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Quite deliberately, the NDIS is being allowed to plunge into existential crisis. This is not a bug - it’s a deliberate strategy.

The first pressure - the force that’s behind and driving this month’s dramatic changes to the scheme - is the issue of legitimacy.

It began with Bill Shorten talking about shonks exploiting the NDIS and ripping off users. He was attempting to reassure the public that he had the issue under control. The problem was the costs kept growing.

Although the exponential growth of earlier years had slowed to ‘only’ around eight percent, this was so far above inflation that it began eating away at the legitimacy of the whole scheme. This established the conditions under which change, dramatic change, would be seen not just as desirable but necessary.

The next block that had to fall into place was political. The government needed both the numbers in parliament to push through its desired changes and the time and space to transition through a period of angst and instability.

This moment in time has given Mark Butler perhaps his only chance to act in this term. The next election is so far away that he’ll be able to shove through the alterations and move to the new system before the normal problems of implementing a new system begins to derail it.

The third necessary condition for change is a willing bureaucracy and disorganised opponents.

The NDIA has known the current trajectory of the scheme is unsustainable for a long time - it just lacked the capacity (or a plan) to act. It still doesn’t have a map that will navigate us to the sunny uplands of a sustainable disability care scheme for all. That doesn’t matter, it will emerge.

At the moment the push is simply to act, to do something that will create the conditions for further savings. That’s why it’s moved to implement two radical changes with virtually no notice: slashing costs in the annual pricing review and introducing the three-month funding periods.

The NDIA is not out of control; it’s doing exactly what the politicians want. Administering a laxative that will purge the system and leave it so shocked and gasping for breath.

Soon everyone will be desperately attempting just to survive. Concerted opposition to the changes will become unthinkable.