Ransacking the Education Investment Fund to support the NDIS makes no sense, Vicki Thomson from the Group of Eight will tell a Senate committee this morning.

The Senate Standing Committees on Economics are inquiring into legislation to fund the National Disability Insurance Scheme, including by closing the $3.8n EIF, which Ms Thomson characterises as; “short-sighted and damaging.”

The Eight explicitly supports the NDIS, she says, “but the effects will be anything but short term. The EIF monies will not solve the funding of NDIS – it is equivalent to less than a fifth of a year’s funding at full cost for the NDIS – but will critically undermine the next decade of Australian research.”

She will detail a range of research that the EIF has made possible, including work on autism spectrum disorder and chips with potential to repair brain injury. And she adds that research supported by the Medical Research Future Fund will require university research infrastructure.

“Robbing Peter to pay Paul, as closing EIF to plug an NDIS funding-hole most definitely is, can never end well. We ask you to not let that happen.”