Social policy ‘generosity’ at a time of fiscal austerity: The strange case of Australia’s National Disability Insurance Scheme

In a climate of fiscal austerity, Australia’s neo-liberal government is continuing to fund and implement an expensive National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). This article presents a demographic, funding and policy context for the introduction of the NDIS. Its success, we argue, must be situated in the context of development of a post-industrial workforce, and owes a lot to its embrace of social investment, marketisation of welfare services, and cash for care. We then look at two tensions unfolding during the scheme’s implementation: increasing demand for care work alongside a shortage of care workers, and the market-driven reform of the Australian vocational education and training system. The changes to vocational education, we conclude, have produced more problems than they solved. Since they anticipate key aspects of the NDIS, they raise questions about the intent and future of Australia’s National Disability Insurance Scheme.