Sky News with Chris Kenny - 22 April 2026

Melissa McIntosh MP 

Shadow Minister for Families and Social Services

Shadow Minister for the NDIS

Shadow Minister for Women

Federal Member for Lindsay 

22 April 2026

Transcript 

Sky News with Chris Kenny

Topics: NDIS

E&EO … 

Chris Kenny

Can we trust Labor to wind back costs? They hardly have the form. Let's go to the Shadow NDIS Minister, Melissa McIntosh. Thanks for joining us, Melissa. Labor’s promised a lot here, have they promised enough? Are their intentions tough enough?

Melissa McIntosh

I think Minister Butler, Mark Butler, has said a lot, but there is no detail behind what he has said, and that is the concern. But in the process of saying these things he's managed to really upset a couple of hundred thousand people in Australia and their families. So instead of targeting the rorts, the criminal activity and putting some detail behind that, fixing the scheme itself, pulling it apart and basically starting again, he's told people on the scheme, including our most severely disabled people, that they're going to have to get another assessment to prove that they belong on the scheme. So, my phone has not stopped ringing in my office all afternoon since this announcement. This is what we didn't want. The floating of ideas by the Government these last couple of weeks has caused quite a lot of stress. We've got to remember that people on the scheme do have disability, where you can question whether everyone should be on it or not and when they're talked about in this way it causes a lot of alarm. So, I think the Government's going about it the wrong way and they've this reduction in growth, but they've promised this before. So, they said that they would reduce growth, they'll have an eight per cent growth target, and then they said it'll have a five per cent growth target, now it's two per cent. So I don't, we don't know what the detail is behind that but we're very skeptical.

Chris Kenny

But let me jump in there Melissa, because according to Butler's numbers, he's going to get 160,000 people off the NDIS over the next few years. Now, as you've referred to, that means that just about everyone on it at the moment will be worried about their ongoing eligibility. But do you believe him? Do you believe, we don't know how he's going to do this. Do you actually think that Labor will get 160,000 people off the scheme?

Melissa McIntosh

But that's the thing, it's a whole lot of scaremongering and then nothing may come of it. So, is that really worth doing that to people? 160,000 it could be more, this is the Minister for the NDIS Jenny McAllister, couldn't even confirm that's a real figure today. But where are those people going to go? Is this just a cost-shifting exercise to get the money out of the NDIS budget to make the Government look better, like they're doing something about it. So, this will require the states signing up to take some of those participants, take some of those services back on and we know that originally when it comes to psychosocial services like schizophrenia and bipolar the states had that originally, and it went to the NDIS and now they want to put it back to the states, and in the meantime people with those mental health issues are falling through the cracks and ending up in our hospital system. So, I don't know how Minister Butler thinks he's going to achieve this when the states are already saying they don't want a bar of it.

Chris Kenny

Yeah, fascinating stuff, I think you might be right on the money there Melissa McIntosh. Thanks so much for joining us. Shadow NDIS Minister, Melissa McIntosh there. She's talking about how this speech and what Mark Butler's announced, they'll use that in the budget to show that they're going to reduce their spending in the next four years but whether they actually do it, well, what do you reckon?