The RedBridge Report
How Australians Were Sold the NDIS Crackdown
Before Australians were being bombarded with stories about NDIS “rorts”, fraud, spiralling costs, dodgy providers and a scheme supposedly becoming unsustainable, the Australian Government commissioned research into what Australians actually thought about the NDIS.
What they found was extraordinary.
Australians overwhelmingly cared about disabled people.
They believed in the NDIS.
They saw supporting disabled Australians as part of who we are as a country.
And when they were presented with cuts to eligibility and support, they didn't like them.
So further research tested something else:
How could those reforms be communicated in a way the public might tolerate?
That research became what is commonly referred to as the RedBridge Report.
And what happened next matters.
First, Australians weren't against the NDIS
In 2023, the National Disability Insurance Agency commissioned RedBridge Group to conduct research into community attitudes towards the NDIS.
The findings are important because they give us a snapshot of public attitudes before the years of relentless political and media messaging that followed.
RedBridge found:
“The universality and degree of empathy and compassion that respondents from all demographic segments exhibited towards people with a disability was notable.”
People without lived experience of disability showed similar levels of emotional connection to those who did.
There was also what RedBridge described as a “universality of support for the concept and intent of the NDIS.”
Australians saw supporting disabled people as a moral responsibility.
Support for the NDIS was connected to people's idea of what Australia should be.
This wasn't a scheme the public was demanding be dismantled.
Quite the opposite.
There was a problem
Some of the reforms being considered were deeply unpopular.
These included proposals that could:
restrict who could access the NDIS
increase the threshold for children with developmental delay
reduce support available to people with very high support needs
change Supported Independent Living arrangements, including movement towards 1:3 support ratios
move people and supports outside the NDIS.
When these ideas were presented plainly, people resisted them.
RedBridge's job was not to determine whether disabled people needed those supports.
It was communications research.
The question was effectively:
What information and framing would make people more willing to accept these changes?
Then they found the message that worked
One of the most significant findings appears in RedBridge's later communications testing.
When researchers framed:
rorts, fraud and unreasonable pricing as an “existential threat” to the NDIS
something changed.
People became more receptive to reform.
RedBridge reported:
“We were able to create an environment in which respondents were amenable to reforms designed to counter these things.”
That is an extraordinary sentence.
Because the research wasn't simply measuring what Australians believed.
It was testing how the environment around those beliefs could be changed.
“Qualified tolerance”
The research went further.
RedBridge tested reforms that participants otherwise found unacceptable.
It reported that after respondents were given particular “proof points” and framing, researchers were able to:
“elicit a degree of qualified tolerance”
for reforms restricting eligibility or reducing support.
People still didn't like the reforms.
But they could be made more willing to tolerate them.
That distinction matters.
The research had identified a communications pathway between:
Australians don't support these cuts
and
Australians might accept these cuts if they believe they are necessary to save the NDIS from fraud, exploitation and collapse.
The order mattered too
The research identified another crucial part of the strategy.
Before talking about changes affecting participants, establish that government is cracking down on providers, prices, fraud and exploitation.
The October 2023 research stated:
“demonstrating that we are first addressing providers and pricing is critical before discussing reforms that impact participant accessibility or funding.”
In plain English:
Talk about the rorts first.
Talk about dodgy providers.
Talk about unreasonable prices.
Establish that the Scheme is being exploited.
Then talk about restricting access and funding.
And then Australians heard about rorts. Again. And again. And again.
What followed cannot simply be described as the RedBridge Report “causing” every hostile story about the NDIS or disabled people.
There were genuine cases of fraud. There were genuine problems with providers, pricing and regulation. Those problems deserved investigation.
But there is documented evidence that the government had commissioned research showing that fraud, rorts and exploitation were the most effective frame through which unpopular NDIS reforms could become more acceptable.
And that framing became extraordinarily familiar.
Australians heard about:
Rorts.
Fraud.
Shonky providers.
Organised crime.
Unreasonable prices.
Participants buying things taxpayers shouldn't have to pay for.
Exploding costs.
An unsustainable scheme.
Again and again, stories about the NDIS were presented through the language of waste, fraud, abuse and taxpayer burden.
The public conversation shifted.
The NDIS stopped being talked about primarily as the mechanism through which disabled Australians could live ordinary lives.
It increasingly became a budget problem.
A fraud problem.
A taxpayer problem.
Something that needed to be brought under control.
And disabled people were caught underneath it
Governments may distinguish between “fraudulent providers” and disabled participants when making individual statements.
Public stigma does not remain neatly inside those lines.
When the system supporting one group of people is relentlessly described as bloated, exploited, unaffordable and riddled with rorts, the people relying on that system inevitably become part of the public suspicion surrounding it.
Disabled people began having to explain why their supports were necessary.
Why someone needed help attending the community.
Why a support worker might accompany someone shopping.
Why seemingly ordinary activities could legitimately be disability supports.
Why disability support costs money.
Why independence costs money.
Why participation costs money.
The question slowly shifted from:
“What does this person need to live an ordinary life?”
to:
“Why should taxpayers be paying for that?”
That is what stigma does.
This wasn't speculation discovered years later
The existence of the research is on the public record.
During 2024–25 Budget Estimates it was revealed that the NDIA had awarded two contracts to RedBridge Group, worth a combined $400,000, for focus groups and communications research.
The NDIA's own FOI disclosure log contains documents prepared by RedBridge.
The research was also conducted while the Independent NDIS Review was underway.
Review co-chair Professor Bruce Bonyhady later confirmed that he had been briefed on the RedBridge narrative research during the Review. He has stated that it did not influence the Review's recommendations.
That distinction should be recorded.
But so should the timeline.
The communications testing was happening before the final NDIS Review was released.
Government already knew which reforms people found difficult to accept.
And it already had research about how those reforms could be framed to make them more tolerable.
The contradiction at the centre of the RedBridge story
This may be the most important thing to understand.
RedBridge did not initially discover an Australian population hostile towards disabled people.
It discovered remarkable compassion.
It discovered widespread belief in the NDIS.
It discovered that Australians considered supporting disabled people a moral responsibility.
It discovered that people resisted reforms that appeared to hurt disabled people.
Then communications testing identified the conditions under which that resistance could soften.
Make people believe the Scheme itself is under threat.
Make fraud and rorting the threat.
Show that government is cracking down on the bad guys.
Then introduce the reforms affecting access and funding.
That is why the RedBridge documents matter.
Follow the timeline
2023
The NDIA commissions RedBridge Group to research attitudes towards the NDIS.
The early research finds extraordinary levels of empathy towards disabled Australians and widespread support for the NDIS.
Further communications testing examines responses to proposed reforms.
Fraud, rorts and unreasonable pricing are tested as an “existential threat” to the Scheme.
Researchers report that this framing makes respondents more amenable to reform.
They also identify “qualified tolerance” for otherwise unpopular changes affecting eligibility and support.
Late 2023
The Independent NDIS Review is completed.
Professor Bruce Bonyhady later confirms the Review had been briefed on the RedBridge narrative work, while maintaining that it did not influence its recommendations.
2024
Major NDIS reforms are introduced.
Fraud, rorting, pricing, scheme growth and sustainability become dominant themes in political and media discussion about the NDIS.
The existence and contents of the RedBridge communications research become public through FOI material, parliamentary scrutiny and reporting.
2024–2026
Further NDIS reforms and savings measures follow.
The language of fraud, rorts, organised crime, sustainability and taxpayer cost remains central to the political case for tightening the Scheme.
By 2026, the Parliament is considering and passing another major package of NDIS reforms involving billions of dollars in projected savings.
Why PaperCuts Australia is documenting this
This isn't about pretending fraud doesn't exist.
It does.
Fraud against the NDIS is theft from disabled people and should be investigated.
Exploitative providers should be prosecuted.
Price gouging should be stopped.
Organised crime should never have been allowed anywhere near disability support.
But none of those things justify turning the existence of disabled people and the cost of supporting us into a national morality play about taxpayer burden.
And they certainly don't justify using outrage about fraud as political cover for measures that restrict eligibility or reduce legitimate disability support.
There is a difference between:
stopping someone stealing from the NDIS
and
stopping a disabled person receiving support from the NDIS.
Those two things have been allowed to blur together in the Australian public conversation.
The RedBridge documents help explain how.
Keep the receipts
PaperCuts Australia is documenting the political statements, headlines, policy announcements and public narratives that followed.
Not because every article came from RedBridge.
Not because every journalist was following a government script.
And not because every concern raised about the NDIS was illegitimate.
But because we now know something we didn't know when much of this messaging began.
The framing had been tested.
The government knew Australians cared deeply about disabled people.
It knew people resisted reforms that looked like cuts.
And it had research showing that presenting fraud, rorts and exploitation as a threat to the NDIS could create greater tolerance for reforms restricting access and support.
Australians deserve to know that.
Disabled Australians deserve to have it remembered.
We kept the receipts.
The actual October 2023 RedBridge Report
https://dataresearch.ndis.gov.au/media/3966/download?attachment
The NDIA's March 2023 report itself records the remarkable empathy and widespread support for the NDIS.
https://dataresearch.ndis.gov.au/media/3960/download?attachment
Parliament's own records document the $400,000 contracts, “qualified tolerance” findings and fraud/rorts framing.
https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Community_Affairs/NDISAmendment24/Report/Australian_Greens_Dissenting_Report
The Saturday Paper subsequently documented both the communications strategy and Bonyhady's acknowledgement that he was briefed on the narrative research before the Review was finished.
https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2024/07/27/ndis-media-strategy-briefing-given-before-review-finished