Labor has accused Peter Dutton of backflipping on bipartisan support for the national disability insurance scheme (NDIS) and finding “an excuse” to slash supports, after Dutton linked cuts to funding Aukus nuclear submarines.
The government services and NDIS minister, Bill Shorten, made the comments in a statement to Guardian Australia after the opposition leader doubled down on his offer of Coalition support if Labor wanted to make cuts to the program.
On Monday, Dutton was asked if bipartisan support for Aukus would extend to giving the government leeway to make budget savings to pay for it. He replied to ABC’s 7.30: “The short answer is yes.”
“In my budget in reply speech last October I said that we would work with the government if they had tough decisions to take, for example, keeping the NDIS sustainable,” he said.
Dutton defended the remarks on Tuesday, telling reporters in Canberra that the program is “crucial to provide dignity and support to people with disabilities” but may become “financially unviable” without changes.
“If they [the government] need to pass legislation – I’ve said nothing different to what I said in October last year … we’re willing to support that through the Senate.”
Shorten responded that “defence spending comes out of the defence budget”.
“It’s disappointing the Liberals are backflipping on their bipartisan support for the NDIS that the opposition leader committed to in October,” he said.
“What Mr Dutton is making clear to the 575,000 NDIS participants is that the Liberals will always be looking for an excuse to slash their supports.”
“We are committed to reforming the NDIS and making sure every dollar gets to the people who need it most.”
Shorten said the government would need to “get on top of things like provider fraud and waste” to make the NDIS sustainable, matters to be dealt with by the independent review “which includes an examination of sustainability and costs and will be reporting back by the end of the year”.
The Greens disability rights and peace spokesperson, Senator Jordon Steele-John, also defended the scheme, saying the “NDIS is an essential service for all Australians to live a happy and healthy life, yet the Coalition has been targeting the disabled community for years to try and dismantle it”.
Earlier, Dutton said that Labor’s claim that the Aukus nuclear submarine plan is cost-neutral over four years is “not credible”, and that $3bn of defence cuts to fund the plan means the Albanese government is preparing to “cannibalise” other projects.
Dutton otherwise offered bipartisan support for the plan to spend up to $368bn by the mid-2050s to buy up to five Virginia class submarines and build a next-generation UK-designed nuclear submarine in Australia.
Dutton also offered the Coalition’s support for a plan to select a defence site for nuclear waste, promising “no politics” on that point and urging critics to “grow up”.
The Australian government will spend $9bn over four years on the Aukus submarine program, including $6bn in Australia and $3bn in the UK and US, mostly the latter, to increase industrial capacity to build the Virginia class submarines.
The plan is budget-neutral because the government has booked $6bn of savings from scrapping the French Attack class submarines and $3bn in unidentified other cuts to defence projects.
On Tuesday the deputy prime minister and defence minister, Richard Marles, said the defence strategic review had a “good look” at spending and that information about cuts will be released before the budget in two months.
Marles said the defence budget will continue to grow, from 2% to 2.2% of GDP. The Aukus submarine plan will cost 0.15% of GDP on average a year in the long term to 2054-55, which Marles labelled “modest” given the “transformation in the capability and potency of the defence force”.
Marles defended the $3bn cut, arguing that defence must be exposed to “budgetary discipline” and that keeping the Aukus program cost-neutral over four years is an “important down-payment on the part of defence”.
“There is no ring-fencing of defence, [it] needs to justify its expenditure and value for money just as any other part of government must do,” he said.
In January, after receiving the defence strategic review, Marles signalled that the government would scale back some defence projects to fund others, telling Guardian Australia “we don’t have limitless resources”.
On Tuesday Dutton told reporters in Canberra “it’s not credible for the government to say that there’s no net impact even over the forward estimates”.
“We can’t allow Labor to cannibalise the defence force to pay for Aukus – it’s not an either or option,” he said.
Dutton conceded there might be “some savings” to be found in the defence portfolio, but called on the government to detail proposed cuts.
