National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 1210
Submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee
Inquiry: National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submitter: — parent and carer of an NDIS participant Date: 27 May 2026
To the Committee Secretary,
Thank you for the opportunity to make a submission. I write as the father and full-time carer of my son, , who is sixteen and has been an NDIS participant for twelve years. I am not a lawyer or a policy expert. I am a parent telling you, plainly, how the changes in this Bill would affect my son, my family, and people like us. I have done my best to address the provisions of the Bill directly, as the Committee requires.
I ask the Committee to recommend that the Senate not pass this Bill in its current form.
About my son
lives with Neurofibromatosis Type 1, autism spectrum disorder, and a mild intellectual disability. Over twelve years on the NDIS, with the right supports, he has made gains we were once told might never come. To give one concrete example: this year, after roughly ten years of patient work, can tie his own shoelaces — in his own way, not perfectly, but independently. That may sound small. It is not. It is the kind of hard-won milestone that, unless you have lived it, is difficult to fully grasp. Every dollar of his funding has been treated as if it were our own money — we seek the most appropriate, best-value services we can find and spend deliberately. The results are real because the support has been stable, individualised, and used responsibly.
The provisions I am concerned about
- The scale of the savings, and the tightening of access and eligibility (an estimated 160,000 participants affected). I understand the Bill underpins savings the Government has described as around $37.8 billion in reduced spending growth between 2026–27 and 2029–30, measured against the NDIS Actuary’s projections. The Government emphasises that total scheme spending still rises over that period — from roughly $53.8 billion to $56.2 billion — and that this is slower growth, not a cut. I ask the Committee to look past that framing to what it means for an individual. The reduction is back-ended: it grows year on year and, by 2029–30, the annual gap against projected need approaches $16 billion — a scale independent budget commentary has put at roughly a 10 per cent reduction in real terms. Paired with tighter eligibility, a reduction of that magnitude against projected need means a real reduction in the support actually available to participants, whatever the headline figure does. My son’s disability and needs do not shrink because the growth rate is trimmed in Canberra.
My fear is therefore simple and direct: could be one of the estimated 160,000 people who lose access. The supports being targeted are the very things that built his progress. Removing or narrowing eligibility does not remove his disability — it removes the scaffolding
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 1210
that lets him keep gaining ground. Gains that took a decade to build can be lost far faster than they were won.
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New ministerial powers to vary or reduce participant funding. Predictability is not a luxury in disability support; it is the precondition for progress. Therapies and capacity-building work because they are consistent over years. A power to reduce or change funding by ministerial or delegated decision introduces exactly the instability that undermines long-term outcomes. Families like mine cannot plan a child’s development around funding that can be cut administratively.
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Expanded use of automated decision-making. ’s needs are complex, individual, and human. They do not reduce cleanly to a formula. Automated decision-making risks producing wrong, rigid, or harmful outcomes for participants whose circumstances don’t fit the model — and places the burden of fighting those errors onto families who are already stretched. Decisions that shape a disabled person’s life should be made by people accountable for them, with a clear and accessible path to human review.
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The cost-shift this Bill creates (a false economy). Cutting ’s support now does not save money — it moves the cost into the future, and grows it. Reduced support means lost independence, lost future employment potential, and greater reliance on other forms of government support (health, income, crisis services) for many more years. The responsible, value-for-money path is to keep investing in early and sustained capacity-building. That is what produces independent adults. This Bill risks doing the opposite.
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Integrity should target providers who rort the scheme — not participants. If the genuine concern is sustainability, the fair and obvious step is to pursue the dishonest providers who overcharge and underdeliver, and the fraud that has been widely reported. That is the harder work, and it requires real will — but it is where the waste sits. Instead, this Bill places the burden on participants who use their funding responsibly and whose outcomes benefit the whole community. That has the problem backwards. I would urge the Committee to ask why stronger provider-integrity and anti-fraud measures have not been prioritised ahead of cuts that fall on families like mine.
What I am asking
I ask the Committee to recommend that the Senate not pass the Bill in its current form; at a minimum, that the provisions reducing eligibility, granting powers to cut participant funding, and expanding automated decision-making be removed or substantially amended; and that the Government redirect its efforts to provider integrity and fraud rather than to reducing support for participants.
All we have ever asked for is decency and respect — for , and for every family doing their honest best with the support they have been given. We have lived this for twelve years. We know what this funding can achieve, because we have seen it.
I am willing to appear before the Committee or provide further information if that would assist.
Thank you for considering my submission.
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 1210
Yours sincerely,