Election 2025: Peter Dutton pledges not to tighten NDIS eligibility

Peter Dutton said he would not tighten access to the scheme to ensure NDIS funding targets were met or exceeded, if he became prime minister.

Peter Dutton addressing the media after a tour of the Hunter Trade College in Telarah in the electorate of Patterson outside Newcastle in NSW. Picture: Richard Dobson/NewsWire

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Peter Dutton will not tighten eligibility to access the NDIS if he becomes prime minister, in a blow to making savings from the $48.5bn program despite the Coalition needing to put the budget in a better structural position to meet its aspiration to index personal income tax scales.

The Opposition Leader on Thursday effectively backed-in Labor’s approach to managing the NDIS, with both sides going to the election opposed to putting in formal guardrails that limit access to the scheme to those with the most profound disabilities.

After saying on Wednesday he had no plans to reduce the government’s target to lower spending growth in the NDIS to 8 per cent a year, Mr Dutton on Thursday said he would not tighten the scheme’s eligibility to ensure this funding target would be met or exceeded.

The Albanese government argues it is on track to lower annual growth of the NDIS to 8 per cent by July 2026, with the growth of the scheme forecast to be a better-than-expected 10 per cent this financial year.

However, the budget papers warned the NDIS was a “fiscal risk” and projections were “liable to change as significant reform initiatives are implemented”.

The scheme was forecast to grow at 4 per cent a year when it was implemented in 2013, with this blowing out to as 22 per cent under the former Coalition government.

“We are committed to the current program, we are committed to the numbers that are in the budget paper and we have been a strong supporter of the NDIS from day one,” Mr Dutton said.

“Except for the organised crime activity that (former NDIS minister Bill Shorten) and others have identified.

“Because I’m not having people with disabilities ripped off and I’m not having Australian taxpayers ripped off because of mistakes the Labor Party has made.”

New NDIS Minister Amanda Rishworth told The Australian in February Labor had decided against tightening eligibility requirements for the NDIS.

NDIS Minister Amanda Rishworth. Picture: Martin Ollman/NewsWire

Labor will instead audit programs used under the scheme and work with the states to establish “foundational supports”, which are programs that would cater for people with lower-level disabilities so they don’t feel the need to go on the NDIS.

More than 680,000 people are on the NDIS and nearly a quarter of those are children under nine, with the scheme the commonwealth’s third biggest spend behind the age pension and “payments to the states” including through the distribution of GST revenue.

Mr Shorten flagged last year that eligibility changes would be considered to make the scheme more financially sustainable but this approach was not adopted by Ms Rishworth.

With the NDIS forecast to cost more than $63bn a year by the end of the decade, Mr Dutton’s backing of its funding trajectory complicates his plan to address the structural budget deficit if he wins the election.

Mr Dutton has also endorsed Labor’s spending on health and education and has rejected the need to raise revenue through taxation changes to the GST, superannuation or property investment.

Under pressure over a lack of economic reform being taken to the election, Mr Dutton told The Australian that he would aspire to index the personal income tax scales in government after bringing the budget under control.

“I want to see us move as quickly as we can as a country to changes around personal income tax, including indexation, because bracket creep, as we know, is a killer in the economy,” he said in an interview.

“It stifles productivity and ­entrepreneurialism and hard work, but we need to do it at a time where the budget can afford to do so. It would be an aspiration of our government to achieve that ­because it provides equity in the tax system and it is costly to do so.”

Anthony Albanese shooting pool with university students at the Paddo Tavern in Brisbane on Thursday. Picture: Mark Stewart/NewsWire

Anthony Albanese on Thursday ridiculed Mr Dutton’s aspiration, given the Coalition is vowing to repeal Labor’s $5-a-day tax cut if elected.

“Well, I have never seen before in an election campaign an alternative prime minister or a prime minister say, ‘I’m going to increase income taxes if I’m elected for all 14 million taxpayers, but I have an aspiration to do something different about it down the track’,” the Prime Minister said.

“That makes no sense.

“So he’s going to lift everyone’s taxes if he is elected, and then aspire to do something to lower them back down the track.

“I’ve got an idea for him – how about he commit to not lifting them in the first place?”

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton serving his wife Kirilly Dutton after she bought some chocolates during visit to Luka Chocolates near Wyong in NSW. Picture: Richard Dobson/NewsWire

On Thursday, Mr Dutton began the day in a technical college in the NSW Hunter Valley seat of Paterson vowing to spend $260m on building 12 centres to teach trades to high school students.

He then went to a petrol station in the seat to talk up his plan to halve fuel excise, ahead of making a pre-Easter visit to a chocolate factory in the central coast seat of Dobell.

Mr Dutton also used the visit to commit more than $250m towards regional road upgrades and improving road safety.