National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 1136
Submission to the Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs Inquiry into the NDIS Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
I am a queer gender fluid person with disability, a parent to a child with disability, and an advocate. I am writing this submission because I am deeply concerned about the impact this Bill will have on people like me, my child, and many others living with disability whose lives are already shaped by barriers, exhaustion, poverty, and exclusion.
I am 47 years old and live with an acquired brain injury, psychosocial disability, and what I believe to be undiagnosed neurodivergence, however I am unable to afford the costs to engage a clinician to explore this further. My child is 10 years old and has ADHD. Despite our disabilities and significant functional impacts, neither of us currently receives support through the NDIS.
I have attempted to access NDIS before. I spent almost two years in an appeal process at the Administrative Review Tribunal before eventually withdrawing because I simply could not keep going. The process itself became harmful. I felt disbelieved and worn down. Specialist professional information I provided was ignored, and I was presented with suggestions about uncommon treatment pathways as though those pathways were realistically accessible or appropriate.
This experience is why I am so concerned about the proposed changes in this Bill.
The changes to the access test under section 25A(2) particularly alarm me. The idea that treatments can be considered “appropriate” even when a person cannot afford them, cannot access them geographically, or cannot safely engage with them because they are not culturally or socially appropriate, is deeply disconnected from reality.
For people in LGBTIQASB+ communities, accessing safe and affirming services is not a small detail. It can determine whether support is possible at all. Financial hardship, long waiting lists, lack of local services, inaccessible transport, discrimination, and trauma all shape whether treatment is genuinely accessible. Pretending these barriers do not matter does not make disability disappear. It simply excludes people from support and disables them further.
I am also deeply concerned that this Bill further disadvantages people with invisible or fluctuating disabilities. My capacity is not consistent from day to day. Sometimes I can complete a task, but doing so comes at a severe cost. I may then spend days recovering, bed bound, or unable to function in other areas of life.
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 1136
This is the reality for many people with psychosocial disability, chronic illness, acquired brain injury, autism, ADHD, and other fluctuating conditions. Functional capacity cannot always be measured by whether a person can perform a task once. It must include the impact, sustainability, recovery time, and cumulative exhaustion involved.
Without meaningful support, everyday life is already a struggle. I experience significant social isolation, which further worsens my mental health. I am unable to complete all domestic duties in my home and spend more than half my life bed bound.
Support would not give me luxury or excess. They would give me dignity.
They would help me maintain my home, participate more fully in work, access my community, and spend meaningful time with people I love and care about. They would allow me to be the parent and person I want to be, rather than constantly living within the restrictions of disability and exhaustion.
There is also growing concern about the way parental responsibility is being interpreted in contexts where a child has a disability, particularly where specialist disability responses are required. In practice, there is a risk that families are being held accountable for meeting needs that sit outside reasonable parental capacity and should instead be supported through coordinated disability, health, and education responses. Where adequate supports are not provided, there is potential for families to be incorrectly viewed through a child protection lens, exposing them to unnecessary statutory intervention. This creates a perverse outcome in which unmet service system obligations are reframed as parental failure, rather than as gaps in service provision. This risks increasing surveillance and intervention into families already managing complex disability-related needs, rather than strengthening the support systems those families rely on.
The provisions allowing automated decision making under section 59B(4) are another major concern. Australia has already seen the devastating harm caused by automated systems through Robodebt. It is frightening to see legislation explicitly allowing computers and algorithms to make discretionary decisions about disabled people’s lives.
Disability is complex and deeply human. Automated systems cannot understand context, trauma, fluctuating capacity, poverty, cultural safety, or the reality of living with multiple intersecting disabilities. Removing human judgement from these decisions creates a serious risk of further harm to already vulnerable people.
I am also worried about the expanded ministerial powers and the lack of guaranteed transitional protections. It feels as though the Bill creates pathways for supports and plans
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 1136
to be reduced or removed based on financial pressures and cost cutting, rather than on what people actually need to live safely and with dignity.
This creates fear and instability for disabled people and families who are already struggling.
I want the Committee to understand the human impact of these reforms.
Honestly, since becoming disabled, I struggle with suicidal ideation every day because of the loss of capacity, the isolation, and the inability to access meaningful supports. Reading this Bill increased my fear that people like me will be pushed even further away from help.
When systems become impossible to navigate, when support is denied because treatments are theoretically available but practically inaccessible, and when people are repeatedly forced to prove their suffering while being ignored, the result is hopelessness.
This Bill risks increasing that hopelessness.
Disabled people deserve more than survival. We deserve the opportunity to participate in community, maintain relationships, parent our children, contribute through work and advocacy where possible, and live with dignity.
I respectfully ask the Committee to reject this Bill in its current form.
If the Bill is not rejected, I strongly urge the Committee to:
• Remove or substantially amend section 25A(2) so that genuine access barriers, including poverty, geography, cultural safety, discrimination, and service availability, are properly considered. • Ensure people with fluctuating and invisible disabilities are not unfairly excluded through narrow interpretations of functional capacity. • Remove provisions enabling automated discretionary decision making under section 59B(4). • Strengthen protections against reductions or removals of supports driven primarily by cost saving measures. • Guarantee meaningful transitional protections in legislation rather than temporary ministerial rules. • Ensure families are not subject to child protection or statutory intervention as a result of unmet disability support needs. This should include safeguards so that disability-related support needs for children and families are properly identified,
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 1136
supported, and prioritised through appropriate disability, health, and education systems before any child protection escalation is considered, and that parental responsibility is not interpreted in a way that penalises families for service gaps, inaccessibility, or lack of adequate supports. • Delay passage of the Bill and undertake an independent review with strong involvement from disabled people, including psychosocial disability, neurodivergent, queer, and other marginalised communities. • Extend consultation timeframes so that more disabled people, carers, families, and advocates have the opportunity to be heard.
Disabled people should not be treated as a budget problem to solve. We are human beings trying to live meaningful lives in systems that are already difficult to navigate.
I ask the Committee to listen carefully to the voices of disabled people and families who are telling you that these changes will cause harm.
Thank you for considering my submission.