The federal government is set to hand down its mid-year economic update tomorrow, including a billion dollar boost the NDIS.
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00:00The government is dripping out bits of information that will appear in the budget update tomorrow
00:07that it's keen for people to focus on, and one of them is an extra $1 billion for the
00:12NDIS to do some of its overhaul of the assessments process.
00:18It's also announcing 1,000 extra staff and a crackdown on NDIS fraud.
00:24Now the government has had an issue with the amount of money that is spent on the NDIS.
00:29It notices that the program is incredibly important and life-changing, but the costs
00:35have been blowing out, and so it brought in some legislation earlier this year to manage
00:40some of that spend.
00:42It included things like making sure there was a set list of things that people who are
00:47part of the NDIS could claim, and the figures show that the NDIS is being brought back under
00:55control in that the growth rate is set to slow to about 8% a year, which is a lot less
01:01than the current growth rate.
01:04The government is saying that while it will spend an extra $1 billion, it will argue that
01:10the NDIS is a $47 billion scheme this year, and any money to spend on bringing costs in
01:16line is money well spent.
01:19The ABC and the SBS have been given extra funding by Labor.
01:23They announced that they are giving the ABC $83.1 million over two years from 2026, and
01:30then after that $40 million a year.
01:33That is to address a funding shortfall that was part of a freeze on indexation that was
01:39brought in by the Coalition.
01:41The Coalition did change that.
01:44It undid the freeze on indexation in 2022, but it still left a $40 million gap in ABC
01:51funding.
01:52The other thing that the government is promising is a five-year funding term for the ABC and
01:59the SBS.
02:00At the moment, funding can be renewed, changed, cut every three years.
02:06They are wanting to make that five years for more stability and also to prevent what they
02:10call political interference with the ABC.
02:14However, that does require legislation, and we are coming to the end of a parliamentary
02:21term, potentially to the end of a government, so it will be interesting to see whether or
02:25not Labor is actually able to make good on that promise.