More than half a million workers earn income from NDIS, Shorten says in parting shot at critics

More than 500,000 Australian workers will make an income from the booming $49 billion National Disability Insurance Scheme that its co-architect Bill Shorten has credited with boosting jobs growth and helping keep the economy afloat during an interest rates crisis.

In his final major interview before retiring on Monday to take up a university job, Shorten revealed new data that shows the equivalent of 311,000 full-time workers are employed via the NDIS, and fired back at critics of the ballooning scheme who fear it will cost more than the age pension within a decade.

Long-time Labor MP Bill Shorten will leave politics on Monday.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Shorten, the outgoing minister for the NDIS and longstanding member for Maribyrnong in Melbourne’s west, said he hoped those in the “cheap seats” would “have enough self-reflection to reconsider their words” if they had a disabled or injured family member.

“Since the formation of the NDIS, a new part of the Australian economy has been created,” Shorten said of the scheme, which he had a significant hand in creating during the Rudd-Gillard governments, marking what he argued was one of the most important economic reforms of recent history.

“The NDIS and its impact will be up there with universal superannuation and Medicare. This is an example of Australian exceptionalism: we look at the world’s problems and come up with a uniquely Australian answer.”

The previously unreported estimate of half a million carers, allied health professionals, plan managers and administrative workers who will be required to service NDIS demand in the coming 2025-26 financial year is based on an analysis of departmental data by Shorten’s office.

Some of those 500,000, such as physiotherapists with a mix of clients, derive only part of their income from the NDIS.

The official workforce report estimated the scheme would require 311,000 full-time equivalent workers in 2025-26, a forecast that has risen by 18 per cent in the past year. Disability support workers and allied health professionals received 92 per cent of spending on the NDIS workforce in the previous financial year, the report stated.

For comparison, about 314,000 people are employed in mining and 309,000 in agriculture.

Countering sharp criticism from economists who say the scheme is sucking resources from more productive sectors, Shorten said the program he helped create had kept unemployment (now at 4 per cent) from spiking as it had in places such as Britain and New Zealand.

Respected independent economist Chris Richardson.Credit: Janie Barrett

“The NDIS employs more people directly than the mining industry,” Shorten said. “It is an unsung hero of low unemployment and employment growth over the last decade since its creation.”

Veteran economist and budget-watcher Chris Richardson said the large growth in the care economy – which ABS data shows comprised 16 per cent of employment nationally, up from 12 per cent a decade ago – probably meant fewer jobs were created in other parts of the economy.

He said that assessing the societal value of the NDIS was diabolically difficult because the scheme had profound benefits for people with disabilities, but was costing taxpayers enormously.

“I would like to think I was an early champion of the NDIS,” Richardson said. “The concept is magnificent, but we have set up a whole bunch of incentives for state governments, for individuals, doctors, for the clients, for providers, that begs people to do the wrong thing, and they do.

“It is heavily rorted.

Shorten with then-prime minister Julia Gillard in 2013.Credit: Harrison Saragossi

“You want to do the right thing by people with disabilities, and you want to do the right thing by the taxpayer. The mix we currently have, to me, remains on an unsustainable trajectory.”

Shorten’s focus in this term of parliament has been passing laws to weed out rorting and bring down the rate of growth in NDIS spending from close to 20 per cent to nearer 8 per cent, avoiding what former treasurer Wayne Swan said last year would be a loss of public support for the scheme if it continued its cost growth.

Shorten garnered bipartisan support for the concept of a new disability insurance program as parliamentary secretary for disability in the Rudd-Gillard government. As opposition leader, he led the Labor Party to two election defeats, in 2016 and 2019, before taking on the NDIS portfolio in the Albanese government. Labor has run two surplus budgets, largely due to a commodity boom, but whoever wins the next election is facing years of deficits as the NDIS, aged care, defence and interest payments put pressure on spending.

Shorten told this masthead that critics of the scheme viewed its effects through the “narrow prism” of its cost to the budget, ignoring what he said was the critical economic benefit of giving family members of disabled people the ability to work. He said this was underpinning Australia’s high workforce participation rate, particularly among women. These families, Shorten said, were able to improve their standard of living instead of enduring economic insecurity doing unpaid care.

He said the creation of a professionalised disability sector – his chief policy legacy – would prepare Australia for the needs of caring for an ageing population.

“This hasn’t displaced people, it’s created work,” he said. “More family members are able to get a job because they’ve got more time. This is generating new jobs. We’re leading the world in the development of a care economy.

“Family carers who had no prospect of ever participating in the economy are now able to earn an income and superannuation. More than 50 per cent report an increase in paid employment.”

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