Health Minister Mark Butler announced the overhaul, which aims to control the scheme's rapid spending growth. NDIS spending is the Commonwealth's second-fastest growing expense at about $50 billion a year, behind only interest on government debt. The government has declared it would be negligent to allow the NDIS to continue growing at about 10% a year.
The changes target areas where spending has accelerated rapidly, particularly unscheduled plan reassessments, which will now only happen in exceptional circumstances. Core supports essential for daily living, including accommodation, personal care, transport, hygiene, continence, and medication management, will not be affected. However, changes to social and community participation funding will reduce the number of hours participants can spend on that, impacting some.
We've worked very carefully to identify where we think we can control spending growth, and the areas where we need to preserve existing support.
Disability advocates have warned that cuts to NDIS services would leave participants worse off. Dr. Nick Coatsworth described that many people have lost faith in the NDIS as its costs balloon, taking resources from other essential services like health and aged care.
NDIS spending is now more than Medicare and more than aged care. The NDIS benefits 800,000 people, while other major budget items such as health, aged care, defense, and interest payments are for 26 million Australians. The specific new eligibility tests and how they will be implemented have not been detailed, nor has the government outlined how it will measure the impact on participants' quality of life.
Those areas of support that are essential for daily living, accommodation supports, personal care, transport, hygiene and continence supports, medication management and all the rest, will not be subject to any of the controls I've talked about.
Getting that spending back to where it was a few years ago is going to mean a reduction in the number of hours participants can spend on that.
This is an area that has tripled in the last five years and is projected to grow to $20 billion on its own. That's not something we think we can continue to sustain.