Federal Budget 2016: NDIS fully funded with introduction of Savings Fund
THE National Disability Insurance Scheme is on track to be fully operational by July with a special savings fund established to pay half of its $22 billion cost.
Budget 2016
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THE NDIS has been fully funded in the Federal Budget with the government establishing a special savings fund to contribute to the cost of the $22 billion scheme.
The Federal Government must fund half the $22 billion cost of the scheme which becomes fully operational from July providing care to 460,000 people with a disability. The states pay for the rest.
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A 0.5 per cent increase in the Medicare levy funds $3.5 billion a year of the Commonwealth’s share of scheme. It was already contributing another $3.4 billion in disability funding a year but from 2019-20 it will need to find an extra $4.4 billion, to make up the government’s $11.3-billion contribution.
The National Disability Insurance Scheme Savings Fund established in the Budget to help fund the scheme has received an initial deposit of $2.1 billion financed by a range of government cutbacks.
It appears to be a political device to force the Greens and Labor to vote to support a range of contentious welfare cutbacks in the Senate which are now expected to finance the NDIS set up by the previous Labor Government.
The savings to be put towards the NDIS include $1.3 billion worth of social welfare savings, a measure to axe carbon tax compensation to new welfare recipients, cuts to disability support pensioners and the axing of an advertising campaign for the NDIS.
The new savings fund will cover only half the $4.4 billion the Commonwealth needs to fund the scheme but bureaucrats say the remaining funds are counted as part of the government deficit until further savings can be identified and added to the fund.
The funding mechanism will ease concerns of the disability sector which was worried the government may try to cut back the scheme.
More than 25,000 Australians with a disability have so far received individualised care packages under NDIS trial sites.
Almost one in three of the people helped by the scheme so far have autism, one in seven have an intellectual disability.
Originally published as Federal Budget 2016: NDIS fully funded with introduction of Savings Fund
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