The outrage over NDIS spending always skips the actual history.
The National Disability Insurance Scheme was launched in 2013 under Julia Gillard’s Labor government. It was meant to be a proper nation-building fix for the old, broken, postcode lottery system we had before — a universal, needs-based public scheme instead of relying on charity or state scraps.
But it started going sideways under the Coalition. They pushed hard for a market-driven model: lots of private providers, plan managers, and middlemen instead of strong public delivery.

Predictably, that brought:

* extra layers of bureaucracy
* profit margins siphoned off
* wildly inconsistent quality
* and huge cost blowouts that had nothing to do with actual care

Even the critics now admit that admin overhead, coordination fees and plan managers are swallowing massive chunks of the money.
Meanwhile the scheme grew faster than anyone planned, because hundreds of thousands of people actually need the support.

So when folks blast “Labor spending” on the NDIS, they’re conveniently ignoring two things:

1) This isn’t optional fluff — it’s real people’s lives and daily support.
2) A lot of the structural waste and inefficiency was built in when it was turned into a quasi-market experiment.

Now both sides are desperately trying to rein in costs as the bill heads towards $50 billion+ a year.

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