Linda Reynolds (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Government Services) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Hanson for her question and I also thank her for her passion and commitment to this extraordinary, globally unique scheme. The Australian government is ensuring that this world-first scheme—and remember this is a scheme for people with significant and permanent disabilities—continues for many generations to come.

Today, there are 450,000 Australians on the NDIS—fifty per cent of those for the first time. As Senator Hanson has said, that is a significant increase over what was anticipated in 2011, in terms of both the number of participants and the average cost of the packages. We have seen more people enter the scheme, and I think that says so much about the goodness in Australians' hearts, about their abilities and about their commitment to pay for this. But this also means that we have sustainability issues with the scheme now.

The average payment per participant has increased by almost 48 per cent over the past three years alone. That is a 12.5 per cent increase every year, which, as all of us in this chamber know, is not a sustainable growth trajectory for taxpayers into the future. The NDIS will always be fully funded under the Morrison government, which is why over the last two budgets alone we have made a commitment of an additional $17.1 billion—that's $17,000 million—to fully fund the NDIS over the forward estimates. This takes the total investment in the NDIS to $121 billion over the next four years, which, as Senator Hanson has said, will make it more expensive for taxpayers than Medicare.