Australians with disability urge the federal government to stop cuts to vital health services amid NDIS overhaul
Physiotherapists, psychologists, podiatrists and other professionals warn the cuts will threaten independence, dignity and even safety for many NDIS participants.
Among those affected is 55-year-old Megan Fitzgerald, who lives with cerebral palsy.
For years, she has relied on weekly visits from a physiotherapist to maintain her independence.
'I'm wanting to keep myself as independent and fit as possible and keep my body moving, and it's not happening,' Fitzgerald told 7NEWS.
Funding cuts have meant she has to make her own way to centres and it's already impacted her mobility.
'I found my body getting stiffer, not having the regular movements, not being able to move,' she said.
But Megan Fitzgerald is not alone.
Taylor Lahoud, 29, who has a newborn at home, cares for his mother, Rosanna, who suffered brain damage after being hit by a car decades ago.
He says therapy changed her life.
But when services began to be cut, her health deteriorated.
'It definitely was helping when we were coming here and they were coming to the home more often. It made a big difference. Mum was actually able to walk a lot more ... now she's pretty much in the wheelchair 99 per cent of the time,' Lahoud told 7NEWS.
'You've got some people out there with all this funding and other people without it. It's so inconsistent, it's like a slap to the face.
'This is a program that's meant to help people but it's so skewed and it's just so backwards. It does not feel like there was any thinking or planning to anything that's going on.'
Four-year-old Primrose Peach also benefits greatly from NDIS-funded services.
Primrose has a rare genetic condition that currently prevents her from walking or talking.
She receives intensive therapy to help with speech and mobility.
Mum Tahlia said further cuts to the sector will have severe consequences.
'Primrose is so close to walking, but without these services, she probably won't be walking for years ... services like this are integral to her development,' she said.
From next week, NDIS funding will be reduced across the board.
Hourly rates for allied health professionals including physiotherapy, dietitians, speech pathology, occupational therapy and psychology will be cut by up to $10.
Travel expense reimbursements will be slashed by 50 per cent and a seven-year freeze on pricing adjustments will remain in place.
Physiotherapist Melissa McConaghy said the changes will decimate an already distressed market.
'At the end of the day, it will be the participants that lose out,' she said.
However, the federal government insists the cuts are necessary.
Health Minister Mark Butler said: 'We want to make sure that NDIS participants are not paying above the odds for therapy and for their support. We want to make sure that taxpayers are getting value for money.'
But experts argue that the short-term savings will ultimately lead to greater costs, as vulnerable Australians who lose access to support services will likely end up in hospital-further straining the healthcare system.
'Physiotherapists can be life-saving. We keep people independent, we keep them mobile and we keep people out of hospital. We are already seeing cuts in the market that is leading to hospitalisations for chest infections, for pressure sores, for falls. We are just going to see so much more of this down the track,' Melissa McConaghy told 7NEWS.
Paediatric therapist Louise Conn said it was really important to have an increased level of early intervention, to prevent further issues down the track.
'It's going to make a huge difference in terms of access to families to all sorts of programs like this and particularly for any allied health, particularly occupational therapists and speech pathologists who go out into the community and see families in their home settings, in school settings and beyond,' Conn said.
'This is going to make a huge, huge difference to what we're able to provide to these families.'
In just over a week, more than 50,000 Australians have signed a petition urging the federal government to halt the changes — and consult meaningfully with the sector.
Advocates are now calling for an immediate review — before people with disability are left without the essential support they rely on.
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Sydney Morning Herald
3 minutes ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
The lifecycle of plastics, a modern wonder that is choking the planet
This is the thought that keeps Professor Sarah Dunlop awake at night: every piece of plastic that has ever been made – and ever will be made – will eventually break down, piece by piece, into ever-smaller fragments. There's growing international recognition that we can't recycle our way out of this mess. Global negotiations in Geneva, which failed to reach consensus on Friday, were seen as the last chance to convince UN member states to sign up to legally binding measures to limit plastic production to address waste at its source. Negotiator Kate Lynch said Australia was 'very disappointed' the session adjourned without resolution for an ambitious global plastics treaty, which aimed to reduce pollution through the lengthy life cycle of plastic products. 'This isn't an ambit claim or rhetoric for us,' she told the session. 'We know that it is an important issue for the global community, particularly the Pacific, where an outsized impact of plastic pollution is felt.' As plastic ages, it degrades. Most of us have heard of microplastics; the small pieces of plastic smaller than 5mm. Less well-known are nanoplastics, which are invisible to the naked eye but enter the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat; in ever-increasing amounts. 'Plastic is toxic, whether it's virgin or recycled,' says Dunlop, the head of plastics and human health at Minderoo Foundation. 'It has toxic chemicals in it, and it will break up into micro and nanoplastics which are like a massive army of mini-Trojan horses carrying toxic chemicals into us. It's a flawed material.' Chemicals added to polymers in the process of creating different types of plastic cause disruption to human endocrine systems and may be carcinogenic. The Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation (APCO), representing the packaging industry, estimates Australians used 1.26 million tonnes of plastic packaging in 2022-23 – equivalent to 47 kg of plastic packaging for every person. Packaging fuels the climate crisis The overwhelming majority of soft plastic we in use in Australia (more than 90 per cent) is constructed from virgin fossil fuels, rather than recycled plastic polymers. Global petrochemical companies like ExxonMobil and Dow, and the Chinese state-owned Sinopec, have a massive stake in our dependence on single-use plastic. According to research by Minderoo Foundation, in 2021 (the most recent figures available) ExxonMobil was the world's biggest creator of polymers used in single-use plastics. From 55 of Exxon's facilities came 11.2 million metric tonnes of polymer plastics that year, which ultimately produced about 5.9 million metric tonnes of plastic waste. (Asked about the findings, and why the company doesn't rely more heavily on recycled polymers, a spokeswoman for ExxonMobil said she had 'nothing to share on the results of Minderoo's study'.) Global plastics leader China manufactured an estimated 80 million metric tonnes of plastic in 2021. The UN reports the world produces about 400 million metric tonnes of plastic waste each year. Not only is single-use plastic creating a pollution nightmare, it is fuelling the climate crisis. Minderoo, and energy transition experts Wood Mackenzie, estimate the global 'cradle to grave' greenhouse gas emissions from single-use plastics in 2021 was 460 million tonnes – equivalent to the total emissions output of the United Kingdom. From factories here and overseas, single-use plastics now enters our lives in a dizzying and growing number of ways. Adding insult to injury, we're paying for the stuff. Research conducted by the Australian Marine Conservation Society showed the cost of pre-packaged fruit and vegetables was often higher than loose produce. A study by CSIRO and University of Toronto, released in April, estimated some 11 million tonnes of plastic now sits on ocean floors around the globe. At the current trajectory, plastic pollution will double by 2040, and the rate of plastics entering the world's oceans would triple in that time. Within 30 years it could surpass the biomass of the world's fish. Industry body APCO says 19 per cent of plastic packaging was recovered in 2022-23, while the Environment Department calculates only 13 per cent of single-use plastic is recycled. The rest goes into landfill or waterways. 'As people, as responsible citizens trying desperately to look after our common home, the planet, we must always think: where does something come from, and where does it go? It comes from fossil fuel, and it goes to waste,' says Dunlop. 'Because at the moment, we are wedded to the convenience. It's this death by a thousand conveniences.' The Minderoo Foundation argues that nothing less than internationally binding instruments – a Paris Agreement for plastic pollution, if you will – will stem this toxic tide. 'We can't recycle our way out of this' In 2010, the REDcycle scheme was launched with great fanfare, giving consumers a sense of power over the sheer volume of plastic that enters our homes as packaging. But the soft plastics captured by the REDcycle scheme weren't recycled into new plastics packaging; they were transformed into ingredients used in concrete, asphalt, street furniture, bollards and shopping trolleys. Australian Marine Conservation Society plastics campaigner Cip Hamilton describes plastics recycling as a hollow victory. 'Recycling [plastic] really delays our disposal of products – we need to look at the root of the issue, which is how we can reduce the amount of plastic that we're using.' In a factory in Melbourne's industrial west, the air is acrid with the stench of chemicals. Every hour this factory's machines thunder along, another tonne of single-use plastic is diverted from landfill. Much of the degraded plastic being processed here was stockpiled by the ill-fated REDcycle scheme, which collapsed in 2022, all-but wiping out the already-inadequate soft plastics recycling initiatives in Australia. Australian Food and Grocery Council chief executive Tanya Barden last year told a Senate inquiry that, even at its peak, REDcycle was only collecting 2-4 per cent of soft plastics on the market. 'One of the problems with the REDcycle system was the lack of processing capacity [and] that is still a significant issue,' she said. 'There isn't infrastructure in Australia that can process soft plastic back into food-grade quality [plastic]; existing mechanical recycling can't do that. So at the moment, you can only put it back into road bases and bollards.' Tangaroa Blue Foundation chief executive Heidi Tait told the same inquiry that while soft plastics can be transformed into materials like decking and bollards, it doesn't mean they should. 'Those products that are meant to be the solution to our soft plastics [problem] are just degrading into microplastics in the environment,' she said. 'They start to look ugly, they get pulled out, and they go to landfill ... we're not actually diverting from landfill, we're actually delaying landfill, and we're giving these products opportunity to pollute again in process [by] extending their life.' This is an inconvenient truth. Another inconvenient truth is that in Australia currently, there are four options: use less plastic, send it to landfill, let it wind up in the natural environment, or repurpose it into other single-use products. Back in the factory in Melbourne's west, CRDC Australia managing director Shane Ramsey strides between giant bales of tattered soft plastics. Ramsey heads the Australian arm of a company that began as a beach clean-up enterprise in Costa Rica. Now, the company has factories in four countries, including a fledgling factory in Melbourne that can repurpose one tonne of plastic an hour. CRDC transforms soft and hard plastics, and aluminised plastics like chip packets, into an aggregate used in building materials called Resin8. It's lighter and holds more heat than regular building materials, making it an attractive prospect for industry. Ramsay estimates the factory has processed hundreds of tonnes of stockpiled plastic from REDcycle. 'High-value plastic should stay in the loop as long as it can,' he says. 'But ultimately, it gets to the point where it can't continue in the life it was in, and we need to have an alternative for it.' Where do we go from here? Australia has set a national target for 70 per cent of plastic packaging to be recycled or composted by this year. We're well behind on the goal – according to the latest figures available, in 2022-23 we managed to repurpose just 19 per cent (down 1 per cent on the previous year). Before the election, former environment minister Tanya Plibersek said the federal government, states and territories and business were investing $1 billion to recycle an extra 1.3 million tonnes per year. Loading 'Australians know how important it is to reduce our plastic waste. That's why so many are doing their bit to reduce their consumption, reusing where they can and recycling as much as possible,' she told this masthead. 'Having individuals keen to do their bit is fantastic – but it's not enough. More than 70 per cent of a product's environmental impact is locked in at the design stage, before a customer ever looks at it.' A departmental spokeswoman said the government remained committed to reform. Australia has long pushed for a strong new international treaty on plastic pollution, and the government has been promising since 2023 to introduce mandatory packaging design standards and targets. In February, the federal Environment Department published the results of a government consultation that showed a clear majority of respondents supported Commonwealth regulation of packaging. Dunlop says to reduce our reliance on plastic we should start being more frugal and thinking more like our great-grandparents who didn't live with single-use plastic. We also urgently need safe and sustainable alternative materials that don't contain toxic chemicals, she said. 'The problem is very serious and accelerating.' she says. 'And we can act now.'
The Age
3 minutes ago
- The Age
The lifecycle of plastics, a modern wonder that is choking the planet
This is the thought that keeps Professor Sarah Dunlop awake at night: every piece of plastic that has ever been made – and ever will be made – will eventually break down, piece by piece, into ever-smaller fragments. There's growing international recognition that we can't recycle our way out of this mess. Global negotiations in Geneva, which failed to reach consensus on Friday, were seen as the last chance to convince UN member states to sign up to legally binding measures to limit plastic production to address waste at its source. Negotiator Kate Lynch said Australia was 'very disappointed' the session adjourned without resolution for an ambitious global plastics treaty, which aimed to reduce pollution through the lengthy life cycle of plastic products. 'This isn't an ambit claim or rhetoric for us,' she told the session. 'We know that it is an important issue for the global community, particularly the Pacific, where an outsized impact of plastic pollution is felt.' As plastic ages, it degrades. Most of us have heard of microplastics; the small pieces of plastic smaller than 5mm. Less well-known are nanoplastics, which are invisible to the naked eye but enter the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat; in ever-increasing amounts. 'Plastic is toxic, whether it's virgin or recycled,' says Dunlop, the head of plastics and human health at Minderoo Foundation. 'It has toxic chemicals in it, and it will break up into micro and nanoplastics which are like a massive army of mini-Trojan horses carrying toxic chemicals into us. It's a flawed material.' Chemicals added to polymers in the process of creating different types of plastic cause disruption to human endocrine systems and may be carcinogenic. The Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation (APCO), representing the packaging industry, estimates Australians used 1.26 million tonnes of plastic packaging in 2022-23 – equivalent to 47 kg of plastic packaging for every person. Packaging fuels the climate crisis The overwhelming majority of soft plastic we in use in Australia (more than 90 per cent) is constructed from virgin fossil fuels, rather than recycled plastic polymers. Global petrochemical companies like ExxonMobil and Dow, and the Chinese state-owned Sinopec, have a massive stake in our dependence on single-use plastic. According to research by Minderoo Foundation, in 2021 (the most recent figures available) ExxonMobil was the world's biggest creator of polymers used in single-use plastics. From 55 of Exxon's facilities came 11.2 million metric tonnes of polymer plastics that year, which ultimately produced about 5.9 million metric tonnes of plastic waste. (Asked about the findings, and why the company doesn't rely more heavily on recycled polymers, a spokeswoman for ExxonMobil said she had 'nothing to share on the results of Minderoo's study'.) Global plastics leader China manufactured an estimated 80 million metric tonnes of plastic in 2021. The UN reports the world produces about 400 million metric tonnes of plastic waste each year. Not only is single-use plastic creating a pollution nightmare, it is fuelling the climate crisis. Minderoo, and energy transition experts Wood Mackenzie, estimate the global 'cradle to grave' greenhouse gas emissions from single-use plastics in 2021 was 460 million tonnes – equivalent to the total emissions output of the United Kingdom. From factories here and overseas, single-use plastics now enters our lives in a dizzying and growing number of ways. Adding insult to injury, we're paying for the stuff. Research conducted by the Australian Marine Conservation Society showed the cost of pre-packaged fruit and vegetables was often higher than loose produce. A study by CSIRO and University of Toronto, released in April, estimated some 11 million tonnes of plastic now sits on ocean floors around the globe. At the current trajectory, plastic pollution will double by 2040, and the rate of plastics entering the world's oceans would triple in that time. Within 30 years it could surpass the biomass of the world's fish. Industry body APCO says 19 per cent of plastic packaging was recovered in 2022-23, while the Environment Department calculates only 13 per cent of single-use plastic is recycled. The rest goes into landfill or waterways. 'As people, as responsible citizens trying desperately to look after our common home, the planet, we must always think: where does something come from, and where does it go? It comes from fossil fuel, and it goes to waste,' says Dunlop. 'Because at the moment, we are wedded to the convenience. It's this death by a thousand conveniences.' The Minderoo Foundation argues that nothing less than internationally binding instruments – a Paris Agreement for plastic pollution, if you will – will stem this toxic tide. 'We can't recycle our way out of this' In 2010, the REDcycle scheme was launched with great fanfare, giving consumers a sense of power over the sheer volume of plastic that enters our homes as packaging. But the soft plastics captured by the REDcycle scheme weren't recycled into new plastics packaging; they were transformed into ingredients used in concrete, asphalt, street furniture, bollards and shopping trolleys. Australian Marine Conservation Society plastics campaigner Cip Hamilton describes plastics recycling as a hollow victory. 'Recycling [plastic] really delays our disposal of products – we need to look at the root of the issue, which is how we can reduce the amount of plastic that we're using.' In a factory in Melbourne's industrial west, the air is acrid with the stench of chemicals. Every hour this factory's machines thunder along, another tonne of single-use plastic is diverted from landfill. Much of the degraded plastic being processed here was stockpiled by the ill-fated REDcycle scheme, which collapsed in 2022, all-but wiping out the already-inadequate soft plastics recycling initiatives in Australia. Australian Food and Grocery Council chief executive Tanya Barden last year told a Senate inquiry that, even at its peak, REDcycle was only collecting 2-4 per cent of soft plastics on the market. 'One of the problems with the REDcycle system was the lack of processing capacity [and] that is still a significant issue,' she said. 'There isn't infrastructure in Australia that can process soft plastic back into food-grade quality [plastic]; existing mechanical recycling can't do that. So at the moment, you can only put it back into road bases and bollards.' Tangaroa Blue Foundation chief executive Heidi Tait told the same inquiry that while soft plastics can be transformed into materials like decking and bollards, it doesn't mean they should. 'Those products that are meant to be the solution to our soft plastics [problem] are just degrading into microplastics in the environment,' she said. 'They start to look ugly, they get pulled out, and they go to landfill ... we're not actually diverting from landfill, we're actually delaying landfill, and we're giving these products opportunity to pollute again in process [by] extending their life.' This is an inconvenient truth. Another inconvenient truth is that in Australia currently, there are four options: use less plastic, send it to landfill, let it wind up in the natural environment, or repurpose it into other single-use products. Back in the factory in Melbourne's west, CRDC Australia managing director Shane Ramsey strides between giant bales of tattered soft plastics. Ramsey heads the Australian arm of a company that began as a beach clean-up enterprise in Costa Rica. Now, the company has factories in four countries, including a fledgling factory in Melbourne that can repurpose one tonne of plastic an hour. CRDC transforms soft and hard plastics, and aluminised plastics like chip packets, into an aggregate used in building materials called Resin8. It's lighter and holds more heat than regular building materials, making it an attractive prospect for industry. Ramsay estimates the factory has processed hundreds of tonnes of stockpiled plastic from REDcycle. 'High-value plastic should stay in the loop as long as it can,' he says. 'But ultimately, it gets to the point where it can't continue in the life it was in, and we need to have an alternative for it.' Where do we go from here? Australia has set a national target for 70 per cent of plastic packaging to be recycled or composted by this year. We're well behind on the goal – according to the latest figures available, in 2022-23 we managed to repurpose just 19 per cent (down 1 per cent on the previous year). Before the election, former environment minister Tanya Plibersek said the federal government, states and territories and business were investing $1 billion to recycle an extra 1.3 million tonnes per year. Loading 'Australians know how important it is to reduce our plastic waste. That's why so many are doing their bit to reduce their consumption, reusing where they can and recycling as much as possible,' she told this masthead. 'Having individuals keen to do their bit is fantastic – but it's not enough. More than 70 per cent of a product's environmental impact is locked in at the design stage, before a customer ever looks at it.' A departmental spokeswoman said the government remained committed to reform. Australia has long pushed for a strong new international treaty on plastic pollution, and the government has been promising since 2023 to introduce mandatory packaging design standards and targets. In February, the federal Environment Department published the results of a government consultation that showed a clear majority of respondents supported Commonwealth regulation of packaging. Dunlop says to reduce our reliance on plastic we should start being more frugal and thinking more like our great-grandparents who didn't live with single-use plastic. We also urgently need safe and sustainable alternative materials that don't contain toxic chemicals, she said. 'The problem is very serious and accelerating.' she says. 'And we can act now.'
Perth Now
12 hours ago
- Perth Now
Deadly trend on the rise in major state
Victoria has been rocked by the highest number of fatal overdoses in a decade, with nearly 600 residents dying from drug overdoses last year alone. Ten years ago, illicit drugs contributed to less than half of all overdose deaths. In 2024, the Coroners Court found this figure increased to 65.6 per cent. Overdose deaths have spiked in Victoria. NewsWire / David Geraghty Credit: News Corp Australia It's a figure increasing yearly, with 584 Victorian residents dying from drug overdoses in 2024, up from 547 the year before and 552 in 2022. Heroin contributed to 248 deaths in the state, and 215 deaths were related to methamphetamine – a stat that has tripled since 2015. The majority of all overdose deaths occurred in metropolitan Melbourne, with about 75 per cent being unintentional. Monash University Associate Professor Shalini Arunogiri told NewsWire the bleak new figures were a reminder of the lack of treatment available for opioid addictions. 'Each of these 584 deaths represents a life lost unnecessarily,' she said. 'Behind every statistic is someone's loved one, a friend, a sibling, a parent.' Worryingly, the majority of the fatal overdoses were men, who made up two-thirds of total deaths over the past decade. Heroin was the leading drug found in the fatal overdoses, followed by methamphetamine. NewsWire / David Geraghty Credit: News Corp Australia Ms Arunogiri said there was a 'strong connection' between drug abuse and mental health, especially if people lacked access to mental health support and effective treatment and instead turned to substances as their 'only available relief'. 'People often turn to substances as a way of coping with untreated trauma, anxiety, depression or other psychological distress,' she said. 'This is why integrated care that treats both mental health and substance use is so important.' The increase in fatal heroin and methamphetamine overdoses was 'particularly concerning', Ms Arunogiri said, as harm reduction methods were available to prevent further deaths. 'The positive here is that solutions do exist, we just need to implement what works,' she said. 'Expanding medication-assisted treatment for opioid addiction must be a priority, given heroin's role as the top contributor.' Ms Arunogiri said lifesaving medications needed to be provided at a faster rate to prevent overdoses. 'Medications like methadone and buprenorphine can reduce the risk of overdose, but people often face long waits for care,' she said. 'Effective measures like drug checking and expanding access to opioid overdose reversal medications, such as naloxone, is also critical.' There's a 'strong connection' between drug use and mental health. Credit: Supplied Penington Institute chief executive John Ryan said 'too many Australians are dying from preventable drug overdoses' and argued governments were '(refusing) to fully embrace measures to drive down this horrific toll'. 'We're still not spending enough money on proven harm reduction initiatives like drug testing, supervised injecting, community education and the wide provision of the anti-overdose drug naloxone,' he said. In May, the Victorian government introduced its take-home naloxone program, which was expanded across 50 needle and syringe program providers, including over the counter at pharmacies, at the Medically Supervised Injecting Room and via prescription to expand access to the medication. Health of the Nation: drugs and alcohol Ms Arunogiri said these were 'important steps' to preventing further harm. 'These evidence-based interventions are crucial, but we need further investment to make sure everyone can access the health care they need,' she said. 'The most devastating thing is that we know these deaths were preventable. 'We understand what works – effective medications, harm reduction services, early intervention, but we need to remove the barriers that keep people from accessing the healthcare we all deserve.'
