A few years ago, during the turmoil in Afghanistan, a friend of mine and his family were offered a humanitarian pathway to Australia by the Coalition government. They arrived carrying trauma, uncertainty, and a fragile hope that safety might eventually become stability. Today, they are still building that stability – appointment by appointment, physio session by physio session – while relying on the national disability insurance scheme (NDIS) to support their son’s rehabilitation, who was left paralysed after illness.
Like many humanitarian migrants, my friend is not distant from policy debates – he is simply too busy surviving them to follow them closely. He has not yet heard that the Coalition, which once supported humanitarian resettlement, is now proposing a significant tightening of welfare eligibility: restricting access to a range of supports, including the NDIS, to citizens only.
