National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 120
Submission to the Senate Committee — NDIS Amendment Bill
I was diagnosed with secondary progressive multiple sclerosis at nineteen years old. I am now in my forties. I have never really known adult life without this disease. What I have known is work. I started with the Queensland Government at eighteen and I kept working through relapses, through steroid infusions, through everything the disease threw at me. I would finish an infusion and go back to the office. Work was not just income. It was identity, structure and the thing that got me through.
I came onto the NDIS in 2021. The difference it made is genuinely difficult to put into words. It stabilised my marriage. It allowed me to be a present parent to my young son. It made it possible for me to keep working in the disability sector — a job I love and that I am good at. Without my NDIS supports I cannot get to work appointments because I can no longer drive at all and I cannot use public transport independently. I cannot toilet myself in public or transfer without assistance. These are not small inconveniences. They are the physical facts of my life.
Under the proposed changes I stand to lose all of that at once. I would likely lose my job because I could no longer get to it. My marriage would come under significant strain if my full care needs shifted onto my husband while he is also working and raising our son. That is simply too much to ask of one person over the long term, and I say that with love and without blame. Without stable supports and income, my capacity to continue caring for my son would also be significantly impacted. I would very likely end up in residential care. I would go from being a taxpayer contributing to this country’s revenue to becoming entirely dependent on it. That outcome is not hypothetical. It is the direct and logical consequence of removing the supports that currently allow me to function.
I also want to address discussions around registration and support workers because this is not an abstract policy issue for me. I use entirely independent support workers. I understand the need for oversight, quality and safety, and I support those principles. However, my own experience with larger registered agencies has repeatedly been poor. In my experience, agencies often appeared focused on maximising billable hours and extracting as much from plans as possible rather than understanding the individual person receiving support. I have carefully selected support workers who understand my MS, my family dynamics and my life. Continuity matters. Having the same person I have built trust with support me with highly personal tasks such as showering cannot easily be explained to someone who has never required that level of support. There is dignity and safety in familiarity. Having different people entering your home every day and being expected to expose the most vulnerable parts of your life to strangers can feel deeply uncomfortable and, at times, humiliating. Support is not just a service being delivered. For many people it is trust, safety and dignity.
Through my work I have also seen what happens when supports reduce or responsibility shifts between departments. I have supported participants who have ended up in hospital because they could no longer safely manage in the community after support reductions or delays in funding decisions. In these situations I have repeatedly watched hospitals, the NDIA and housing systems enter discussions about who holds responsibility — for funding, for discharge and for ongoing support — while participants remain in the middle with nothing being resolved.
People have remained in hospital for months. People have lost housing. People have become homeless or remained in unsafe situations while agencies continued to debate responsibility in the background. This is already happening. Hospitals and housing services are already telling us they do not have the capacity to meet current demand. I am already seeing systems struggling under the pressure they are carrying now. My question is a practical one: if significant numbers of people lose supports or are removed from the NDIS, where exactly are they expected to go? If these systems cannot cope while the NDIS still exists, what happens when there is no longer an NDIS standing beside participants and requiring somebody to take responsibility? What I have seen is that without that pressure, people with disability and their families are often left caught between systems while their situations continue to deteriorate.
I want the committee to understand the broader picture because my situation is not unique. The 2023 Independent Review produced a detailed roadmap of 26 recommendations and 139 specific actions. It explicitly stated these recommendations were intended to be implemented as a whole and prescribed foundational supports as a non-negotiable requirement before any changes to participant eligibility or plan funding occurred. Those foundational supports do not exist. The government has proceeded anyway, without explanation.
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 120
The government has told the public for two years that the NDIS is riddled with fraud. On 2 July 2024, a minister told parliament via a staged question that billions were being rorted. The confirmed fraud figure at the time was $34.5 million across 72 active cases in a $42 billion scheme. In March 2026, the government voted down a Senate inquiry into NDIS fraud — the very fraud it had spent two years citing as justification for these changes. That sequence of events does not suggest a government acting transparently or in good faith.
The proposed changes will remove approximately 160,000 people from the scheme and reduce average plans by $5,000. None of this was put to the Australian people at the 2025 federal election. There was no mandate. The NDIS returns $2.25 to the Australian economy for every dollar spent. Cutting it does not save money — it transfers costs into hospitals, emergency departments, housing services, mental health systems and onto the unpaid labour of families and, disproportionately, women.
I also want to acknowledge what happens when systems fail at the sharpest end because for some people these decisions are literally life and death. Noah Johnston died in December 2025 after his ventilator tube became dislodged overnight because the NDIA had not funded a registered nurse to be present. Koa Gibson was four years old. After her nursing support was reduced to three hours per week and her mother’s request for emergency funding was declined, Koa died. These are not abstractions. These are the consequences of getting this wrong.
I am asking the committee to answer three questions directly. First, will the committee require the government to table the complete evidentiary basis for the July 2024 fraud claims and reconcile the statement that billions were being rorted with the confirmed figure of $34.5 million? Second, the foundational supports the Independent Review prescribed as a non-negotiable precondition do not exist. On what basis has the government proceeded with eligibility changes? Third, when will the government introduce a Disability Rights Act that makes the rights of people with disability legally enforceable regardless of which minister holds power? What I am asking the committee to do is this: reject this bill until the foundational supports prescribed by the review are actually in place. Require the government to release modelling on what hospitals, mental health systems, housing services and families will spend absorbing what the NDIS drops. Require an independent human rights assessment before these changes proceed and recommend a Disability Rights Act as a precondition for any further structural reform.
I entered this scheme because I was told it would provide lifelong support. I made decisions about my career, my family and my future on the basis of that promise. I am asking the committee to hold the government to it.