Nation can’t afford to just keep expanding the NDIS

I despair that we have become a nation that has lost touch with economic reality. Australia has a population of 26 million. Medicare was introduced as a safety net for all and is currently costing about $34bn a year.

The NDIS was introduced as a safety net for those with crippling disabilities and services 500,000 people, costing $33bn a year. The existing NDIS is estimated to cost $64bn by 2030.

Dylan Alcott proposes adding four million people to the NDIS, increasing its size by eight times (“Help four million not in NDIS: Alcott”, 4/10). Is the Australian taxpayer expected to foot a $240bn annual cost, using today’s figures, or is he proposing that he will be able to absorb this number into the current cost structure? I don’t think the latter is feasible.

Total tax revenue in 2021-22 is estimated to be $600bn, about 28 per cent of GDP. As it is, Medicare and the NDIS are taking 10 per cent of the total tax take in Australia and as a nation we cannot afford it now and even less so under this proposal to increase the taxpayer largesse to another four million people. If the NDIS were a business, the shareholders would be demanding forensic accounting to positively identify where the funds are being spent wisely and where there is waste. I suspect the waste and rorts will be higher than that spent wisely.

John Hunt, Northbridge, NSW

Dylan Alcott may be an admirable fellow, but I disagree with him. I work at the coalface of disability, and daily I see children denied funding for the therapy they should be getting, because of incompetence and maladministration. The driver of this dysfunctional system is the open-door policy that Alcott is advocating. It is the disabled who are suffering, not the fraudsters. I propose a first step. In all of the debate, sharpen the use of words. Replace the euphemism support with therapy or care. Then we might know more precisely what you are talking about.

David Roberts, consultant pediatrician, Joondalup, WA

Mothers and babies

Judith Sloan points out the federal government’s bizarre policy of extending childcare fee relief to families earning up to $530,000 a year (“Labor’s childcare largesse should be focused on needy”, 4/10). But families earning much less should not be encouraged to use more institutional care for their babies and toddlers either. A key 2018 Quebec study found that extensive time spent in non-maternal care in early life has effects that persist across the entire course of a child’s development. These effects include hyperactivity, anxiety and aggression. If we want a smarter country, separating very young children from their parents for large parts of each day is not the way to go.

Roslyn Phillips, Tea Tree Gully, SA

Time’s up for Russia

It is time the UN stepped in to repel the Russian invasion of Ukraine as was achieved in 1953 when a UN force repelled the North Korean invasion of South Korea. Some will argue a veto in the Security Council by Russia prevents this. However, under the UN charter, membership of the Security Council is granted to the Soviet Union – not to Russia. I can find no amendment to the UN charter that grants Russia membership of the Security Council. It is time for action.

Lieutenant Colonel Charles Mollison (Retd), Royston, Qld

Powerhouse blunder

I was glad to see the back of the bad NSW Labor government a decade ago, but if I vote for the Coalition at next year’s election it won’t be with unalloyed confidence and pleasure. One example of how the Coalition has behaved is the decision-making process concerning the Powerhouse Museum (“$500m revamp to ‘destroy’ Powerhouse”, 4/10). Surely the whole idea of the Powerhouse Museum was to have a museum of science and technology in the old powerhouse. The decision to move much of its raison d’etre to Parramatta is like saying “we’ll leave the Opera House building where it is, but we’ll make it a museum for agricultural implements and move all the musical and dramatic activities to a new cube-shaped building in Penrith”. Conservatives will have a poor choice when deciding to vote for a Labor Party that hasn’t got its act together or a Coalition that has made some really weird decisions. When we add an increasing tendency on both sides towards wokeness, the quandary deepens.

David Morrison, Springwood, NSW

Children at risk

One hundred children dying in two years while on the radar of Victorian’s child protection ser­vices is 100 too many (4/10). This appalling statistic can never be repeated.

Penni Seignior, Mudgeeraba, Qld

If we are unable to prevent the deaths of 100 children in Victoria alone due to lack of sufficient staff to monitor them, how are we going to provide adequate policing of the children who are to return from the camps in Syria?

Jean Aldred, The Gap, Qld