NDIS black hole risk as states back away from savings measures
As the agency's latest quarterly report shows one in 10 children aged five to seven now receive support from a scheme originally intended to care for the permanently and significantly disabled, AFR Weekend has learnt the plan to take those children off the NDIS – supposed to be operational by July 1 this year – has foundered.
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Sydney Morning Herald
6 hours ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
Government must make clear roundtable is only the first step
A month after the election, Anthony Albanese gave a speech to the National Press Club. Eight days later, Jim Chalmers did the same. The two speeches were monologues, of course – but seemed to be in dialogue with each other. Albanese announced a roundtable at which the government would try to build support for economic reform, 'to drive growth, boost productivity, strengthen the budget and secure the resilience of our economy'. Chalmers, speaking of that same roundtable, said – almost as though replying directly to the prime minister – 'No sensible progress can be made on productivity, resilience or budget sustainability without proper consideration of more tax reform.' So if we don't see any tax reform coming directly out of this roundtable – which finally arrives this week – will the rest of us be justified in saying 'no sensible progress' has been made? The short answer is no – but with some important caveats. Why shouldn't the government be ridiculed if it fails to do much on tax this week? The answer lies in timing. Labor has been careful to keep its goals for the roundtable pretty broad. It has talked about building consensus and shaping long-term directions; it wants the event to 'lead to' concrete actions, with ideas generated for the next three budgets. All this can sound a bit of a squib – but there are good political reasons to proceed cautiously. It's highly unlikely most voters are ready for a series of tax announcements. Remember that Labor, early in its first term, foreshadowed tough conversations with voters about precisely these topics: spending and taxing. We need more services, which means we need more tax, which is harder to get with an ageing population. The government knew those conversations needed time. In the end, though, it didn't end up having them, for good reason: inflation made it a pretty stupid time to be asking people to pay more tax. Loading Now the government is having to start that process again. This time, that tax conversation has been reframed, to be about productivity. Productivity has been the government's buzzword since election night. But in political terms, that's no time at all. If anyone at the summit thinks 'productivity' has penetrated the dinner table discussions of most families yet, they're crazy. That's the argument for not acting straightaway. At the other end of the spectrum is the idea Labor will take only big changes – in particular on tax – to the next election. The prime minister has previously spoken of perhaps taking more of his universal childcare agenda to the next election. So you can imagine the government offering, at that poll, a new tax agenda alongside other changes – so that, say, higher taxes were balanced by better or cheaper services, such as childcare. This approach would be consistent with past Labor policies to introduce universal care, such as Medicare and the NDIS, both of which came with levies attached. (The opposition says, 'you don't raise living standards by raising taxes', which sounds like common sense until you remember Medicare did exactly that.)
The Age
6 hours ago
- The Age
Government must make clear roundtable is only the first step
A month after the election, Anthony Albanese gave a speech to the National Press Club. Eight days later, Jim Chalmers did the same. The two speeches were monologues, of course – but seemed to be in dialogue with each other. Albanese announced a roundtable at which the government would try to build support for economic reform, 'to drive growth, boost productivity, strengthen the budget and secure the resilience of our economy'. Chalmers, speaking of that same roundtable, said – almost as though replying directly to the prime minister – 'No sensible progress can be made on productivity, resilience or budget sustainability without proper consideration of more tax reform.' So if we don't see any tax reform coming directly out of this roundtable – which finally arrives this week – will the rest of us be justified in saying 'no sensible progress' has been made? The short answer is no – but with some important caveats. Why shouldn't the government be ridiculed if it fails to do much on tax this week? The answer lies in timing. Labor has been careful to keep its goals for the roundtable pretty broad. It has talked about building consensus and shaping long-term directions; it wants the event to 'lead to' concrete actions, with ideas generated for the next three budgets. All this can sound a bit of a squib – but there are good political reasons to proceed cautiously. It's highly unlikely most voters are ready for a series of tax announcements. Remember that Labor, early in its first term, foreshadowed tough conversations with voters about precisely these topics: spending and taxing. We need more services, which means we need more tax, which is harder to get with an ageing population. The government knew those conversations needed time. In the end, though, it didn't end up having them, for good reason: inflation made it a pretty stupid time to be asking people to pay more tax. Loading Now the government is having to start that process again. This time, that tax conversation has been reframed, to be about productivity. Productivity has been the government's buzzword since election night. But in political terms, that's no time at all. If anyone at the summit thinks 'productivity' has penetrated the dinner table discussions of most families yet, they're crazy. That's the argument for not acting straightaway. At the other end of the spectrum is the idea Labor will take only big changes – in particular on tax – to the next election. The prime minister has previously spoken of perhaps taking more of his universal childcare agenda to the next election. So you can imagine the government offering, at that poll, a new tax agenda alongside other changes – so that, say, higher taxes were balanced by better or cheaper services, such as childcare. This approach would be consistent with past Labor policies to introduce universal care, such as Medicare and the NDIS, both of which came with levies attached. (The opposition says, 'you don't raise living standards by raising taxes', which sounds like common sense until you remember Medicare did exactly that.)
Sky News AU
a day ago
- Sky News AU
‘Endless Ponzi scheme': NDIS blasted for being ‘biggest drain' on taxpayers
Sky News Senior Reporter Caroline Marcus has labelled the NDIS an 'endless Ponzi scheme'. 'Even though it has become the biggest drain on taxpayers that this country has seen in a long time … it has instead blown out to include boys starting school who might not hold their pencils properly,' Ms Marcus said. 'This isn't an exaggeration – I know from having kids of a preschool age just how rife this is that suddenly what we would have considered growing up as normal and you'll develop, learn as you grow, now, suddenly, there's a developmental disorder and attention disorder because boys can't sit still in class.'
