Shadow Portfolio — 27 May 2026

Michael McCormack used the second reading of the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS) Bill to mount a dual-front attack on the government's management of both the NDIS and the Department of Veterans' Affairs, describing what he called "white hot anger" in the veterans community over the veterans component of the scheme and its budget treatment [TA-260527-house-ef5cc5d1c124:s019].

The centrepiece of his intervention was the DVA's forthcoming allied health spending cap: from 1 July 2027, veterans will face a $5,000 annual ceiling on allied health support, replacing the existing 12-session treatment cycle per provider. McCormack flagged an additional procedural concern — that the exemption pathway for veterans whose needs exceed the cap has not yet been designed — presenting this as evidence that the policy is being imposed ahead of any workable administrative framework [TA-260527-house-ef5cc5d1c124:s019].

He acknowledged the government's pairing of that cap with $169.7 million to lift allied health provider fees to NDIS rates, noting it is the first material fee increase in over two decades, but treated the concession as insufficient to offset the damage to veterans' care continuity.

McCormack's sharpest critique targeted NDIS service delivery in regional, rural and remote communities. He argued that the bundling of travel costs inside NDIS plans has already caused the loss of speech therapy, podiatry and physiotherapy services for participants outside major cities — characterising this as a foreseeable consequence of policy designed without regional awareness.

He broadened this to a political argument, contending that city-centric MPs in government are structurally disconnected from the hardships facing constituents in non-metropolitan Australia, and drew an explicit link to the broader fuel cost crisis compressing household budgets in those communities [TA-260527-house-ef5cc5d1c124:s019]. The framing positions the NDIS reforms not as a technocratic redesign but as a cost-shifting exercise whose burden falls disproportionately on vulnerable people far from Canberra.

On scheme integrity, McCormack called for a full audit of the NDIS, the removal of corrupt providers — whom he described in pointed terms as "shysters, grifters, vile rent-seekers and charlatans" — and criminal prosecution where fraud is proven. This positions the National Party as willing to support structural reform of the scheme's integrity architecture while arguing that the government's current amendment package addresses the wrong problems and in the wrong sequence.

The overall opposition posture is one that accepts the need for NDIS sustainability measures but contests the distributional consequences of the measures chosen, particularly for veterans and for Australians in regional and remote areas.