National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 1232
Submission regarding the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
I am making this submission as a support worker, working with several people with disabilities, all of whom will be disadvantaged, placed in a more vulnerable position and negatively impacted by this proposed bill. Living with a disability, or disabilities, is hard enough as it is. When people heavily rely on supports for to day to day living, it is putting them at risk of harm and neglect.
I oppose this bill because this will negatively impact people living with a disability and put them more at risk. This Bill designed by people with no experience, no empathy or understanding, is not a Bill that considers the people who are living with a disability or disabilities. How can you take the human component away from deciding what is best for the people who are living with a disability? People with a disability already feel unheard and unseen, this New Bill is saying that it’s true, when it shouldn’t be. People with a disability have as much right as other people in our communities, to live the best life possible. They have so many barriers and implications already, how many barriers are you going to use, to make sure this community invisible. This is inhumane and appalling, Dehumanizing and degrading.
My main concerns are regarding:
● Loss or reduction of supports especially around community participation. I work with multiple clients who rely on their support team in being able to gain access to the community. One client in particular who is a nonverbal, down syndrome, uses her community funding in being able to go to work, supported, go to cooking classes to be with their friends with disabilities and cheerleading and bowling competitions. Reducing their funding means this will stop. Isolating an individual even more, taking more of their voice and power away. A person who is so vulnerable already would never be able to access the community without supports; this would put them severely at risk. I also work with multiple people in wheelchairs, who are already struggling out in the community. A community which is supposedly accessible, is very clearly not to someone in a wheelchair. A client who is a wheelchair user needs supports in being able to use the disability toilets. A lot of the disability toilets are non-accessible to someone in a wheelchair. They need someone to push them and open the door for them or multiple doors to gain access. Shopping is a nightmare for them as isles are never big enough, shops are constantly having signs and displays throughout the store and outside, creating obstacles and no access. You are punishing people with true disabilities and saying tough luck in being able to access a community and causing further isolation to a community that is already isolated. Instead punishing a person with a disability, punish the people supporting them. There are too many support people who do not hold the relevant training in being able to support people with a disability. It makes no sense to me that someone off the street can support someone who can be living with complex disabilities. How has this been made possible. If you force someone to do a course, then maybe it could weed out people who are not in it to support people, but are in it for monetary gain. Maybe look there first before stripping the funding of those who rely on it for a better quality of life, for better access in the community, for social interaction, which may be the only social interaction they can receive based off the funding. This reduction on funding is having a huge impact in the community right now, making people living with a disability so worried that is making them severely unwell which is leading to hospitalisation and even contemplation of ending their life. Instead of cutting funding, look at where we can get more funding from, gas companies, mining companies, international companies,
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 1232
maybe some of our politicians could take a pay cut and stop paying for unnecessary holidays and paying for dinner from tax payers money, before having Australians, who didn’t choose to have a disability, suffer and make them feel as if they are burden for having a disability. How would the government feel, if the people could choose their wages and decided to strip government officials of their money, would you find the isolating, would that cause you and your family’s distress? I will let you ponder on that.
● Funding/ministerial powers. Now given my recent point on having under qualified support people supporting people statement, how is it just, to have a government, with no sound knowledge of what it is like living with a disability, making decisions for people who are living with it? That is like saying, I could govern this country, how do you think that would pan out? Teachers need a qualification to teach, a veterinarian needs a degree to help animals, who, in our government, has any experience, lived or qualified, to make such harsh and life changing decisions on this Bill? That’s a fair question. Has any government official even been out to the families or participants houses to see what life is like and or offer supports? This government is out of date and out of touch and are constantly stripping funding from places that are really needing it. We need real people, who are living, have lived or a close contact to people living with a disability, who sees the day-to-day impact and challenges that they face, the scrutiny and isolation from the community, real people advocating and helping make decisions on this Bill. Not a government who is so hell bent on stripping money from Australians, (except themselves), where it is needed most. These are peoples lives you are directly and indirectly affecting, ‘people’, not a spreadsheet.
● Foundational supports/ system changes. I have multiple clients who need more access to funding in summer then in winter. The no rollover makes no sense to me. How can you allocate funding for a period and then say, if you don’t use it, you lose it. I clients who have procedures done where they are needing more supports for when they get home and then supports reduce when they are in hospital. Living with a disability is not the same every day. Their needs are constantly fluctuating and changing. To deny a rollover means you are denying supports for when they need it most, is putting people with a disability severely at risk. What if the used all their funding in the first period because they needed extra support after a procedure and they had a month to go, a month without supports could put a client’s life in jeopardy, especially clients who have no family. What if something was to happen to them, where does the liability fall? If you give a participant a certain amount of funding, then let them have it. Don’t tell them you can have it and then at the end of the period say that they can’t. Why is this budget so strict, with no structure. If this is your expectation, would it not be fair, for the Australian people to expect this of our government?
These changes will harm my clients by isolating them, not being able to have the personal care they need, not being able to go to doctors’ appointments because they have no one to support or advocate for them, putting an end to the community events and gatherings and their mental health will decline. You think people with a disability can live with minimal supports? How about asking them what they need and just making your decisions based off a piece of paper?
I ask the committee to consider my professional experience when reviewing this Bill.