The big surprise of the budget has been how Labor has got it so wrong, politically. The mistake didn’t begin in the NDIS minister’s office.

This is a story that will probably never have an ending. We may never know how the wheels began coming off Labor’s grand project - not just the NDIS, but the far bigger project of governing the country.

The point is, though, that since April the government has first ignited a huge bonfire on its left through a botched attempt to curb the dramatic growth of the NDIS, and then on its right by forcing through much-needed tax reform.

How could things have gone so badly wrong that, according to polling, Pauline Hanson now leads the most popular opposition party?

We may never know the answer to that question, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worthwhile trying to find one. That’s because its answer goes a long way towards our judgment about who can be trusted as Australia embarks on a path to reconstituting the NDIS.

The key date is April 22, in Canberra. That was when Health Minister Mark Butler suddenly announced - from out of the blue - that the NDIS was to be radically reformed. It was a huge package, revealed with no prior warning; no effort made to solicit ideas from the sector in composing it; no effort made to soften the sector up beforehand.

NDIS Minister Jenny McAllister wasn’t at the at the National Press Club that day.

That was a very surprising omission, particularly as the reforms completely concerned her portfolio. What followed has been a significant setback to Labor.

Despite their assurances the the reform will progress, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Health Minister Mark Butler are being badly wounded as the implementation process continues.

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It was also a revealing omission.

When Jenny McAllister became Minister for the NDIS in May last year, she did not arrive pretending the scheme could continue as it was. She began, publicly at least, with the opposite proposition. The NDIS had to be secured. It had to be made fairer. It had to work better for participants, providers and taxpayers. But it also had to be changed with people with disability, not simply imposed on them. McAllister was appointed Minister for the NDIS in the outer ministry; Mark Butler, sitting in cabinet, held the broader Disability and NDIS title as part of the health portfolio.

A week after being sworn in, McAllister told the DSC Conference in Melbourne she had been meeting departmental officials, the NDIA, state and territory counterparts, advocates, providers, regulators, academics, workers and people with lived experience of disability. She said the most important conversations were with participants themselves. She invoked the old disability movement demand: “nothing about us, without us”. Her central promise was process: the scheme must be designed, overseen and implemented in partnership with people who live inside it.

That was not just rhetoric. In August, the Government announced the membership of the NDIS Reform Advisory Committee. Its purpose was to give people with disability a formal role in shaping reform implementation. It was chaired by El Gibbs and Dougie Herd, included state and territory representatives and community members, and the Government said the majority of members were people with disability. The committee was to advise the Minister for the NDIS and disability ministers through the Disability Reform Ministerial Council.

In September, McAllister also announced the NDIS Evidence Advisory Committee, chaired by Associate Professor Jill Duncan. Again, the architecture mattered. The Government said Duncan and a majority of committee members were people with disability, and that the committee would use research, lived experience and community views to judge which NDIS supports should be funded. This was slow reform. Committee reform. Evidence reform. Reform that at least recognised the political reality that the NDIS cannot be remade by spreadsheet alone.

None of this means McAllister could have been surprised by the numbers. No serious minister could have been. National Cabinet had already agreed to push annual NDIS cost growth down to 5 to 6 per cent, while also funding Thriving Kids as part of the broader foundational supports promise. The parliamentary library’s own bill digest later noted the scheme had grown 22 per cent in 2022–23 and was still growing at 11.3 per cent in the year to March 2026.

The problem was not that Labor discovered the NDIS was growing. The problem was what happened next.

On April 22, Butler used the National Press Club to announce a new course. He said urgent financial controls were needed, that legislation would be introduced as soon as Parliament resumed in budget week, and that the Government wanted passage by June 30. He referred to a $13 billion blowout and set out a two-stage process: immediate controls first; eligibility work later.

That compressed everything.

The careful machinery McAllister had been constructing was overtaken by a budget timetable. The reform language remained. The advisory committees still existed. The language of lived experience was still available. But the political signal had changed. This was no longer principally about co-design. It was about savings.

The budget then made that explicit. The Government booked $37.8 billion in expected NDIS savings over four years, while insisting the scheme would keep growing and remain Australia’s largest social program outside the Age Pension.

By May 14, the bill was in Parliament. It promised to clarify eligibility, tighten what the NDIS funds, address fraud and update governance. That may sound administrative. It was not heard that way by the sector.

The most damaging response came from inside the very process McAllister had helped create. The NDIS Reform Advisory Committee warned the overhaul would cause material harm, undermine the scheme’s original intentions, and concentrate unprecedented power in the Commonwealth minister. It urged the Government to redraft the bill in genuine partnership with the disability community.

That is the story now.

Not whether the NDIS needs reform. It does.

Not whether McAllister understood that. She plainly did.

The question is why a government that had begun building the institutions for careful reform then chose to crash through them. The Senate inquiry has now been extended until August 14 after Labor struck a deal with the Greens. Disability advocates welcomed the pause after what had been described as a rushed and disrespectful process.

That does not fix the damage. It simply gives Labor time to decide whether the process McAllister began still matters.