Huge cuts to national disability insurance scheme aim to save more than $36bn in budget’s largest single measure

The government expects to recoup $36.2bn by curbing the national disability insurance scheme’s growth over the next four years as it looks to return to the NDIS’s “original purpose” of supporting people with “significant and permanent disability”. The treasurer, Jim Chalmers, said the budget’s savings package amounted to genuine economic reform, beyond the “usual nips and tucks”. “It is all about saving the NDIS from itself,” he said on Tuesday. “It’s all about making sure that we can continue to provide [the] levels of support people need and deserve in a way the country can afford.” Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email The budget papers show changes to limit who can access the NDIS – which supports more than 760,000 Australians with disabilities – will reduce participant payments by at least $37.8bn until 2030. The health minister, Mark Butler, announced last month he would introduce drastic changes to bring down the scheme’s growth to 2% every year until the end of the decade to prevent its budget soaring past the $100bn-a-year mark by the mid-2030s. The budget papers show the plan to reduce the NDIS’s growth is by far the budget’s single largest savings measure . The National Disability Insurance Agency, which runs the scheme, also faces cuts, with its headcount reduced by 669 in the next financial year to 9,840. But the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission will gain almost 200 more staff as the government widens registration requirements for providers. …