The Australian government has spent years telling us the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) is broken. It has pushed that narrative in media briefings, parliamentary speeches and fabricated racist statistics about provider fraud in working-class suburbs.

Having successfully eroded public trust in the NDIS and its purpose, it is now using that to justify dismantling it.

Health minister Mark Butler announced the most significant cuts to the NDIS since the scheme began at the National Press Club on April 22. He said it was “reform” and “sustainability”. In fact, it is the largest rollback of disability rights in a generation. The people who will pay for it are the same people the scheme was built to protect.

But before a single cut was announced, the narrative had to be built.

We have had years of headlines about “rorts and rorters” and politicians talking about waste and fraud as though every participant was a suspect and every provider was criminal.

The now infamous claim about 3000 NDIS providers operating out of Lakemba, a figure that was fabricated, deliberately targeted a predominantly working class, migrant and Muslim community. The allegation was then repeated by journalists and ministers, without scrutiny. It was a racist lie and did exactly what it was designed to do. It made the public angry, eroded trust and gave the government the cover it needed.

Meanwhile fossil fuel corporations, which pay next to nothing in resource taxes, face no equivalent scrutiny.

Let us be clear about what fraud in the NDIS actually looks like. It is not participants using their funding to live their lives.

Yes, the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission has said that organised crime syndicates have infiltrated the scheme and used intimidation, cash kickbacks and threatened violence against vulnerable people. But the victims of NDIS fraud are overwhelmingly people with disability and yet the government's response is to cut the very supports that protect those people.

Butler announced on April 22 that 160,000 people will be removed from the NDIS. Many will be autistic people and people with developmental disability and they will be removed before alternative supports exist. [source?].

Overall average plan approvals will drop from........

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