00:01Well, the minister wasn't ruling in or out any potential options for the government to
00:07save some money on the NDIS ahead of this next federal budget.
00:11The NDIS, as we know, is one of the government's biggest spends.
00:16It's only ballooning further and further.
00:18It currently costs about $50 billion a year, and it's forecast to hit $100 billion in the
00:24next decade.
00:25And so the government has already announced some measures.
00:28They'll be moving a large cohort of children off the NDIS and under the Thriving Kids program
00:34to save some costs.
00:36But today, Mark Butler said there were some more options on the table when it comes to
00:41cutting costs, including tightening eligibility for who might be able to have access to the
00:47scheme.
00:47The NDIS is not currently means tested, but it has been floated as a possibility.
00:53Experts do say that the NDIS is distributed relatively evenly across all different incomes,
01:01but that there is a lot of money being given to families who are very wealthy, and perhaps
01:06that needs to be looked at.
01:08The idea of means testing has been raised in the past.
01:11A previous NDIS minister, Bill Shorten, called it a lazy solution, but today Mark Butler was
01:18much more open to the idea.
01:20Here's what he had to say.
01:22All means testing is one of the options that's been raised by colleagues and been raised more
01:28broadly in the community.
01:30And, you know, I welcome the debate.
01:32I'm not going to comment particularly on that idea or on the many other ideas that have been
01:37raised by colleagues at the moment.
01:39There's a shared sense of purpose that we want to secure the sustainability of this important
01:45program for the future.
01:53The government says it's looking at a range of different measures to bring down costs without
01:59leaving the disability community behind, but advocates are already concerned that uncertainty
02:05around upcoming reforms are driving a delay in supports and that this rhetoric around making
02:13changes to the scheme make people with disabilities feel like they are the problem.
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