If one story keeps Jeremy Cordeaux returning to the microphone, it is the NDIS. On this Garage edition of the Court of Public Opinion, he came back to it with mounting fury, tracing a scheme sketched on the back of an envelope that is now racing toward $100 billion a year, with, he says, no minister prepared to own it.
From An Envelope To $100 Billion
Jeremy set out the numbers. When the Productivity Commission and the Labor government were designing the scheme, the estimate, he said, was about $13 billion a year, reached almost casually. Before long it was $15 billion, then $20 billion, and now, he said, it runs at roughly $50 billion a year and is heading for $100 billion by 2030.
These people, he argued, are not business people or managers. A scheme of this magnitude was assembled, in his telling, without proper thought as to its ultimate cost, and without pausing to ask why no comparable organisation existed anywhere else in the world.
The Landmine Theory
Jeremy offered a pointed reading of its origins. Thirteen years ago, he argued, Labor under Julia Gillard sensed it would lose the coming election and wanted to leave a few landmines for the incoming Liberals, programs that would be politically painful to unwind, because you cannot easily give people something and then take it back. The NDIS and the NBN, in his framing, were both born unfunded, unbudgeted and unaffordable.
He took care to be fair. Many people, he stressed, are genuinely helped by the NDIS and rely on it, and there is much in it that is worthwhile. His quarrel is not with the idea of support but with what is affordable and sustainable, and with a scheme that was never properly budgeted.
Nobody Takes The Blame
What angers Jeremy most is the missing accountability. He recalled Bill Shorten, as the then minister, describing the NDIS as out of control and in the hands of organised crime, and still, he said, the government did nothing. No minister, across at least a decade, has taken real responsibility for the fraud or the runaway costs.
He was scathing about the current minister, Jenny McAllister, telling Insiders that NDIS fraud “might be something we look at.” Might be, he repeated, incredulous. He wished the obvious question had been put to her: why is the scheme growing so fast, when the number of disabled Australians has been broadly stable? To Jeremy, that points to overservicing rather than genuine need.
You Do Not Have Time
Her suggestion that nothing would be done until 2028, because the government has plenty of time, drew his sharpest reply. You do not have time, he said. The scheme is a millstone around the neck of every taxpayer, and the money simply is not there.
He was equally unimpressed by the plan to shift children with developmental delay into a new bureaucracy called Thriving Kids, arguing it is still taxpayers’ money, merely moved from one bucket to another. It buys time, he suggested, using the public’s money, but is unlikely to touch the fraud or the waste. It must be made sustainable, he insisted, and if it is not, the blame sits squarely with the ministers who let it run.
Listen To The Full Episode
Catch the complete Garage edition of The Court of Public Opinion, recorded live around the dining room table.
Watch The Full Episode
The Court of Public Opinion streams live every Friday from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. (ACST), right here at jeremycordeaux.com. Download the podcast anytime on your favourite podcast app, and join the conversation with your calls and comments.
