The National Network of Incarcerated & Formerly Incarcerated Women & Girls stands in solidarity with disabled people, their families, carers, advocates and communities following the passage of sweeping changes to the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
‘We share the anger, fear and collective grief being expressed across the disability community,’ said Debbie Kilroy.
The Federal Government, with the support of the Coalition, has passed changes expected to strip tens of billions of dollars from projected NDIS spending while pursuing a dramatic reduction in the number of people accessing the scheme.
Behind the language of “sustainability”, “social licence” and getting the NDIS “back on track” are real people wondering whether they will still have access to the supports that allow them to live, communicate, work, participate in community, leave their homes and exercise control over their own lives.
‘This is not an abstract budget exercise. These decisions reach directly into people’s homes, bodies and futures,’ said Debbie Kilroy.
We know what scapegoating looks like
We are particularly disturbed by the language being used to justify these reforms. Health Minister Mark Butler described the NDIS as having become a “soft target for shonks, for fraudsters and for sharp practice”.
‘We reject the use of criminalisation as political cover for austerity,’ said Tabitha Lean.
‘Criminalised communities know this strategy intimately. When governments want to expand surveillance, restrict rights, withdraw resources or increase coercive powers, they construct a dangerous or undeserving population and tell the public that extraordinary measures are necessary because of them,’ said Tabitha Lean.
The “fraudster”. The “criminal”. The “rorter”. The “undeserving” welfare recipient. The “high-risk” person.
Different labels. The same political work.
Fraud by providers or corporations should be investigated and addressed, but governments must not weaponise the spectre of fraud to create public consent for stripping rights, tightening eligibility, expanding surveillance or removing essential supports from an entire community.
‘Disabled people should not have to continually prove that they are sufficiently disabled, sufficiently vulnerable or sufficiently deserving to receive the support they need to live,’ said Tabitha Lean.
We reject the deserving and undeserving binary
‘Criminalised people also know what happens when governments divide communities into those deemed worthy of care and those deemed suspicious, risky, fraudulent or undeserving. We refuse that division,’ said Debbie Kilroy.
‘We reject any suggestion that protecting public money requires treating people who rely on public systems as potential criminals. We reject the idea that disabled people must accept increased scrutiny, assessment and surveillance because somewhere, somebody might exploit a system. And we reject the implication that there is something inherently virtuous about making fewer people eligible for support,’ said Debbie Kilroy.
‘A society should not measure the success of a disability support system by how many people it can remove from it,’ said Debbie Kilroy.
There is nothing sustainable about abandoning people
The Government says these changes are necessary to make the NDIS “sustainable”. But sustainability cannot simply mean making the spreadsheet smaller.
What happens to people who lose access to the NDIS matters.
Where will they receive support? Who will provide it? What happens when those promised alternatives do not exist, are inaccessible, are underfunded or cannot meet people’s needs?
‘We are deeply concerned by reforms designed around moving large numbers of people away from the NDIS while governments themselves acknowledge that substantial work remains to build the foundational supports supposedly waiting for them,’ said Debbie Kilroy.
‘You cannot remove the bridge before building somewhere safe for people to land. And we know which communities will be hit hardest when formal supports disappear: people experiencing poverty, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, people in regional and remote communities, people without family wealth, people experiencing homelessness, people with psychosocial disability, and people already entangled with child protection, policing, courts and prisons,’ said Debbie Kilroy.
‘For criminalised disabled people, these systems are not separate. Withdrawal of disability support can quickly become increased contact with hospitals, police, courts, prisons and other coercive institutions,’ said Debbie Kilroy.
Disability support is not charity
‘The NDIS was never supposed to be an act of government generosity. Disabled people fought for recognition of their right to exercise choice and control over their own lives and to receive the supports necessary to participate fully in community. That history matters,’ said Tabitha Lean.
‘We are alarmed by political language that increasingly treats the NDIS primarily as a financial liability that must be contained rather than as part of Australia’s obligation to disabled people,’ said Tabitha Lean.
When governments boast about billions of dollars in projected “savings”, we need to ask where those savings come from.
A saving to government can be an unpaid caring responsibility transferred to a woman.
It can be a person unable to leave their home.
It can be a family pushed beyond breaking point.
It can be somebody entering crisis.
It can be increased contact with police.
It can be institutionalisation.
It can be imprisonment.
The cost does not disappear simply because it has been removed from an NDIS balance sheet. It is transferred onto disabled people, families and communities.
Our struggles are connected
As incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women, we stand with the disability community not only in solidarity, but as part of it. Many criminalised people are disabled people. Many live with physical, intellectual, cognitive and psychosocial disabilities, acquired brain injuries and other support needs. These identities and experiences do not sit neatly in separate boxes.
For many of us, disability and criminalisation are deeply intertwined. Disabled people are routinely pushed into contact with police, courts and prisons because governments have failed to provide accessible housing, healthcare, disability support, income, community-based care and other resources people need to live safely and with dignity. Behaviour arising from distress, disability or unmet support needs can be surveilled, punished and criminalised rather than met with care.
We therefore recognise the architecture of containment running through these systems. We recognise risk assessments and bureaucracies deciding who is credible. We recognise being required to repeatedly disclose the most intimate and traumatic details of our lives to prove that we are deserving of support. We recognise surveillance being presented as protection, and the language of “fraud”, “risk” and “safety” being used to justify greater state control.
We also recognise what happens when governments describe care as an unaffordable expense while continuing to find extraordinary resources for policing, prisons, surveillance and other systems of containment. When disability and community supports are withdrawn, people do not simply disappear from government budgets. Too often, they are pushed further into crisis and into contact with other arms of the state.
Our solidarity is therefore not symbolic. Our communities overlap. Our experiences overlap. And our struggles against abandonment, surveillance, institutionalisation and criminalisation are connected.
‘We grieve with disabled people who are frightened, furious and exhausted by what these reforms may mean for their lives. We stand beside those who have spent years fighting for an NDIS grounded in dignity, autonomy, choice and control. And we reject attempts to manufacture suspicion towards marginalised communities to make cuts politically palatable,’ said Tabitha Lean.
‘Disabled people are not a budget problem. Criminalised people are not political scapegoats,’ said Tabitha Lean.
We refuse a politics that divides us into separate categories of deserving and undeserving people or asks communities already fighting for dignity to compete with one another for the resources we need to live.
Our liberation cannot be separated. Disability justice must include criminalised people and struggles against criminalisation must include disability justice.
We stand with the disability community. We share your grief. We share your anger. And we will not allow governments to use criminalised people, “fraudsters” or any other manufactured category of undeserving people as the justification for dismantling hard-won rights.
For further comment, please contact Debbie Kilroy on 0419 762 474 or Tabitha Lean on 0499 780 226.
