World champ adaptive surfer Barney Miller has NDIS funding slashed amid massive government cuts 

"It was incredible, the NDIS made me stronger, helped me reach my goals."

If you’re living in the banana republic called Australia where eight of ten new jobs are hanging off the withered ol government teat, debt hitting a trillion bucks, inflation gone to hell, you’ll know the heat the gov is under to get cutting. 

The National Disability Insurance Scheme is a well-meaning utopian program where each person classed as disabled is given an individualised funding package. It was projected to cost thirteen bill a year and support 400k disabled people but, humans beings human, y’see a scam y’gonna take it, the cost has soared to fifty bill and now supports three-quarts of a million.

And the industrial level fraud, which only got in the spotlight after a couple of right-wingers did a Nick Shirley and went door-knocking on suss NDIS businesses in suburbs where half the joint is on the NDIS and the other half is apparently supplying the services, has meant deserving recipients have been caught in the crossfire of the new cuts. 

Coffs Harbour surfer Dave “Barney” Miller used to be one of the best surfers in town until, in 1999, on a nassy rainy night he was a passenger in a car that flew off the road. He busted his neck and was paralysed from the chest down. 

His journey, as they say, was movingly told in the documentary You and Me.

He now runs the Barney Miller Surf Classic in Sawtell annually to raise money for other people with spinal cord injuries, and is a Red Bull Wings for Life World Run ambassador.

Great guy, now stuck with a rusty damn chair and his physio and pain therapy cut to hell ’cause sons of bitches milked the NDIS cow dry.

“It was incredible, it made me stronger,” he said of the NDIS.

Question to Australian BTL: What’s your best NDIS scam story? You and your kids and your gal all got ADHD or low-level autism etc?