The disabled will be the first to suffer if we get this wrong Reader Dr Stephen Kenny: Dear Andrew, As a medical practitioner, and father of a severely autistic 18yr old, I cannot express the depth of my resentment at the use of the proposed NDIS scheme as a political weapon to hamstring the budgets of future governments for political gain. This political gain, by ruining the fiscal integrity of the Australian economy, is being justified by using the plight of wheelchair bound and severely intellectually or physically disabled people like my son. However, it is clear that this scheme will be broadly applied and therefore diluted in its putative effectiveness by including alcoholics, drug addicts, depressed, anxious, lumbar pain, housemaid's knee or any other of a myriad of trivial disabilities which sufferers will consider equally disabling. It is a given that there will be a massive redundant bureaucracy (is there any other kind?) needed to administer it, which will blow out its budget four or five fold no doubt. Then, one must consider the application and assessment of eligibility criteria, which will be the province of time poor GPs such as myself, who are increasingly unavailable for actual patient care for alleviation of illnesses, but rather as clerical assistants increasingly at the behest of bureaucracies interested only in burying us under a mountain of paper, just as they are with nurses and teachers. While genuine assistance to the severely disabled is clearly welcome, surely targeted schemes for wheelchair subsidies for example are a more efficient means of distributing assistance funds to those most in need. The lack of detail offered before the well meaning but deluded general populace jump on the bandwagon is a disgrace, and instead I propose a mature discussion needs to be undertaken openly and transparently regarding how to assist the severely disabled in a targeted and an economically sustainable way. As the Rudd government showed when first in office, attempting to restrict the carer benefit criteria, if the welfare system becomes unaffordable, the most disabled will be the first ones cut adrift.