An Open Letter to Labor & Mark Butler

You Broke It

What you've done since you won

Proposed - April 2026

Cut up to 160,000 participants by 2030

At the National Press Club on 22 April 2026, Mark Butler announced plans to reduce the NDIS from approximately 760,000 participants to 600,000 by 2030. That's one in five current participants you plan to remove.

Source: Butler NPC speech, 22 April 2026

His words - April 2026

"An ATM for shonks, grifters, fraudsters and crooks"

That's what your Minister called the scheme you built. Not the consultants billing $25M without a tender. Not the $5M/month CRM. Not the agency that reviews 0.4% of claims. The scheme. The one with 59,848 children in it. The one whose staff got it wrong 7 out of 10 times underfunding participants - so you spent $34.8M of taxpayer money fighting them at tribunal instead of fixing the decisions.

Source: Insurance Business Magazine, April 2026

Proposed - April 2026

Reduce average plans from $31k to $26k

A $5,000 cut to the average plan. For a child on a $17,000 plan, that's the difference between two therapies and one. Between learning to talk and learning to sit up. You're asking parents to choose.

Source: Butler NPC speech, 22 April 2026

Announced - December 2025

Changed the law so the ART can't overrule plan funding

You lost 73% of cases at the tribunal. So you changed the law. The ART can't change your plan funding anymore. It can only send you back to the NDIA for another assessment - using the same tool that got it wrong the first time. The needs assessment itself (s 32L) isn't even a reviewable decision under s 99. You can't challenge the thing that decides your funding.

The NDIA confirmed at Senate Estimates this saves them money. Of course it does. It's cheaper when people can't fight back.

Source: NDIS Amendment Act 2024 (s 32L, s 99) · Senate Estimates, December 2025 · NDIS Quarterly Report Q3 2024-25

Collapsed - March 2026

AEIOU Foundation: 120 children lost therapy overnight

Australia's largest specialist autism early intervention provider collapsed in March 2026 after average funding packages were cut by 70%. Centres closed immediately. 120 children lost services overnight. These weren't "shonks." They were speech therapists working with three-year-olds who can't speak yet.

Source: ABC News, 22 April 2026

Legislated - October 2024

Allied health evidence: from mandatory to optional

Under the old Act (s 33), planners had to "have regard to relevant assessments." Your OT's report, your speech therapist's recommendations - mandatory consideration.

Under the new framework (s 32L), the assessor - not an allied health professional - only has to consider reports the NDIA specifically requests. Everything else your therapist writes? The law says "may have regard to." Not must. May.

The person who sees your child every week writes a report. The person who's never met them can legally ignore it. Then a computer calculates the budget.

Sources: NDIS Act s 33 (old) vs s 32L (new) · NDIS Summary of Legislation Changes · Every Australian Counts · SWAN Autism

Every one of these is your doing. Not the Liberals. Not Pauline Hanson. You. The party that built the NDIS is now proposing the largest contraction in its history. You don't get to blame the opposition for what you're choosing to do.

The Numbers You're Hiding

You know these figures. You choose not to say them.

What you say vs. what's true

You say 40% of participants have autism. You don't mention autism accounts for only 21.4% of spending.

You cite 40% because it sounds alarming. You don't cite 21.4% because it undermines your narrative. Headcount isn't cost. You know this. You're counting on voters not knowing it.

Source: NDIS Payments Data & Participant Numbers, Dec 2025 · 324,206 autism participants of 761,442 total · $10.49B of $48.96B total spending

What you say vs. what's true

You say the scheme is unsustainable. You don't mention Australia spends 1.7% of GDP on disability - below the OECD average of 2.2%. Denmark spends 4.7%.

"Unsustainable" is a political word, not a fiscal fact. By every international comparison, Australia's disability spending is below average. You're not overspending. You're underspending and calling it reform.

Source: OECD Social Expenditure Database (SOCX) · Federal Budget 2025-26 · Grattan Institute, "Saving the NDIS" (2024)

What you spent vs. what you won

You spent $34.8M in one year fighting participants at the AAT. You lost 73% of the time. Your solution: change the law.

$34.8 million of taxpayer money. $17.3 million to external law firms. Seven times out of ten, a tribunal told you your own decisions were wrong. Instead of making better decisions, you changed the law so the ART can't overrule you anymore. That's not reform. That's cover.

Source: FOI disclosure, Dec 2021 (Right to Know) · NDIS Quarterly Report Q3 2024-25 · Senate Estimates Dec 2025

Seat	Affected Voters	Switches to Flip
Bullwinkel	12,579	4,794
Solomon	8,889	3,725
Petrie	20,064	9,369
Forde	23,118	11,332

What We Want

Three demands. All reasonable. All minimum.

Reverse the proposed plan cuts. Focus on the actual problem: internal incompetence, provider fraud, ridiculous ops costs ($5M per month on a CRM?!)
Restore ART power to substitute its own decision on total plan budget allocation - not just send participants back for another computer-generated assessment using the same tool
Guarantee Thriving Kids funding is operational and accessible BEFORE removing children from the NDIS

We also expect: Publish NDIA legal spending and consultancy contracts annually - not via FOI, not via Senate Estimates, published. Commission an independent review of NDIA operational efficiency before cutting participant services.

The Parent In The Booth

You want to understand who you're losing? 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.

An Open Letter to Labor

Your words. Your platform. Your mandate.

What you've done since you won

You know these figures. You choose not to say them.

Your seats. Your voters. Your maths.

Three demands. All reasonable. All minimum.

You want to understand who you're losing? Read this.

Make them read it