u/Jet90

Interesting article from a linguist and political campaigner. Discuss fact checking, populism, mainstream media, legitimacy and political capital.

> The media isn’t really there to educate people or hold politicians accountable anymore. It’s there to entertain.

> Through repetition across media, politics and social media, immigration becomes one of the most cognitively available issues when people think about national identity and the economy

This interacts with a well-researched cognitive bias called the “salience effect.” It’s when people tend to draw conclusions based on what is most mentally available. That means that the more immigration is discussed, especially in problematic terms, the more it becomes associated with being a national strain, regardless of data and statistics.

The result is that even rebuttals can strengthen the centrality of the original frame. That is where Pauline Hanson’s position becomes structurally advantaged. The more the system talks about immigration, the more her frame is reinforced..

> When predictions are repeated across outlets, they can generate a sense of inevitability, where people begin to assume that rising support is likely to continue. That shift in perception can itself influence behaviour.

I’ve watched some of Pauline Hanson’s at the Press Club and it’s clear that this is what political decline looks like. I’ve also seen the reaction to her performance and here’s what I have to say.

> Pauline gets her legitimacy from the optics of attention. From this standpoint, giving her any attention, good or bad, is helpful for her. Criticism, outrage, ridicule and the like keep her at the centre of the conversation. This is the very source of her political capital.

> If Andy Borowitz’ analysis in Profiles in Ignorance is correct, we have reached late-stage acceptance of ignorance. That is the phase when we celebrate it.

> The reason politicians’ ignorance is celebrated is that highly intellectual politicians can be perceived as elitist. Ignorance, in this era, is being sold as “authentic.” That’s Borowitz’ main argument; Intellect makes a politician almost out of touch, while simplicity is the seller here because it’s “honesty.”

This week, the parliamentary inquiry into Labor’s planned cuts to the National Disability Insurance Scheme heard evidence of people already suffering from constrained services and fearing worse to come.

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A man with spina bifida testified he was told he would be supplied only half the incontinence products he needs and that he should approach companies to ask for free samples. He attended a planning meeting only to hear decisions already made on his behalf.

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“I was told when this plan was made that they could not fund my bowel incontinence needs, because these … were products that I had not used on a long-term basis,” he wrote in a statement read by a friend, Rohan. “I found this extremely distressing and frustrating, because I felt like I was being asked to beg.”

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Rohan also read a statement from the next witness, a woman too tearful to speak. She told of her intellectually disabled brother who sleeps on a camp stretcher in her open-plan living room: “The system did not catch him.”

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Disability advocate Emma Bennison described “fear, tension and deeply personal conversations” since the overhaul was announced last month, about “people’s worth, about their contribution, and about their future”.

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“I have never had the kinds of conversations about disability in my life that I’ve had in the last few weeks,” the chief executive of Disability Advocacy Network Australia told the parliamentary inquiry.

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“I am old enough to remember what it was like before the NDIS, and I can tell you, I do not want to go back. It was terrible.”

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With just 11 days for submissions and three days of hearings, the Albanese government has been accused of rushing hundreds of legislative changes through parliament in its push to cut $37.8 billion over four years and $184.9 billion over a decade. Treasury modelling tabled in the Senate last month revealed the plans would remove 241,000 people from the scheme by mid 2031. Another 110,000 people will be “diverted” from the scheme over the four years, according to the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing.

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The inquiry has received more than 4000 submissions, but just an eighth of the total has so far been published. On Thursday, a submission emerged from the state and territory disability ministers declaring they could not supply in full the services carved off from the NDIS.

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“While elements of the proposed reforms have the potential to deliver improved outcomes, the Bill in its current form risks undermining the original intent of the NDIS,” the ministers wrote in the joint statement.

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“Without a careful, coordinated approach that aligns these changes with broader improvements across the disability support system, there is a significant risk that people with disability will end up in hospitals or other settings that are inappropriate and unable to meet their needs, or have no access to services at all. States and territories are not in a position, and have made no agreement, to deliver like-for-like services to people who are exited from the NDIS.”

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The most contentious elements of the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) bill that was introduced to parliament on May 14 are the permanence test, which tightens eligibility to the scheme; expansive new powers for the responsible minister; and, as The Saturday Paper reported last week, the unprecedented open-ended use of automated decision-making.

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Uncertainty about the scheme’s remit to service primarily people with “severe” and “permanent” disability is rife. The bill states that participants will need to exhaust “all appropriate treatments” to access the NDIS, which will reject those whose needs could be met by another system such as workers’ compensation, motor accident compensation schemes and aged care.

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The Department of Health, Disability and Ageing says it will establish a new technical advisory group to help the disability community with the assessment process and the relevant thresholds.

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“How do I know people will die? Because you will have made it impossible for them to live in so many ways. And you will have to live with them every single day for the rest of your life...”

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Inclusion Australia’s Maeve Kennedy told the inquiry there’s a risk that exhausting all treatments might mean “psychotropic medication used as chemical restraint could be used as treatment for the purposes of scheme eligibility”.

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“The Disability Royal Commission was clear about the harm caused by these practices, which disproportionately impact people with intellectual disability. The legislation should explicitly guard against that outcome.”

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The dangers of such restrictive practices, including menstrual suppression, should “not be underestimated”, said Megan Spindler-Smith, the acting chief executive of People With Disability Australia. “The disability royal commission showed us what can happen when isolation is an outcome of how we are legislated for,” she told the inquiry through tears. “And they have long-term life impacts.”

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Department officials later stated that chemical restraints would not be considered an appropriate treatment and therefore would not be used to test for permanence. However, the position was not clear on psychotropic medicines. Officials also confirmed that the agency would not force any person to undergo treatments to meet the permanence test.

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People with episodic, fluctuating and complex conditions such as Parkinson’s disease are concerned they will face a higher burden to prove their eligibility. There are also concerns for healthcare access in rural and regional areas, for people with different cultural backgrounds and those on lower incomes.

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“Disabled people should not have to medically exhaust themselves, financially ruin themselves or experience preventable harm before they are considered deserving of support,” Spindler-Smith said.

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Her colleague Clara Pirani said: “Your access depends not necessarily on your disability but your postcode and your bank balance.”

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The NDIS Legislation, Policy and Engagement branch assistant secretary Sarah Hawke later sought to clarify that “the model really seeks to avoid the situation where some people with greater access to supports may appear to have higher functioning than those without, despite having similar levels of functional need”.

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“The personal environmental circumstances are highly relevant to considering the funding for participants, and that’s explicit in the legislation.”

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As for ministerial powers, the bill proposes to enable the minister to cut, without legislation or consultation, entire categories of support. These powers would allow the minister for disability and the National Disability Insurance Scheme, Mark Butler, to meet his stated intention, announced at the National Press Club in April, to slash the budget for social and community participation activities.

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Greens senator Jordon Steele-John called it “more or less a legislative god power” and “One Nation’s ideal when it comes to

the NDIS”.

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“Think about what Pauline Hanson could do with that power to disabled people and our families,” he told reporters on Thursday. “Think about what a future Coalition government could do with those powers to strip everything overnight with the stroke of a pen.”

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Department of Health officials say any decision the minister may make would be subject to parliamentary scrutiny.

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The reforms are also criticised as entrenching unpaid labour, including parental support, as the legislation states the National Disability Insurance Agency chief executive must consider in their decisions the “presumption that parents are responsible for providing substantial care and support for their children”.

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Previously, this was in the rules for determining support, but now it is codified in legislation with extra considerations for the chief executive around “unsustainability” of the provision of “supports and networks”.

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The inquiry heard that parents and particularly women generally are likely to be most affected.

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“We have identified three immediate risks: people may lose essential supports when there is currently nowhere else to go,” Sophie Cusworth, the chief executive of Women with Disabilities Australia, told the inquiry.

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“Costs, care and risk will be shifted onto people with disability and their families, particularly women. And the future rules, tools and evidence settings enabled by this

bill may reproduce gender bias, further locking women with disability out of support.”

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The inquiry heard the NDIA, which runs the scheme, has already warned families they could be referred to child protection services if they can’t fulfil their parental responsibilities.

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“What we’re really scared will happen here is that kind of position is going to be taken more often and that more families will feel under threat,” Skye Kakoschke-Moore, the chief executive of Children and Young People with Disability Australia, told the inquiry. “They’re reaching out for help because they’re not able to cope, but by doing so, it may indeed place them in a position of incredible vulnerability.

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“We have already heard from parents that they are concerned that they will be required to reduce the number of hours they are working or leave employment entirely. Seeing that we are already in a cost-of-living crisis, the lower income families have, the deeper the crisis is going to become.”

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Mark Butler, who is also the minister for health and aged care, is offering no backdown or pause. “We’re very committed to getting these changes through,” he said in a Thursday press conference, noting that the government wants the bill “passed quickly”. He described the reforms as a “very well developed plan that thought carefully about the way in which we could get the NDIS back on track, secure it for the long term, but very much still with people with disability at its centre”.

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Butler has also emphasised people won’t be without an alternative system of support.

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For children under nine, services would be set up outside the NDIS when the Thriving Kids program begins rolling out in October.

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Such alternative systems are not ready, however, and agreements with states and territories to pick up disability services are yet to be struck.

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While the disability community broadly welcomes the objective to set the $50 billion-a-year scheme on a sustainable path and protect it from scams and waste, they reject the association of users of the scheme with fraud and being an economic burden.

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NDIS participants told the inquiry of their fears for their independence and safety.

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“When disabled people die as a direct result of this bill, and they will, their blood will be on your hands,” advocate Hannah Diviney told the inquiry.

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“How do I know people will die? Because you will have made it impossible for them to live in so many ways. And you will have to live with them every single day for the rest of your life, haunted by their ghosts, and me every time I have a platform. Because I’ll be damned if I ever let a single politician in this government forget what you did, if you dare position your own political power over our humanity. This bill must be withdrawn.”

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Another witness spoke of fears of going back to group homes, where he experienced being left on toilets and in showers for hours and being infantilised or roughed up by carers.

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Australia’s disability discrimination commissioner, Rosemary Kayess, warned that the legislation, if passed, would leave people in “unsafe situations”.

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“We had four-and-a-half years of evidence given to the disability royal commission,” she told the inquiry. “People with disability in 2009, 2010, after the first round of a disability strategy, identified … the vulnerability that is created when people are isolated and that’s how they become vulnerable. They end up in either closed environments or isolated environments and they are at risk of violence, abuse and exploitation.”

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When the prime minister was pressed on Thursday about the risk of placing participants in unsafe situations, Minister Butler responded. “We’re not going to provide a daily commentary on submissions that have been made to the NDIS inquiry.

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“We’re watching it closely,” he told reporters in Sydney. “We’re studying the submissions that are being made and once the inquiry delivers its report, we’ll obviously be in a position to consider our response.”

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On fraud, which the minister has described as a threat to the social licence of the NDIS, estimated savings from addressing it are a fraction of the four-year, $37.8 billion cost-cutting package. Treasury modelling released alongside the NDIS reform bill shows related savings of $0.9 billion, or $0.3 billion a year from 2027-28.

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The bill proposes to give the NDIA what it has not had until now: powers to regulate and monitor spending. This includes amending the definition of a NDIS provider to ensure their registration “becomes the norm”.

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“It will enable us to revoke registration and that will become a powerful tool,” Mahashini Krishna, from the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission, told the inquiry.

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It also provides for a new range of civil penalties the NDIA can use, allows the agency to investigate criminal activity and requires the retention of records relating to support and the claiming of funds.

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“There is a lot that really gives us capabilities that we have never had … It is a very big leap forward,” John Dardo, deputy chief executive of the NDIA, told the inquiry.

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That said, the expectation of reforms is already having the unintended effect of ejecting sound providers, according to the peak body for support coordinators and plan managers, Disability Intermediaries Australia.

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“Genuinely high-quality businesses are choosing not to stick around to see what comes next,” Tanya Walford, DIA’s acting chief executive, told the inquiry. “We don’t have the information which is going to give us what we need in terms of how we can move forward as a sector.”

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The Coalition and the Greens are still negotiating over whether the NDIS reforms will be referred to a longer inquiry. The Greens say such an extension is “urgently needed” and their firm opposition to the current proposals puts the Coalition in the frame to strike a deal with the government.

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The shadow NDIS minister, Melissa McIntosh, says she is taking the fears for people’s safety “very seriously”.

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The Coalition’s cooperation with Labor is by no means assured, given it wants a longer inquiry into the government’s contentious capital gains tax discount and negative gearing changes.

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Mark Butler says extending the NDIS hearings beyond the rising of parliament on July 2 is not the government’s intention. He’s “confident” in the timeline Labor’s set out “to get this bill through the parliament as quickly as possible before the winter break”.

Australians living with life-limiting illnesses could be left without access to essential disability supports under proposed changes to the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), according to Palliative Care Australia (PCA).

The national peak body was one of 4,500 to lodge a submission to a Senate inquiry examining the Albanese government’s cost-saving reforms, which Treasurer Jim Chalmers has argued are “all about saving the NDIS from itself”.

The proposed amendments would introduce tighter eligibility requirements to cut down participant numbers by more than 240,000 over the next four years, in a bid to reduce projected spending to $55 billion a year by 2030.

PCA argued in its submission that the new rules risk creating a “dangerous gap” that could unfairly exclude some people with life-limiting or terminal illness from the NDIS.

It warned this could leave them “locked out of both systems”, unable to access either appropriate healthcare or disability supports.

“The Bill effectively accepts that some people may be unable to access appropriate healthcare because of cost or geography, while also excluding them from accessing functional supports through the NDIS,” said PCA National Policy Director Josh Fear.

“That is not an adequate safeguard for people with complex and highly vulnerable care needs.”

Mr Fear said the proposed changes overlook the challenges faced by Australians living with serious illness, particularly those in rural, regional and remote areas where access to specialist and palliative care services is already limited.

“People approaching the end of life should not be left navigating gaps between systems while trying to manage serious illness, disability and distress,” he said.

The Senate inquiry will hold its first public hearing in Melbourne on Tuesday, followed by two days in Canberra.

Its final report is due on June 16, 2026.

PCA fears the new plan would reduce the already-constrained capacity of the NDIS to “respond flexibly and swiftly to fluctuating functional capacity and to rapid functional decline”.

It also flagged concerns about delays in decision-making, arguing that proposed timeframes – including a 90-day period for decisions on unscheduled plan reassessments – are “unsuitable for people with short life expectancies”.

PCA’s warning comes amid growing criticism of the reforms from disability and community groups, which fear vulnerable Australians could be left without vital support.

Under the new plan, eligibility would be determined by a participant’s functional ability – how their condition impairs their day-to-day life – rather than a diagnosis.

Participants would also be required to demonstrate that they had exhausted all other appropriate treatment options before gaining access to the scheme.

Average plan funding is forecast to fall from $31,000 to $26,000 per participant, while funding for social and community participation supports would be cut by 30 per cent.

The legislation would also give NDIS Minister Mark Butler new powers to reduce funding in certain circumstances, a move criticised by the Australian Human Rights Commission in its submission to the inquiry.

“The breadth of power means that funding settings could be adjusted over time in response to changing policy, governments, or budget priorities,” it stated.

The Commission described the two-week consultation period as “wholly inadequate” and warned the legislation could be “regressive in the protection and realisation of the rights of people with disability”.

It also argued the changes would make it harder for participants to challenge decisions, which could “reduce independent scrutiny, with implications for access to justice”.

PCA has urged the Senate Committee to consider safeguards to ensure people with permanent and significant disabilities arising from a terminal diagnosis continue to receive appropriate support.

“We are calling on the Senate Committee and the Australian Government to ensure the legislation protects equitable access to both healthcare and disability supports for people with life-limiting conditions,” Mr Fear said.

Should we allow users to rewrite there own version of news headlines? I've noticed users will sometimes spin there own take on an article that doesn't accurately reflect the articles contents. A lot of the main political subreddits don't allow users to write there own headlines.

I’m a school teacher who has always voted for and supported the Labor Party, including handing out how-to-vote cards for my local member for Niddrie, Deputy Premier and Education Minister Ben Carroll.

I write as one of 35,000 teachers and education support staff who took to the streets of Melbourne in March to fight for better pay and working conditions. Now rank-and-file members of the Australian Education Union are being asked to decide whether they think the in-principle agreement negotiated between the AEU and the Victorian government is adequate. I can’t in good conscience vote in favour of this deal.

Illustration: Badiucao

I started my career teaching in government schools in Victoria 20 years ago. I have been a VCE teacher, and also undertaken roles as a year level coordinator, leading teacher and acting assistant principal. In that time, I’ve witnessed the workload and administrative burden on teachers and school leaders increase exponentially. Despite ever-increasing workloads, it is the commitment and professionalism of teachers that has driven a dramatic improvement in the quality of teaching and learning. As the Victorian government likes to celebrate – while still not fully funding our schools – Victorian students ranked first or second in 18 of 20 NAPLAN measures nationally.

Victoria has not yet reached full funding under the Gonski Schooling Resource Standard for government schools after the state government quietly delayed its commitment to reach these targets from 2028 to 2031. Until then, our schools, staff and students will continue to be asked to do more with less – below the level experts say every child needs to succeed.

Victorian teachers experienced a real wage decline of around 11 per cent over the life of the previous agreement due to inflation. This is one reason teachers were fighting for a 35 per cent increase over three years in our log of claims.

Some media reports have celebrated the in-principle agreement between the Victorian government and the union as a “win”, but those reports overlook some critical details. First, the government rejected a three-year agreement and instead proposed a four-year deal, with no back pay since the previous agreement expired in December 2025. As a result, there’s a significant gap. While the headline figure of 28 to 32 per cent sounds impressive, the vast majority of teachers and principals would receive a pay rise of 23 per cent in the first three years of the new agreement, and 4.9 per cent in the fourth year. It’s nothing to sneeze at, sure, but given the backwards position from which we’re starting, and projections around inflation, it’s a far cry from the 35 per cent over three years that we demanded and deserve.

Teachers took strike action earlier in the year but half-day strikes were called off in May and June.Louis Trerise

Those talking up the deal fail to recognise that there are very few meaningful improvements to working conditions on offer. Teachers are already performing, on conservative estimates, around 10 hours of unpaid work each week outside of school hours. Significant workload reform is essential if we are to stem ongoing workforce shortages and retain experienced educators in our classrooms.

We must also recognise that education support staff have not been offered pay increases equivalent to those offered to teachers, despite this being a key demand of AEU members. These are the amazing people working one-to-one with our students with a disability, those smiling at school reception desks across the state, our mental health practitioners, those maintaining the grounds, or the lab techs ensuring science pracs are available to amaze, delight and educate. We know their value, and this should be recognised in their pay.

The claim by Premier Jacinta Allan that this agreement will make our workforce “the best-paid teachers in Australia” requires scrutiny. It does not apply uniformly across all pay ranges: nine out of 11 pay ranges for Victorian teachers would remain below that of their NSW counterparts, and, yes, first-year teachers in Victoria would be paid a fraction more than first-year teachers in NSW by this October, but NSW teachers are yet to negotiate their agreement that expires in October 2027, which will likely take them higher again.

A funny thing tends to happen when teachers talk about the fact their pay and working conditions must be improved – comments from the peanut gallery claiming they’d love “12 weeks of holidays” a year and to be paid as well as we are. The crazy thing is, Victoria is still suffering from a teacher shortage (ask any school in the western suburbs, like mine, how many times they’ve had to readvertise jobs over the past few years just to get one viable candidate). It seems as though the pay and working conditions (and “holidays”) just aren’t tempting enough to sway people to join our noble profession.

So, between June 15-18, I’ll be voting no against the in-principle agreement between the union and the government. Teachers and support staff deserve a better deal. This is not a rejection made lightly or a selfish cash grab. It is a decision informed by many years teaching in Victorian government schools and by a deep concern for the 667,000 students who rely on our public education system every day.

In 2024, Victorian nurses rejected the inadequate offer that both their union and the government urged them to accept. Rather than ending the campaign, that vote compelled a return to negotiations and secured a stronger outcome. I’m confident that, if we hold the line, the Victorian government will come back to the table with an offer our teachers deserve and our schools need.

Jessica McGinnis is a teacher at a government school in Melbourne’s western suburbs.