“Dear parents, due to rising costs, we have decided to shut all schools.”

In an opinion piece, Briana Blackett considers what it would be like if we talked about schools the way we talk about the NDIS. 

It’s a Wednesday afternoon and your child arrives home from school. They dump their bag on the floor (much to your annoyance) and mumble something about a letter to parents. You fish the envelope out of the bag and are shocked by its contents:

Dear parents and caregivers,

Due to the rising number of students enrolling in schools across the country, we have decided to stop funding public education. The unanticipated budget blowout caused by you, and others, enrolling children in school has made the system unsustainable. As a result, all schools will close effective immediately.  We thank you for your understanding.  

Kind regards,

The government, 

on behalf of the Australian people.  

Shocking, right? But not unimaginable. 

150 years ago, Victoria became the first Australian state (then colony) to provide free education. The move came after decades of campaigning, and considerable pushback. Within five years of the Education Act being passed in 1872, the number of public schools in Victoria had tripled. I expect the education budget did too. Can you imagine if the government of the day said “Oops, there are far more students than we anticipated. Let’s just scrap the whole thing”. Instead, it responded to demand and created a system deemed so crucial it was replicated in every state and territory within 40 years.  

These days you’d be hard pressed to find an Australian who thinks government support for education is a bad thing. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never heard a politician campaign on a promise to slash the education budget. Quite the opposite, in fact, as we know how life-changing getting an education can be and how good it is for the country as a whole.  

When the NDIS was introduced in 2013, it too was launched after decades of campaigning. But, unlike the early days of government-funded education, it received overwhelming support from the major parties and the majority of Australians. The pushback against the NDIS came later.  

As with public education, the budget for the NDIS is rising to meet the needs of the people. But, instead of championing this similarly life-changing initiative, there are constant calls from small but noisy quarters to call the whole thing off, or at the very least radically water it down. Words like “budget blowout”, “unsustainable”, and “out of control” are used. A headline today suggests the NDIS needs to be “saved” from (the prevalence of) autistic people. Typically, these words are used by those who don’t personally need the NDIS.  

Politics aside, I’m amazed that a scheme with so many positive spin-offs has become a target for people who claim to speak for the economy and what it needs.  

Modelling shows that for every one dollar spent by the NDIS, it generates two dollars for the economy. It doesn’t take a financial whizz to understand that is a good thing. 

In terms of jobs, the NDIS is also a winner. Some 270,000 jobs exist because of the scheme, again, bolstering our economy.

And if we want to measure the scheme’s success based on how it’s actually affecting people, we need look no further than the NDIS minister’s own statement from December 2021. 

The latest “Outcomes Survey” shows how the NDIS ”has helped improve the lives of participants in multiple areas of their lives across all age groups”.

According to government’s statement, the NDIS has led to increases in:

• Development goals reached by disabled children
• The independence of disabled youth
• The number of disabled people in paid work
• The number of carers in paid work
• The number of disabled people connecting with their wider communities, and  
• a person’s ‘choice and control over their own lives’ (and who doesn’t want that?)

Some of these outcomes are reminiscent of the points made by campaigners 150 years ago when they argued that making education accessible for everyone will have a positive and lasting impact on Australia - both in social and economic terms.  

Those positive impacts compelled leaders to find ways to fund our schools - even in the early years when there was a huge spike in uptake. And we continue to find ways to fund them today.

Just as the government hasn’t abandoned the dream of educating children, I hope whichever party wins the next election similarly chooses not to abandon people with disability. 

That, instead of frightening parents like me by forecasting the scheme's imminent collapse with words like “unsustainable”, they approach the NDIS as they do education. As a crucial public service.

In doing so, they’ll not only be supporting people with disability, they’ll be supporting the economy, the job market, and Australia as a whole for generations to come.

This is an opinion piece by Briana Blackett who is a journalist and advocate for her two children with disability. After more than 20 years in TV news, she now works for Hireup as part of its Communications team.