The Human Cost

What Cutting Disabled Kids Actually Looks Like

Not spreadsheets. Not percentages. This.

$395
Per child, per week
53
Kids per MP
24.5×
Submarines vs kids
Scroll
The Weekly Reality

$395 Per Week

Sounds like a lot until you realise that's only just enough for 45min of Speech Therapy and 45min of OT. Or less if you live remote.

Annual actual spending per child
$20,574
Per week
$395
This is the "unsustainable" cost the government wants to cut. For a child who can't speak, can't dress themselves, can't sit in a classroom. This is what "too expensive" looks like when you're a disabled kid in Australia.

Now let's look at how that compares to other costs that are considered more "sustainable".
The Parent In The Booth

You want to understand what this looks like? Read this.

An NDIS parent April 2026
Picture this. My kid's plan is $17,000. Not the $30k average you keep quoting - seventeen. I'm already paying out of pocket every week just to keep two therapy sessions running. OT and speech. That's it. That's the plan. Two sessions a week so my child can learn to say words. To hold a spoon. To sit upright for more than a minute without falling over because he has no core strength.

Now Butler's proposed cut comes in. $5,000 off the average plan. My $17k becomes $12k. That's $231 a week. A single OT session costs $193. One session and I've got $38 left. I can't afford speech anymore.

So now I choose. Does my kid learn to talk, or does my kid learn to sit up? Pick one. Because the government just decided he can't have both.

I voted Labor my whole life. My parents voted Labor. I believed in this party. You built the NDIS - I gave you credit for that every single election. And now you're the ones dismantling it. Not the Liberals. Not Pauline Hanson. You.

Now, I'm imagining voting time. Standing in the booth, Labor box in my view, pen in my hand. But this time writing 1 would make me physically sick. So I won't. What kind of Dad would I be if I did?
That's one parent. There are 59,848 families with autistic children aged 0-8 on the NDIS.
Follow The Money

Kids aren't expensive. Adults are. Assisted living is. 24/7 care is.

What these kids will cost as adults after they're kicked off NDIS doesn't tell the full story either.

Kids 0-8 (allocated budget)
$30,000
Adults 25-34
$100,000
Increase
3.3×
✓ They Know This
Cut kids now = pay 3.3× more later
Source: NDIS Participant Numbers and Plan Budgets, Dec 2025 · Autism avg budget: 0-8 $30k, 25-34 $100k, 65+ $156k · dataresearch.ndis.gov.au
The actual cost breakdown: Ages 0-8 average $30k allocated ($20.5k actual spending). Ages 19-24 average $81k. Ages 25-34 average $100k. Ages 65+ average $156k. You want to cut the cheapest cohort? Explain that math.
Who Gets What

Tax Cuts vs Disability Cuts

Tax relief for high earners. Plan cuts for disabled children. Same budget.

Stage 3 tax cuts to high earners (per year)
~$7-8B
Proposed NDIS cuts
$3.75B
Ratio
~2x
Priorities
The government has $7-8B per year for tax cuts to high earners (earning 180k+). But $3.75B — half that — is so unsustainable they're kicking 140,000 disabled people off a scheme for disabled people.
One was passed without a sustainability review. The other triggers a national panic about the budget.

Makes sense: more money for the rich, more disability for the disabled. Aligns with their idea of math.

Derivation: see methodology

But wait — let's not forget the other tax discounts for the wealthy

Negative gearing + CGT (per year, top 20%)
$16.5B
Autism 0-8 actual spending
$1.23B
Negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions cost $16.5 billion per year, overwhelmingly benefiting the wealthiest 20% of Australians. The entire autistic children 0-8 cohort costs $1.23 billion. One is a property investment subsidy. The other keeps disabled kids in therapy. The property subsidy is more than 13 times larger.

Sources: Australia Institute, PBO July 2024
The Record

Who Already Paid The Price

This isn't theoretical. People have already died. Providers have already collapsed. The system is already failing.

March 2026
AEIOU Foundation collapse
Australia's largest autism early intervention provider collapsed. Centres closed. 120 children lost therapy overnight. After average funding packages were cut, the model became unviable.
ABC News, 22 April 2026
2023
Royal Commission findings
The Disability Royal Commission found the NDIS system itself creates conditions that enable harm. Not individual bad actors. The system.
Final Report, Sept 2023
2020
NDIS participant death, South Australia
A participant died in conditions of extreme neglect. Carer convicted. The subsequent independent review found systemic failures across the NDIA, the Quality & Safeguards Commission, and SA Health. Not one failure. A system of failures.
NDIS Commission Independent Review, 2020
Ongoing
400+ participant deaths per year
Over 400 NDIS participant deaths per year reported to the NDIS Quality & Safeguards Commission (Commission Annual Reports).
Systemic Failure
The regulator tasked with preventing harm is "only partly effective"
The Australian National Audit Office found the NDIS Quality & Safeguards Commission "only partly effective" at its regulatory role. No risk framework. No quality assurance. No visibility of unregistered providers. The body meant to protect participants can't see half the system it's supposed to regulate.

More than 50% of carers report low wellbeing. These are the people holding the system together while the system fails around them.

Sources: ANAO Audit of the NDIS Quality & Safeguards Commission, Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability (2023), Carers Australia (2021)
Follow The Money

Where The Money Actually Goes

They say the problem with the NDIS is children, too much growth. The numbers say the problem is consultants, legal fees for bad decisions, and a system that checks 0.4% of claims before paying them.

NDIA operating expenses (2023-24)
$2.08B
McKinsey consulting
$25M via limited tender. Chair was ex-McKinsey. No finding of misconduct; questioned at Senate Estimates.
$25M
Salesforce CRM
Initial contract $27M. Ballooned to $235M. Currently $5M/month.
$235M
Serco call centre contract
$158.8M
Independent assessments contracts
$339M in contracts awarded. Scrapped after community opposition.
$339M
Fighting participants at tribunal (AAT/ART)
$34.8M total on AAT matters in 2020-21. $17.3M to external law firms. Lost 73% of plan-related cases - that's 7 out of 10 where a planner got it wrong. That's not fraud. That's staff incompetence. Their fix: change the law so the ART can't overrule them anymore.
$34.8M
Estimated fraud/non-compliance (ANAO)
6-10% of outlays. Only 0.4% of claims checked pre-payment.
$2.5-4.2B/yr
They're not cutting waste. They're cutting children and keeping the waste.

$2.5-4.2 billion per year in estimated fraud and non-compliance. $235 million on a CRM. $339 million on assessments they scrapped. And the solution is to cut $56/day from disabled children.
The Real Waste
0.4% of claims checked before payment
The ANAO estimated $2.5-4.2 billion per year in fraud and non-compliance - 6-10% of total outlays. The NDIA checks only 0.4% of claims before paying them. The remaining 99.6% are paid first, checked later — if at all.

The entire autism 0-8 cohort costs $1.23 billion. The fraud and non-compliance the system doesn't bother to check costs 2-3 times more. Every year.

Sources: ANAO audits, Senate Estimates, FOI disclosures, Consultancy.com.au
▸ More comparisons: defence spending, parliamentary costs
Defence vs Disability

Submarines vs Children

AUKUS per year (avg over 30 yrs)
$12.3B
Autism children "savings"
$500M/yr
Ratio
24.5x
Priorities
Submarines cost 24.5x more per year than the "savings" from cutting autistic children
$368 billion for submarines over 30 years. $500 million "saved" by cutting disabled children. That's 736 years of "savings" to pay for one submarine program.

Nobody calls AUKUS unsustainable. Nobody holds a press conference about submarine costs being out of control. The submarines don't have parents who vote.

Sources: ASPI Strategist, Federal Budget
Priority Check

One MP = 53 Kids

One MP (annual cost)
$1.1M
One autistic child (actual spending/yr)
$20,574
Priorities
53.5
children per MP
$1,100,000 ÷ $20,574 = 53.5 children. One Member of Parliament costs as much as 53 autistic children's entire annual NDIS spending.

The entire parliamentary system costs $484 million per year. That could fund 23,518 children's plans.

Note: An MP's office serves ~110,000 constituents - this is not an equivalence, it's a priority comparison.

Sources: ANAO, Parliamentary Library, NDIS Payments Data Dec 2025
$484 million per year on the parliamentary system. $1.23 billion on 59,848 autistic children aged 0-8. Parliament costs 39% of what we spend on the most vulnerable children in the country. One is being called unsustainable. Guess which one.
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The numbers they're hoping you don't compare

Screenshot it. Share it. Send it to your MP. These are the numbers they hope you never compare.

Contact: powerinnumbers@proton.me

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All Sources
Full methodology · Analysis performed April 2026