They say a society is judged by how it treats its most vulnerable. Right now, the Australian government is making its priorities devastatingly clear – pulling the rug out from under tens of thousands of people living with a disability, while simultaneously funnelling record billions into weapons and letting corporate giants off the hook.
Under the government’s sweeping overhaul of the National Disability Insurance Scheme, participant numbers are targeted to be slashed by 160,000 by the end of the decade. That is 160,000 vulnerable Australians – our family members, our friends, our neighbours – effectively kicked off a scheme that was designed to be their permanent safety net.
The government insists the NDIS is “unsustainable”. They claim that introducing new standardised functional assessments and reducing average plan spending are “hard but responsible decisions”. But for families like mine, who rely heavily on the NDIS just to survive day-to-day, these aren’t abstract line items on a treasury spreadsheet. They are our lives.
When politicians talk about “curbing growth”, they are actively talking about stripping away the foundational supports that allow people with disabilities to live with basic dignity.
While the government claims core NDIS supports are protected, aggressive price freezes and crushing bureaucratic red tape are acting as devastating stealth cuts. Essential therapies that help individuals communicate, regulate and learn are becoming entirely inaccessible as providers are financially squeezed out of the scheme. Crucial mobility aids – the very equipment that literally allows people to leave their homes and exist in society – are now trapped behind exhausting delays and rigid new assessments. Compounding this, stagnant funding is driving dedicated support workers out of the sector, stripping vulnerable people of the fundamental care they rely on for everyday survival and independence.
When the government cuts back these supports, people don’t magically stop needing them. Instead, they lose their independence, their connection to the community, and their opportunity to thrive.
Is the budget actually broken or are our national priorities deeply misplaced? Watch how quickly the narrative flips when the conversation turns to defence. Suddenly, government spending is no longer a “burden” – it becomes an “essential investment”. The government can effortlessly conjure hundreds of billions of dollars for nuclear submarines that won’t even see the water for decades. And it doesn’t stop at defence.
Just look at the timely debate this week around the massive, untaxed profits of multinational gas companies. We allow corporate giants to extract our natural resources while paying an absolute pittance in tax, shielding their wealth while everyday Australians struggle with the cost of living. Yet, when the government looks for savings, they don’t look at the gas cartels or the defence contractors. They look at disabled citizens who need basic home modifications.
The cruelty of this overhaul is compounded by the fact that the federal government is simply passing the buck. If a person is kicked off the scheme under these new, tighter eligibility rules, they are left to navigate a fractured, underfunded state system that leaders admit doesn’t even exist yet. As advocates have warned, if we get this wrong, the consequences won’t show up in a budget line – they will show up in people’s lives.
Last week, I sat and watched my sister after her music therapy session. For that brief, precious window of time, the heavy, exhausting barriers she battles every single day seemed to entirely lift. I saw pure, unfiltered smiles – a beautiful sense of freedom. That joy, that vital connection, that ability to finally experience life on her own terms – that is exactly what the NDIS was promised to be. Yet, under the cold reality of these recent reforms, this lifeline is being suffocated.
It is absolutely heartbreaking to have to constantly beg a bureaucratic system to let her keep the one thing that brings her peace, forced to reduce her genuine human joy into rigid, clinical paperwork just to prove she is “worthy” of keeping her own freedom.
The NDIS was never supposed to be just another welfare program to be trimmed when politically convenient; it was promised as a fundamental human right. It was built on the promise that Australians with a disability have an inherent right to live fulfilling, independent and dignified lives.
We cannot accept a society that readily funds the machinery of war and protects the profits of gas giants, while looking at my sister and her friends, and telling them that their freedom simply costs too much.
We can no longer afford to suffer in silence while a cold, calculated bureaucracy prioritises its bottom line over the very lives of the people we love. They are not a burden to be managed or an expense to be cut. They are human beings who deserve absolute dignity, and we must ensure they are never, ever left behind.
Satara Uthayakumaran is a writer and Australia’s youth representative to the United Nations for 2025.
Satara Uthayakumaran is a writer and Australia’s youth representative to the United Nations for 2025.
