One of Australia's most prominent Paralympians has hit out at the Turnbull government for linking savings from welfare cuts to funding the national disability insurance scheme.
Kurt Fearnley is shocked and confused about a plan to quarantine $3 billion in net savings to fund the NDIS in a bid to pressure Senate crossbenchers to pass an omnibus bill that ties an overhaul of childcare fee subsidies to a raft of welfare cuts.
The three-time gold medallist says the scheme was thrown into the political fray like a football match on Monday.
"Not only thrown in it, it was thrown in to one of the murkiest dirtiest parts of that game," he told ABC TV on Tuesday.
"To ignore the language and say that it isn't important and say that we need to directly grab money from X to pay from the NDIS, you fund this thing, you fund this thing and it will make us money.
Short-term politics hurt the NDIS, Fearnley said.
"It will hurt the government, and it hurts the community as a whole. It hurts the country."
A clearly disheartened Fearnley said the scheme was never meant to be a political football.
He wishes four years after the roll-out we could get to a place where the government can speak about the scheme with as much vigour as it does for $50 billion in business tax cuts, because it believes it benefits the community.
"To ignore the benefit, it is mischief, it is political just opportunism, and it is just wrong."
