National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

Submission 1452

I am writing to you as an NDIS participant with psychosocial disabilities. I have been involved in the scheme since the early days of the roll-out, my case transferred from a local organisation directly into the NDIS.

I barely used my plan the first few years, too used to the old system where other people got to make decisions on my behalf, fearing that the scheme was just going to be yet another way for strangers to control my life. But it wasn’t. I’ve had my share of unhelpful providers in the years since, but at the end of the day I was in control. I got to say who was in my life and what happened to me.

Bit by bit, I put my trust into the scheme. My wins might not seem like big ones, but they are. I go grocery shopping now, with help. If I’m doing well I even go out shopping just for fun. A couple of times I even got to go to the beach. Those trips brought me so much happiness. I got to feel like a normal person, someone who gets to go spend a day at the beach just because they felt like it. Even if it did involve much more effort than it would for them. I live only an hour away from the coast, but for years and years I couldn’t go, because I couldn’t go by myself and the old services didn’t think it was necessary.

Unfortunately, it seems like the government agrees with them now.

I understand, taxpayers paying for trips to the beach seems like such a frivolous expense. It does seem like such an easy thing to cut. We don’t need little daytrips. Not even if they’re the only time we leave our postcode all year. Not even if they make us feel like life might be worth living.

Except I remember back in 2020 and 2021, when it was argued that lockdowns were such a severe harm to people’s mental health that we could only keep them for so long. That it was cruel to do that to people, even if it was to save them. So I have to wonder why it is that disabled people being stuck at home every day is different. Why is it not cruel to keep us locked away? Why is your only socialisation being zoom calls okay for some but not for all?

Because I can tell you now that I will not be okay. Before I had the NDIS I was ending up in the emergency room on such a frequent basis they had a file prepared for the nurses on call to help me. The only thing that prevented me from having an equally long list of inpatient stays was the fact that the psych ward was always full. On one particularly memorable occasion, a nurse told me it was a shame I didn’t have a drug or alcohol problem, because otherwise they would have kept me in that ward until another bed was free.

All of which is to say that your cuts will not save money, not really. Sure, the NDIS budget will shrink, but in exchange for greater healthcare costs in what is already a struggling system.

And then of course there’s the matter of the costs of rising unemployment. The cost of every disabled person who can no longer work without support, and every support worker whose hours are stripped to the bone once we can no longer pay for care.

In 2021, Per Capita estimated that for every dollar the government invests in the NDIS, $2.25 is created. They also estimated for every billion dollars stripped from the scheme, around ten thousand jobs would be lost.

National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDI$ for Future Generations) Bill 2026

Submission 1452

I highlight these figures because it has been clear from the beginning that the harm this legislation will do to disabled people like me does not matter. We have said, time and time again, that tightening eligibility criteria, one size fits all plans, and the ability for those running the scheme to decide at a whim what we do or don’t need puts us at risk of serious harm. These changes to the act are being rushed through, with no time at all for us to comment on them.

I have lost hope in the government listening to us. But perhaps money still talks.