National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 1021
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Submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Introduction and summary of position
I am an autistic woman and an NDIS participant. I am making this submission because I am deeply concerned about the likely impacts of the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 on disabled people, families, carers and broader public systems.[1]
Like many disabled people, I have spent years navigating systems that were not designed to understand, accommodate or appropriately support my needs. Access to NDIS support has materially changed my life. These supports are not optional extras. They are part of what allows me to remain employed, manage my mental and physical health, navigate daily living, sustain relationships and participate in society with stability, safety and dignity. Without adequate support, the consequences are not abstract. Basic functioning becomes harder to maintain, health deteriorates, isolation deepens, work becomes less sustainable, and life narrows back toward survival rather than participation, connection and autonomy.
This submission addresses the provisions of the Bill. Although the Bill is presented by government as protecting the NDIS and improving scheme integrity, its practical effect is to narrow access, increase reassessment and gatekeeping, reduce preventative supports, and shift unmet support needs onto families, carers and already overstretched public systems.[2]
This submission argues that the Bill should not proceed in its current form because it would:
- make it harder for disabled people to get and keep NDIS support by tightening eligibility, narrowing how lifelong disability is recognised, and increasing reassessment requirements;[3]
- introduce standardised functional capacity assessments that risk reducing complex, fluctuating and context-dependent disability to a short assessment process that may not capture how people actually function over time, across different settings, or under stress;[4]
- reduce access to social, civic and community participation supports, as well as capacity-building supports, even though these supports often prevent crisis and deterioration, by helping disabled people maintain daily functioning, relationships, mental health, communication, routine, employment, housing stability and community connection;[5][6]
- disproportionately affect autistic people, people with psychosocial disability, people with intellectual disability, people with Down syndrome, people with vision
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impairments, children with developmental delay, and people whose support needs are cumulative, fluctuating or not immediately visible;[7] 5. increase the burden on disabled people to repeatedly prove that their disability is serious enough, permanent enough and unsupported enough to justify assistance;[8][9] 6. shift unmet support needs onto hospitals, mental health services, housing and homelessness systems, schools, welfare services, crisis services, unpaid carers and disabled people ourselves;[10] 7. and fail to address the deeper structural problems created by the marketised design of the NDIS.[11]
I recognise that some provisions relating to provider fraud, provider compliance, information- gathering powers and plan management may respond to genuine governance failures within the NDIS market. However, those measures have been bundled together with broader reforms that would restrict participant access and support. The committee should not accept participant restriction as the price of provider regulation.
- The Bill narrows access and increases gatekeeping
The Bill introduces major changes to access, planning, reassessment, support determinations, new framework plans, reasonable and necessary supports, provider regulation, plan management and scheme governance. I am particularly concerned about the provisions that restrict access and increase administrative control over participants.
The Bill would introduce stricter interpretations of permanence, meaning whether a person’s disability is considered lifelong and therefore eligible for ongoing support. The concern is that disabled people may be required to continually prove that further treatment or intervention will not substantially improve their functioning before support is considered justified, including where treatment is inaccessible, unaffordable, ineffective or psychologically inappropriate.[12]
This matters because disability support should not depend on disabled people exhausting treatment pathways before their lifelong support needs are recognised. For autistic people, people with psychosocial disability, people with chronic illness and people with cumulative impairments, functional capacity can vary depending on environment, stress, support, housing, health, trauma, workload and life circumstances. A fluctuating support need is still a real support need. It does not disappear because a person can function better in some contexts than others, or because their capacity changes across days, months or the life course.
The Bill also provides for standardised functional capacity assessments for access and reassessment from 2028 onward. Disabled people and advocacy organisations have raised serious concerns that standardised functional interviews may displace longitudinal clinical evidence, contextual understanding and lived experience.[9] A short standardised assessment conducted by an NDIA or NDIA-appointed assessor, rather than a person’s own treating clinicians, cannot reliably capture the way disability operates over time, across environments and under cumulative stress.
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This is especially concerning for autistic people, people with psychosocial disability and people with non-visible, cumulative or fluctuating impairments. A person may appear relatively composed or functional during a formal interview while still experiencing serious burnout, instability, distress or support needs across daily life.[13] Standardised assessment risks reducing complex disability to a narrow administrative snapshot, making real support needs harder to recognise, explain or evidence.
The Bill also tightens reassessment and review rules, strengthens requirements that supports arise directly from the impairment used to access the scheme, and expands powers to limit funding through support determinations and financial sustainability considerations.[14][15][2] This is especially concerning for people with multiple, intersecting disabilities, chronic health conditions or cumulative impairments, whose support needs cannot be neatly attributed to one primary diagnosis or impairment category. In practice, a person’s need for support may arise from the combined impact of autism, psychosocial disability, trauma, chronic illness, fatigue, pain, intellectual disability, physical impairment or other conditions. Treating these needs as separable risks excluding supports that are necessary precisely because of how those impairments interact in daily life.
Taken together, these provisions would make NDIS access and planning more difficult, more adversarial and more dependent on repeated proof of incapacity.[16] This an administrative and psychological burden that falls most heavily on people whose disabilities affect executive functioning, communication, energy, emotional regulation, memory, self-advocacy and capacity to navigate complex systems. For many participants, the process of gathering evidence, attending assessments, responding to reassessments and contesting inadequate decisions can itself contribute to stress, burnout, deterioration and reduced functioning. This is the opposite of a stable, preventative disability support system.
- The Bill misunderstands preventative and capacity- building supports
The Bill’s proposed reductions to social, civic and community participation supports, alongside reductions to capacity-building supports, are especially concerning.[5][6]
These supports are often framed politically as secondary, discretionary or recreational. In reality, they are frequently preventative. They maintain daily functioning, social connection, communication, emotional regulation, executive functioning, independence, housing stability and protection from isolation and deterioration.[17][18]
Capacity-building supports can include support with daily living, communication, executive functioning, independent living, social participation and long-term stability. For many disabled people, these supports may appear relatively low intensity on paper, such as assistance with routines, appointments, community access, emotional regulation, or daily tasks. But these are often precisely the supports that allow people to maintain stability, employment, relationships, health and social connection while preventing crisis and long- term deterioration.[19]
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Because these forms of support are preventative and stabilising rather than easily quantifiable, they are often undervalued within systems focused on measurable improvement, increased independence or reduced future costs. The Bill’s stronger emphasis on functional assessment, reassessment and financial sustainability risks intensifying this problem by privileging narrow measures of functional performance over the long-term work of maintaining stability and preventing deterioration.[20][21]
Removing these supports will not create independence. It will increase pressure on emergency healthcare, mental health services, housing systems, carers and crisis systems.[22][23]
- Who is most exposed to harm under the Bill
The Bill will not affect all disabled people equally. Its impacts are likely to fall hardest on people whose support needs fluctuate, are not always externally visible, or arise from the accumulated impact of multiple disabilities, health conditions, stressors and barriers over time.
Autistic people are likely to be heavily affected by functional capacity assessments, permanence restrictions and cuts to social and capacity-building supports.[1] Autistic people may experience fluctuating capacity, cumulative burnout, sensory overload and executive functioning impairment that are not easily captured in standardised assessments.[24] Reductions to supports that assist with routine, executive functioning, emotional regulation, sensory and cognitive load, community participation and daily living are likely to increase instability, social isolation, unemployment, mental distress and long-term deterioration for many autistic participants.[19][25]
People with psychosocial disability are also likely to be severely affected, particularly by stricter permanence requirements and reductions to community-based supports. Many people with psychosocial disability rely on ongoing relational, social and community supports to maintain stability and avoid hospitalisation, crisis escalation and acute service involvement.[26][27]
People with intellectual disability, people with Down syndrome and people with vision impairments are among those identified as particularly exposed to reductions in social and community participation funding. These supports are often central to maintaining communication, daily living skills, routine, safety, community connection, attendance at appointments and protection from neglect and isolation.[28]
Children with developmental delay and autistic children with “lower to moderate support needs” may be redirected away from the NDIS into alternative systems that remain poorly defined and are likely to rely heavily on already overstretched education, paediatric health and community health systems.[1] Families may be forced to absorb increased unpaid care responsibilities if adequate replacement services do not exist.
People with cumulative or interacting disabilities are also likely to be disadvantaged by the requirement that supports arise directly from a single impairment category.[29] Many disabled people do not experience their impairments as neatly separable. Autism, trauma,
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chronic illness, psychosocial disability, fatigue, intellectual disability and physical impairments can interact in ways that compound functional impact.[30] The proposed framework risks excluding precisely those people whose support needs are most cumulative and systemically neglected.
These impacts will also not be distributed evenly. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, disabled people in rural and regional areas, migrants and racialised communities, poor and working-class families, women performing unpaid care labour, and people already subjected to heightened forms of state surveillance and institutional exclusion are likely to experience intensified consequences from reduced support.[31]
Restricting disability support and removing preventative supports will predictably increase physical and mental ill health, crisis presentations, housing insecurity, neglect, institutionalisation, social isolation and exposure to violence and exploitation. For some disabled people, particularly those already living with poverty, trauma, chronic illness, inadequate informal support or cumulative disadvantage, these reforms are also likely to increase morbidity and mortality risks by intensifying barriers to ongoing care, safety, stability and daily functioning.[23]
- The structural problem is marketisation, not participants
The current public discussion increasingly frames disabled people themselves as the cause of rising NDIS costs. I believe this fundamentally misrepresents the structural problems within the Scheme.[2]
The disability rights movement that fought for the NDIS sought greater autonomy, dignity, choice and control in response to underfunded, institutional and restrictive state-based systems.[21] Disabled people needed more control over our own supports and lives.
However, those legitimate demands were implemented through a heavily marketised framework shaped by Productivity Commission assumptions about competition, individualised funding, insurance-style governance and quasi-market service delivery.[20] The result was not a universal, publicly funded disability support system, but a marketised funding scheme in which disability support became organised around private providers competing within a publicly funded quasi-market.[21]
Governments withdrew from large parts of direct disability service provision, and fragmented provider markets emerged in their place.[21] Participants were promised choice and control, but many disabled people have instead had to navigate fragmented services, inconsistent quality, provider misconduct, workforce instability, provider collapse, aggressive billing, overservicing, intermediary costs and adversarial reassessment processes.[32]
Some aspects of the Bill, especially provider fraud enforcement, NDIA provider compliance powers, information-gathering powers and tighter regulation of plan management, can reasonably be understood as attempts to respond to governance failures, exploitative behaviour and weak oversight that emerged within the highly marketised structure of the
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NDIS itself.[32] But these measures sit alongside broader reforms focused on tighter eligibility, reassessment, support restrictions and participant expenditure reduction.
Participants did not create the fragmented provider marketplace, administrative cost escalation, workforce instability, provider billing abuses, profit extraction or insurance-style reassessment architecture.[33] These problems were produced by the design of the Scheme and the policy decisions that shaped it.
This is the political context in which the Bill should be understood. Growth in autistic participants, psychosocial disability and children with developmental delays within the NDIS is being treated as evidence of excess, overreach or misdiagnosis, rather than as evidence that large numbers of disabled people were previously unsupported, under-supported or forced to absorb their needs through crisis, unpaid care, poverty and exclusion.[34]
A different reading has been offered by economists and policy analysts associated with the Australia Institute, including Greg Jericho, who has argued that the government “chose to cut the NDIS” while not introducing a 25% gas export tax that would raise $17 billion annually.[35] Jericho also links many NDIS problems to Productivity Commission assumptions that market competition and private-sector provision would deliver disability support more efficiently and sustainably than direct public provision.[35]
The Bill does not meaningfully confront the deeper structural contradictions produced by the marketised design of the Scheme. Instead, its central mechanism for restoring fiscal control remains tighter eligibility, increased gatekeeping, reduced supports and the displacement of disabled people out of the Scheme.[2][21][32]
This is also a false economy. Disability support should not be treated only as expenditure to be reduced. Evidence shows that disability support can generate economic and social returns by increasing disabled people’s participation, reducing reliance on crisis and institutional systems, supporting unpaid carers to enter or remain in paid work, and sustaining employment across the disability support workforce.[36] The NDIS Review’s cost- benefit work also recognised that many benefits of the Scheme are difficult to measure over short periods but may emerge over longer timeframes, including where supports prevent more expensive forms of institutional or crisis response.[37]
In this sense, the problem is not simply that the NDIS costs money. It is that a scheme originally shaped by Productivity Commission market logic has produced a disability services market in which public funding is too often organised around provider growth, scale, billing, intermediaries and private extraction, rather than stable, preventative and publicly accountable support. Marta Russell’s political economy of disability is useful here: under capitalism, disabled people are often treated either as surplus to labour-market requirements or as sites from which profit can be extracted through privatised systems of care, welfare, medicine and service provision.[38]
- Restricting NDIS support will shift costs elsewhere
Reducing NDIS expenditure does not eliminate disabled people’s support needs. It shifts those needs elsewhere.[10]
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If disabled people lose access to support through stricter eligibility, reassessment, narrower definitions of permanence, reductions to social and capacity-building supports, or functional assessment thresholds, the need for support remains. It is displaced onto already underfunded systems, including:
● Medicare and public hospitals; ● mental health services and crisis teams; ● emergency departments and ambulance services; ● housing and homelessness systems; ● welfare and employment services; ● aged care; ● education systems; ● child protection and family services; ● community services; ● and unpaid care networks, disproportionately carried by women and families.[39][31]
Before I had access to appropriate disability support, many of the consequences of unmet need were already being absorbed through crisis, deteriorating health, instability, difficulty sustaining employment, isolation and reliance on informal care. Recognition and support did not create those needs. They reduced the extent to which I was forced to absorb them alone. Restricting access to the NDIS will push many disabled people back into precisely those cycles of unsupported crisis, deterioration and instability that the Scheme was supposed to reduce.
The Bill presents restrictions on access, reassessment and funded supports as necessary for scheme sustainability. However, sustainability is not a neutral concept. It reflects political choices about which forms of public expenditure are treated as necessary and which are treated as excessive. Disabled people are being told there is not enough money for supports that allow us to remain housed, connected, employed, safe and alive, while far larger expenditures in areas such as defence expansion, fossil fuel subsidies and foregone corporate taxation receive far less scrutiny.[40][41][42][35] In this context, the Bill’s emphasis on financial sustainability risks making disabled people absorb the consequences of broader fiscal choices through reduced support, increased gatekeeping and greater exposure to crisis.
Recommendations
The committee should recommend that the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 not proceed in its current form.
While some measures relating to provider oversight, fraud prevention, information-gathering powers and plan management regulation may address genuine governance problems within the NDIS market, these measures have been bundled together with broader reforms that would significantly narrow support access and shift the burden of fiscal “sustainability” onto disabled people themselves.
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The committee should recommend that the Bill not proceed in its current form and that any future Bill remove provisions that would involve:
● stricter permanence requirements that pressure disabled people to demonstrate treatment exhaustion before support is recognised; ● standardised functional capacity assessments that reduce complex, fluctuating and context-dependent disability experiences into narrow bureaucratic measurements; ● restrictions on reassessment and review rights that increase evidentiary and administrative burdens on participants; ● reductions to social, civic and community participation supports; ● reductions to capacity-building supports that function preventatively by maintaining stability and preventing deterioration; ● narrower interpretations of support needs arising directly from a single impairment; ● the redirection of disabled children away from the NDIS into inadequately resourced mainstream or alternative systems; ● and any framework that makes disabled people bear the cost of market failure, administrative failure and fiscal containment.
Instead, the Commonwealth Government should:
- separate legitimate fraud, compliance and provider-integrity measures from provisions that restrict participant access and support;
- recognise social and capacity-building supports as essential preventative supports rather than discretionary extras;
- recognise that restricting disability support does not eliminate need, but redistributes costs across health, housing, education, welfare, crisis systems and unpaid care;
- address the structural failures produced by marketised and privatised disability support;
- reduce the NDIA’s reliance on adversarial reassessment, legal contestation and bureaucratic gatekeeping;
- invest in integrated and adequately funded support systems across federal and state jurisdictions;
- ensure future reforms are grounded in genuine co-design with disabled people and disability organisations;
- work with state and territory governments to invest in integrated and adequately funded support systems across jurisdictions;
- and move toward a publicly funded, publicly accountable and universally accessible disability support system organised around human need and collective responsibility rather than manufactured austerity, market logic and cost containment.
For many disabled people, including myself, NDIS supports make the difference between stability and crisis, participation and isolation, functioning and collapse. They shape whether we can remain housed, connected to community, able to work or study, able to manage our health, and able to live with some degree of autonomy, dignity and safety.
These reforms would not eliminate the need for support, care or assistance. They would deepen hardship while displacing those needs onto overstretched systems, unpaid carers and disabled people ourselves. The likely consequences are increased poverty, isolation,
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institutional neglect, psychiatric crisis, housing insecurity, homelessness, deteriorating physical and mental health, and greater exposure to violence, exploitation and premature death for many disabled Australians.
Disabled people are once again being positioned as fiscal liabilities to be managed and reduced, rather than as human beings entitled to the support and material conditions necessary to live safely, maintain our health and relationships, participate in society and exercise autonomy and dignity.
Endnotes
[1] Department of Health, Disability and Ageing (2026) About the changes to the NDIS. Australian Government.
[2] Office of Impact Analysis (2026) National Disability Insurance Scheme reforms. Australian Government.
[3] Department of Health, Disability and Ageing (2026) About the changes to the NDIS. Australian Government; Disability Advocacy Network Australia (2026) ‘Joint Statement: Disability advocates call on Government to ensure critical supports remain while NDIS changes are made’; People with Disability Australia (2026) ‘What are the NDIS reforms, and why are they happening?’.
[4] Department of Health, Disability and Ageing (2026) About the changes to the NDIS. Australian Government; Jervis-Bardy, D. and Basford Canales, S. (2025) ‘NDIS plans to be computer-generated under changes’, Guardian Australia, 3 December.
[5] Emerson, E., Fortune, N., Llewellyn, G. and Stancliffe, R. (2021) ‘Loneliness, social support, social isolation and wellbeing among working age adults with and without disability: Cross-sectional study’, Disability and Health Journal, 14(1), 100965; Giummarra, M.J. et al. (2022) ‘Interventions for social and community participation for adults with intellectual disability, psychosocial disability or on the autism spectrum: An umbrella systematic review’, Frontiers in Rehabilitation Sciences, 3, 935473; Simplican, S.C., Leader, G., Kosciulek, J. and Leahy, M. (2015) ‘Defining social inclusion of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities: An ecological model of social networks and community participation’, Research in Developmental Disabilities, 38, pp. 18–29.
[6] Autistic Self Advocacy Network of Australia and New Zealand (2025) NDIS Needs Assessment Tool ASAN AUNZ Position Statement; Down Syndrome Australia Consortium (2026) DSA Consortium response to “Securing the NDIS”; Mental Health Coordinating Council (2026) NDIS reforms raise key implications for psychosocial supports; People with Disability Australia (2026) ‘What are the NDIS reforms, and why are they happening?’.
[7] Basford Canales, S. (2026) ‘Australians with Down syndrome among those to suffer most from proposed NDIS cuts, government analysis says’, Guardian Australia, 20 May; Department of Health, Disability and Ageing (2026) About the changes to the NDIS. Australian Government; Queenslanders with Disability Network (2026) National Disability
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Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026: Summary.
[8] Department of Health, Disability and Ageing (2026) About the changes to the NDIS. Australian Government; Jervis-Bardy, D. and Basford Canales, S. (2025) ‘NDIS plans to be computer-generated under changes’, Guardian Australia, 3 December; Queenslanders with Disability Network (2026) National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026: Summary.
[9] Jervis-Bardy, D. and Basford Canales, S. (2025) ‘NDIS plans to be computer-generated under changes’, Guardian Australia, 3 December; People with Disability Australia (2026) ‘What are the NDIS reforms, and why are they happening?’; Queenslanders with Disability Network (2026) National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026: Summary.
[10] Disability Royal Commission (2023) Final Report; Olney, S. et al. (2025) ‘The costs of living with disability in Australia: Accounting for poverty and exclusion’, Australian Economic Review.
[11] Independent Review into the National Disability Insurance Scheme (2023) The role of pricing and payment approaches in improving participant outcomes and scheme sustainability; van Toorn, G. (2022) ‘Marketisation in disability services: A history of the NDIS’, in Meagher, G., Stebbing, A. and Perche, D. (eds) Designing Social Service Markets: Risk, Regulation and Rent-Seeking. Canberra: ANU Press, pp. 185–214.
[12] Department of Health, Disability and Ageing (2026) About the changes to the NDIS. Australian Government; Jervis-Bardy, D. and Basford Canales, S. (2026) ‘Australians will need to exhaust “all appropriate” treatment options to access NDIS under proposed rules’, Guardian Australia, 13 May.
[13] Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2024) People with disability in Australia 2024; Boschen, K., Phelan, C. and Lawn, S. (2022) ‘NDIS participants with psychosocial disabilities and life-limiting diagnoses: A scoping review’, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(16), 10144; Hull, L. et al. (2019) ‘Development and validation of the Camouflaging Autistic Traits Questionnaire (CAT-Q)’, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 49(3), pp. 819–833.
[14] Department of Health, Disability and Ageing (2026) About the changes to the NDIS. Australian Government; Queenslanders with Disability Network (2026) National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026: Summary.
[15] Queenslanders with Disability Network (2026) National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026: Summary.
[16] Department of Health, Disability and Ageing (2026) About the changes to the NDIS. Australian Government; Independent Review into the National Disability Insurance Scheme (2023) The role of pricing and payment approaches in improving participant outcomes and scheme sustainability.
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[17] Bishop, G.M. et al. (2024) ‘Disability-related inequalities in the prevalence of loneliness across the adult life course: A nationally representative cross-sectional study’, BMC Public Health, 24; Simplican, S.C., Leader, G., Kosciulek, J. and Leahy, M. (2015) ‘Defining social inclusion of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities: An ecological model of social networks and community participation’, Research in Developmental Disabilities, 38, pp. 18–29.
[18] Giummarra, M.J. et al. (2022) ‘Interventions for social and community participation for adults with intellectual disability, psychosocial disability or on the autism spectrum: An umbrella systematic review’, Frontiers in Rehabilitation Sciences, 3, 935473; Simplican, S.C., Leader, G., Kosciulek, J. and Leahy, M. (2015) ‘Defining social inclusion of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities: An ecological model of social networks and community participation’, Research in Developmental Disabilities, 38, pp. 18–29.
[19] Giummarra, M.J. et al. (2022) ‘Interventions for social and community participation for adults with intellectual disability, psychosocial disability or on the autism spectrum: An umbrella systematic review’, Frontiers in Rehabilitation Sciences, 3, 935473; Kalb, L.G., Beasley, J.B., Caoili, A., McLaren, J.L. and Barnhill, J. (2021) ‘Predictors of mental health crises among individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities enrolled in the START program’, Psychiatric Services, 72(3), pp. 273–280; Mental Health Australia (2014) ‘Getting the NDIS right for people with psychosocial disability’, Mental Health Australia; Mental Health Coordinating Council (2026) NDIS reforms raise key implications for psychosocial supports.
[20] Productivity Commission (2011) Disability Care and Support. Report no. 54.
[21] van Toorn, G. (2022) ‘Marketisation in disability services: A history of the NDIS’, in Meagher, G., Stebbing, A. and Perche, D. (eds) Designing Social Service Markets: Risk, Regulation and Rent-Seeking. Canberra: ANU Press, pp. 185–214.
[22] Disability Royal Commission (2023) Final Report; Kalb, L.G., Beasley, J.B., Caoili, A., McLaren, J.L. and Barnhill, J. (2021) ‘Predictors of mental health crises among individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities enrolled in the START program’, Psychiatric Services, 72(3), pp. 273–280.
[23] Disability Royal Commission (2023) Final Report; Kalb, L.G., Beasley, J.B., Caoili, A., McLaren, J.L. and Barnhill, J. (2021) ‘Predictors of mental health crises among individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities enrolled in the START program’, Psychiatric Services, 72(3), pp. 273–280; Naito, R. et al. (2023) ‘Social isolation as a risk factor for all- cause mortality: Systematic review and meta-analysis of cohort studies’, PLOS ONE, 18(1), e0280308.
[24] Hull, L. et al. (2019) ‘Development and validation of the Camouflaging Autistic Traits Questionnaire (CAT-Q)’, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 49(3), pp. 819– 833.
[25] Amaze (2024) Employment and autism; Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2024) People with disability in Australia 2024.
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[26] Boschen, K., Phelan, C. and Lawn, S. (2022) ‘NDIS participants with psychosocial disabilities and life-limiting diagnoses: A scoping review’, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(16), 10144; Choi, J., Ellem, K. and Drayton, J. (2025) ‘Supporting the recovery of NDIS participants with psychosocial disability: A narrative literature review’, Australian Journal of Social Issues, 60, pp. 1038–1051; Mental Health Coordinating Council (2026) NDIS reforms raise key implications for psychosocial supports.
[27] Choi, J., Ellem, K. and Drayton, J. (2025) ‘Supporting the recovery of NDIS participants with psychosocial disability: A narrative literature review’, Australian Journal of Social Issues, 60, pp. 1038–1051; Mental Health Australia (2014) ‘Getting the NDIS right for people with psychosocial disability’, Mental Health Australia.
[28] Basford Canales, S. (2026) ‘Australians with Down syndrome among those to suffer most from proposed NDIS cuts, government analysis says’, Guardian Australia, 20 May.
[29] Queenslanders with Disability Network (2026) National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026: Summary.
[30] Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2024) People with disability in Australia 2024; Boschen, K., Phelan, C. and Lawn, S. (2022) ‘NDIS participants with psychosocial disabilities and life-limiting diagnoses: A scoping review’, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(16), 10144.
[31] Disability Royal Commission (2023) Final Report.
[32] Independent Review into the National Disability Insurance Scheme (2023) The role of pricing and payment approaches in improving participant outcomes and scheme sustainability.
[33] National Disability Services (2025) State of the Disability Sector Report.
[34] Centre for Independent Studies (n.d.) ‘Steven Schwartz’ profile; National Disability Insurance Agency (2023) Annual Financial Sustainability Report 2022–23; Office of Impact Analysis (2026) National Disability Insurance Scheme reforms. Australian Government; Schwartz, S. (2026) ‘Blame diagnostic inflation for the NDIS’ $10b autism bill’, Centre for Independent Studies, 5 March; van Toorn, G. (2022) ‘Marketisation in disability services: A history of the NDIS’, in Meagher, G., Stebbing, A. and Perche, D. (eds) Designing Social Service Markets: Risk, Regulation and Rent-Seeking. Canberra: ANU Press, pp. 185–214.
[35] Jericho, G. (2026) ‘People with disabilities the biggest losers in budget – Greg Jericho’, Deep Cut News.
[36] D’Rosario, M. (2021) False economy: The economic benefits of the National Disability Insurance Scheme and the consequences of government cost-cutting. Per Capita and National Disability Services.
[37] Taylor Fry and The Centre for International Economics (2023) NDIS Review: Costs, benefits and frameworks. Final report.
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[38] Russell, M. (2001) ‘Disablement, oppression, and the political economy’, Journal of Disability Policy Studies, 12(2), pp. 87–95; Russell, M. (2019) Capitalism and Disability: Selected Writings by Marta Russell. Edited by K. Rosenthal. Chicago: Haymarket Books.
[39] Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2024) People with disability in Australia 2024.
[40] The Australia Institute (2026) ‘Help for home buyers, horror for NDIS participants, and the gas industry’s free ride rolls on’.
[41] The Australia Institute (2026) Economics research and analysis.
[42] Jericho, G. (2026) ‘People with disabilities the biggest losers from Labor’s surplus obsession’, Deep Cut News; The Australia Institute (2026) ‘Help for home buyers, horror for NDIS participants, and the gas industry’s free ride rolls on’.