Inside Albanese and Shorten's NDIS funding victory
A long-running review into the NDIS released today recommends drastic action to get the spiralling costs of the scheme under control.
Bill Shorten has spent the first 18 months of his tenure in the Albanese government trying to rein in the spiralling costs of the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
The NDIS is a centrepiece Labor policy, but without reforms the cost of funding is set to to almost triple to $92 billion over the next decade, making it one of the biggest line items in the budget and a key reason why the country's finances are in structural deficit.
Reforming the NDIS is therefore an urgent task, and one that's politically fraught for Labor with the government suffering a serious dip in the polls on the back of the cost-of-living crisis and its handling of the High Court's decision on indefinite detention.
But on Wednesday, despite months of resistance, the Albanese government clinched a deal with state and territory leaders to deal with the problem. At this week's national cabinet, the states signed up to a new system of "foundational supports" outside of the NDIS. Without securing this deal, the changes outlined in a 12-month review into the scheme, released this morning, would not have been achievable.
