Government targets $463m savings by slashing disability support for school students amid systemic underfunding crises
Original framing: “The government wants to save $463m by tightening disability support to school students. What’s going on?” — The Conversation - Global
Disabled students, parents, and educators—particularly those from low-income or racialized backgrounds—are systematically excluded from policy discussions, their lived experiences reduced to 'costs' in budget papers. Indigenous disabled communities, who face compounded discrimination, are entirely absent from the narrative. The policy reflects a top-down, ableist approach that treats disabled people as objects of policy rather than subjects with agency. Marginalized voices are not just missing; they are actively silenced by the framing of disability as a fiscal problem.
This policy exemplifies how neoliberal austerity weaponizes disability to justify fiscal discipline, erasing centuries of disability rights struggles and indigenous care models.
The $463m figure is a red herring—a short-term accounting trick that ignores the $1.2 trillion annual cost of exclusionary education systems in the US alone. By centering Hermes’ trickster logic, we see the absurdity of a society that claims to 'save' by impoverishing its most vulnerable, while indigenous frameworks like 'whanaungatanga' and scientific evidence from UDL prove there are cheaper, more humane alternatives. The real savings lie in dismantling ableism, not disabled people. Marginalized voices—disabled students, parents, and elders—must lead the redesign of support systems, with policies like impact assessments and community-based networks ensuring accountability. The future modeled here is not one of cuts, but of collective care, where disability is not a cost to manage but a relationship to nurture.