Petros Pierrakos

What the four governments are doing to disabled people Australia, the UK, the US and New Zealand are all doing the same things to disabled people right now. They are doing them at the same time. They are using the same words. They are using the same American software company. Most of it is happening inside twelve months. Here is what they are doing. They are checking everyone again to see who still gets support. Australia is rewriting the NDIS eligibility test and will reassess every existing participant over three years. The UK tried to make PIP harder to get with a new points rule. That did not pass. A review is now writing a new test. The US has passed a law that makes people on Medicaid prove they still qualify every six months from January 2027. New Zealand will reassess everyone on Disability Support Services under new national rules from October 2026. Reassessment is how governments remove people from support. They are letting computers make decisions about people's payments. New Zealand passed a law in June 2026 that lets a computer make almost any benefit decision. Australia already used a computer system called Robodebt to make wrong debt decisions and people died as a result. The other governments are building similar systems anyway. The UK passed a law that gives legal cover to automated identity checks in health and social care. In the US, the immigration department got a Medicaid dataset in August 2025 and put it into a computer system called Palantir ELITE. None of these laws require a person to check the computer's decision before it takes effect. The same American company is used in all four countries. It is called Palantir. In the UK it runs the NHS data platform on a £330 million contract, and its staff can see identifiable patient records when they need to fix problems. In the US its ELITE system holds records on 79 million people on Medicaid. In Australia, government contracts with Palantir add up to about $80 million, and the Australian Future Fund owns about $165 million of Palantir shares. New Zealand does not have a Palantir care contract yet, but its Ministry of Social Development already runs a data system that matches immigration and tax records. One company holds health, welfare and immigration data in four countries. They are making the rules stricter on providers and stricter on disabled people at the same time, in separate laws. Australia's new NDIS integrity law lets officials search buildings, take documents, and require people to answer questions, with fines above $15 million. The UK's new Mental Health Act keeps the powers that let doctors detain people. The US removed the rule that said nursing homes must have enough staff. New Zealand's new bill writes down the rules for family carers as employees, but does not protect future funding levels. The provider side of the law and the participant side of the law are always in separate Acts. Unpaid carers are being asked to do more work without being paid for it. Every country has a carer strategy or consultation open. None of them offers to pay carers. The Australian government said in March 2026 that carers matter and did not pass a new law. The UK is asking whether Carer's Leave should be paid. It has not decided. The US has passed no federal carer pay reform. New Zealand's draft carer plan finished consultation in March 2026 and will launch later this year with no new pay attached. The paid workforce is being made smaller and cheaper. Australia has raised aged care award pay through Fair Work. The UK closed the overseas care worker visa in July 2025 and has not replaced those workers. The US removed the nursing home minimum staffing rule in February 2026. New Zealand changed the rules for family carers as employees but did not raise the actual pay rates. The result in every country is more work, fewer workers, and less protection. Ministers are moving important decisions out of parliament. Each of these laws sets a general framework. The actual numbers, thresholds and eligibility tests are set later by rules, orders and instruments that a minister signs off without another full parliamentary vote. That includes the benefit rate, the eligibility test, and the funding level. Parliament votes on the framework. The minister decides the numbers later. Legal rights are being reduced inside welfare law. Schedule 2 of Australia's NDIS Bill gives officials the power to search premises, seize documents, and require people to answer questions. It is passing in the same fortnight as new ASIO powers. The UK's new data law widens the situations in which adult social care data can be shared. The US Department of Justice issued a legal opinion on 18 June 2026 saying the Americans with Disabilities Act does not require disabled people to be supported to live in the community, and said it will no longer follow its own long-standing Olmstead guidance. New Zealand's government answered a Supreme Court decision that helped family carers by writing a new law that changes the rules. In each case, courts had started to give disabled people more protection, and governments have written new laws that take some of it back. Each government uses the same three words to describe what it is doing: sustainability, integrity, and modernisation. Australia's Bill is called Securing the NDIS for Future Generations. The US Act is called the One Big Beautiful Bill and its Medicaid section is described as protecting program integrity. The UK describes its welfare reform as saving £1 billion by 2030. New Zealand's law is called the Social Security (Modernisation) Amendment Act 2026. AUKUS is officially about defence, not welfare or health. No source in this review shows AUKUS moving welfare or health data between countries. But the same American company holds the operational contracts in each country, so cross-border access to your file is now controlled by the company's contracts rather than by treaties between governments. The Five Eyes intelligence sharing arrangement and the US CLOUD Act also apply. To sum it up: four governments are doing ten of the same things. They are reassessing disabled people to reduce numbers. They are using computers to make benefit decisions. They are storing the data with one American company. They are giving officials new powers to search and question providers, while cutting participant budgets in separate laws. They are asking unpaid carers, mostly women, to do more for free. They are shrinking the paid workforce. They are moving the real decisions out of parliament and into ministerial rules. They are cutting legal rights inside welfare law. They are using the same three words to describe it. And they are doing it all inside twelve months. I don't think that is a coincidence. They are all AUKUS countries, and this smells like Tranche 2. But this works in our favour too, including remedies. Evidence gathered in one country can be used in submissions in the next. The UK Timms Review findings support Australian NDIS submissions. The US experience shows what happens when disability exemptions to work requirements do not work in practice. New Zealand's new law is a current warning that the lessons of Robodebt have not been learned. Freedom of information decisions in one country can be used to ask for the same kinds of records in another. Three of the four countries have a carer strategy consultation open right now, so the same evidence can be submitted three ways. New Zealand advocates are already fighting the computer decision law in court and in the media. Australian advocates can support that directly, and New Zealand advocates can support us in return. We are stronger together.