Disability justice

Disabled people face economic, political and social barriers in every aspect of their lives as the result of a system designed around the needs of those who profit from other people's labour. Where a person cannot be exploited for profit, the system treats them as a burden. Victorian Socialists reject that logic entirely. Illness and/or impairment should not mean exclusion, poverty or loss of agency.

In Victoria, more than one million people live with disability. The vast majority are ineligible for the NDIS, which was never designed to cover the full disabled population and is now being cut by the federal Labor government. The introduction of Thriving Kids will remove autistic children and children with developmental delay aged eight and under from the NDIS from January 2028, routing them instead into a new state-delivered system. The disability community has been consistent: early childhood support is welcome; removing children from the NDIS before adequate alternatives exist is not. Victorian Socialists will not implement these programs on the Commonwealth's terms. We insist that no child loses NDIS access before genuinely equivalent support is in place, that all services are free, and that the disability community lead the design.

What we think

1. Disabled people are oppressed by a system that treats them as economically unproductive and therefore disposable.
2. The elimination of barriers experienced by disabled people requires targeted funding across healthcare, housing, education, transport, and social and cultural life.
3. Disabled people have a right to agency and independence, including the right to make decisions about their own lives without coercion or guardianship imposed by others.
4. Disabled people have a right to live free from violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation.
5. Neurodivergence is not itself a disability to be treated or corrected; the barriers neurodivergent people experience come from inaccessible material, social and economic conditions, and it is those conditions that should be the target of intervention.
6. Services for disabled people must not be run for profit. Privatisation of disability services is incompatible with high-quality, accessible care.
7. Access to disability services must not be determined by age, language, income, location, culture or nature of disability.
8. Disabled people who want to work should be able to, without discrimination or penalty.
9. Disabled people have a right to access education at all levels.
10. The federal government’s cuts to the NDIS represent an attack on disabled people that the Victorian government must actively resist and where possible offset.
11. The ’low to moderate support needs’ category used to determine access to Thriving Kids is explicitly not based on clinical diagnosis. The federal government’s own guidance confirms access depends on an assessed developmental support needs level, not a diagnostic category such as DSM-5 autism severity levels. This makes it a budget and administrative mechanism, not a clinical one, and it should not be used to determine children’s access to support.

We’ll fight to

Services and NDIS

1. Progressively transition all private disability services into public hands, with continuity of care guaranteed throughout the transition.
2. Restore and increase funding for all state-funded disability services that were wound up after the introduction of the NDIS, and fully fund Victoria's obligations under the National Agreement on Foundational Supports with the condition that all services are evidence-based, free, genuinely co-designed with disabled people and their families and disability workers, and that no child loses NDIS access before equivalent alternatives are operational and independently assessed as adequate.
3. Oppose federal cuts to NDIS funding, the reduction of average plan values, and the tightening of eligibility criteria, and use Victoria’s leverage as a co-funder and co-deliverer of Foundational Supports to demand restoration of full entitlements.
4. Provide additional funding for expanded disability services, including for people with complex needs, to ensure equal access across Victoria with particular urgency around social and community participation supports, which are being cut federally from July 2026.

Agency and independence

1. Guarantee the agency and independence of disabled people by:
   • Protecting the presumption of decision-making capacity and strengthening supported decision-making frameworks.
   • Reduce and work towards the elimination of restrictive interventions by expanding resources, staffing, and training to provide genuinely person-centred care across education, support, healthcare and accommodation settings.
   • Funding and expanding a network of self-advocacy organisations.
   • Protecting sexual and reproductive rights.
   • Advocating for the removal of the Partner Income Test and raising the rate of the DSP to above the Henderson Poverty Line.
   • Banning the non-consensual use of Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) and other coercive behavioural interventions on autistic people, particularly children and young people who cannot meaningfully consent or refuse.

Education

1. Significantly increase school funding and accessibility for children with disabilities to allow children to access schooling that meets their needs, whether at a mainstream school or a specialist school, and advocate for the federal government to increase disability loading funding to schools, which remains the primary funding gap for personal and social supports in mainstream settings.
2. Increase the wages and conditions of teachers and disability support staff, including mandating sufficient planning time and access to the specialist resources they need to support children with disability in their classrooms.

Employment

1. Introduce pay equity for disabled workers by abolishing employment exemptions that allow employers to pay below-award wages.
2. Overturn the neoliberal privatisation of Disability Employment Services (DES). Co-design a state run DES program with service users, carers, workers and their unions so that people with disabilities who want to find work can receive the support of publicly employed health and disability workers and a DES that prioritises people over profit.
3. Redeploy any job losses due to cuts to the NDIS into state services.

Housing and transport

1. Ensure all public transport infrastructure is accessible and expand subsidies for private transport use.
2. Fast-track completion of all outstanding disability modification requests for people in public and community housing.
3. Ensure all new public housing is built to the Livable Housing Design Gold standard.
4. Ensure a range of housing options and support models are available so that disabled people can choose how and with whom they live, including supported independent living in the community rather than institutional care.

Legal and financial support

1. Increase funding for free specialist disability legal support.
2. Introduce financial support to address the higher basic living costs faced by disabled people, including subsidies on essential services, equipment and transport.

Carers

1. Recognise and resource the contribution of unpaid carers, including through carer payments, respite services and workforce protections.