ABSTRACT
Chapter 6 chapter charts the emergence of one of the most recently established IF schemes globally, the Australian National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). I identify a variety of civil society groups whose advocacy work was key to the adoption of IF in Australia. Amongst them was In Control’s Australian offshoot, In Control Australia, which acted as a conduit for the spread of information and working models of IF sourced from overseas. In this chapter, I explore the significance of these transnational linkages and what, if any, effect they had on domestic disability politics and policy formation. I also examine the history of consumer rights advocacy in disability policy, and how IF advocates reanimated the logic and language of the market in arguing the case for an NDIS. By appealing to an agenda that celebrates consumer choice and links it to democratisation, advocates seized the opportunity to affect change in line with their vision of a just society. But in doing so, they also resignified and reinvigorated that agenda, vesting it with the moral force of an emancipatory project, and bestowing it with the imprimatur of Leftist social progressivism.
