Mark Butler’s NDIS cuts will force people with disabilities like mine to withdraw from society

‘Is it returning the [national disability insurance scheme] to its “original intent” to slash the very funding that allows disabled people to meaningfully engage in community?’ asks autistic advocate Clem Bastow. Photograph: Posed by model; Justin Paget/Getty Images

At times of extreme dysregulation, I turn to the safest of safe foods: a particular frozen cheeseburger that has changed its recipe once since last century. I knew it was time to throw one in the microwave when the federal health minister, Mark Butler, began wrapping up his address to the National Press Club on the topic of “reforms” to the national disability insurance scheme. For those playing along at home, this need for a safe food is because my functional capacity is adversely affected by the abject terror that accompanies the idea of savage cuts to the NDIS – and on Wednesday those fears turned out to be well founded.

In the pleasant words of the ABC’s headline: “More than 160,000 people to be kicked off NDIS as government overhauls eligibility test.” We have to do it, so the general vibe of Butler’s address ran, because the NDIS’s “social licence” is in the gutter. Panic among NDIS participants and their families was widespread and is ongoing. People With Disability Australia immediately launched a campaign against the cuts.