Tonight I Wonder: Who Pays for Broken Promises?

Tonight I’m remembering the public relations stunt to defend the NDIS Review held in Brisbane on 25 January 2024, hosted by the Department of Social Services and members from the NDIS Review Panel. I recall vividly NDIS Review Co-chair, Professor Bruce Bonyhady, and panel members Professor Kirsten Deane, Kevin Cocks and Dougie Herd, promising that no participant would be worse off as a result of their recommendations. I can still hear our concerns about recommendations, such as funding people with complex support needs at 1:3 shared support, dismissed with platitudes and cynical remarks from Bill Shorten, saying we were “scare mongers”, “keyboard warriors” and “trouble makers”. I can still see the Minister walking up and down the stage, making promise after promise, he knew the Government and the NDIA had no intention of keeping.

Tonight I am wondering at the audacity of making the 1:3 recommendation without any evidence from the Review consultations and without any regard to the consequences on the lives of NSIS participants as a result of these changes to the very essence of the scheme

Tonight I am trying to work through the requests that are piling up from people desperate for help because their funding has been cut using shared support ratios.

Tonight I am wondering how we are going to prevent people from being forced back into group settings like those where they experienced abuse, neglect and exploitation.

Tonight I’m remembering the disastrous propaganda used to bolster promises that there would be no funding cuts and that participants had nothing to fear.

Tonight, I’m wondering how many more broken promises there are and whether those who make them sleep easily knowing the harm they are causing and if they care.

Tonight I’m wondering about how the perpetrators of this violence towards our disability community justify their actions, then I remember the Red Bridge reports and how they promoted that the public would be willing to accept group/shared living arrangements for NDIS participants, and the way to maximise that willingness was to frame the change around participant benefits, erroneously constructed without evidence, whilst ignoring the decades of abuse, exploitation and neglect that occured within these shared support settings.