guilt free as they demand less money spent on disability.

But there is a further point. Australia now spends 50% more on disability care than other wealthy countries (as measured by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development). Is our care really that much better?

The answer is undoubtedly yes. The real question should be is this sustainable.

We may soon have a political answer to that question.