Submission 1496
Submission on the NDIS Amendment Bill 28 MAY, 2026
My name is . I am 40 years old and an NDIS participant. I have been a participant since being accepted onto the NDIS in 2021. Prior to being on the NDIS, I was struggling immensely. I very rarely left my house due to extreme overwhelm and meltdowns. I was not eating enough because I did not recognise hunger cues. I could not keep myself or my house clean- I struggled to function on a day-to-day basis. Social outings were completely out of the question, and I had no quality of life. I was in and out of hospital, self-harming, and attempted suicide on multiple occasions. I had no help, and I didn’t understand why I couldn’t function like everyone else could.
NDIS funding has allowed me to fund a support worker so that I can leave my house and access the community safely. I rely on my support worker to attend regular medical appointments, pick up my medications, and do shopping. I also rely on my support worker to help me with daily chores such as housework and light cleaning.
NDIS funding has allowed me to work with an OT to work out my sensory needs and has allowed me to fund consumables that help to regulate me enough to access the community safely (with the assistance of a support worker). NDIS has also allowed me to continue working on my functional capacity. Working with an OT on an ongoing basis is vital to my daily functioning.
This new NDIS bill proposes cutting support work and specialist therapies (OT) funding by up to 50%. This is unfathomable. The prospect of having this funding vastly reduced is, quite frankly, terrifying. Not just for me, but for countless other participants who rely on this funding for their day-to-day lives. These sweeping changes and significant cuts to funding will cause significant distress and yes, significant harm- not just to participants, but to the people who care for them and the people around them. If this funding is cut, a significant portion of participants will not be able to function. Disabled people cannot just “make do” with what they’ve got, when what they had was almost certainly not adequate to begin with.
Submission 1496
The NDIS has allowed me to grow my confidence, connect with community, and maintain independence. If this funding is cut, all of that- and any progress I have made- goes away. I will go back to barely leaving my house because my funding will not allow me adequate support work hours. If this funding is cut, I will not be able to attend any medical appointments or pick up my medication (which is on the other side of the city), which will lead to declining physical health. If this funding is cut, my mental health will rapidly decline due to aforementioned reasons, and I WILL end up back in hospital. Thinking about ending up back in hospital after making so much progress is highly distressing. These proposed cuts won’t just affect participants- they will also affect the already strained public health system, as more and more disabled people turn to public hospitals due to not being adequately supported by the scheme that was supposed to be helping them.
Another major concern is plan reassessment and the intention to redefine what it means to be permanently disabled. Existing framework for plan reassessment is far from perfect- but the new reassessment framework is downright horrible. Putting aside the fact that current participants, applicants, and disability advocates have -to date- been given zero information about what this framework entails, how people are assessed, and who will be eligible, requiring every existing participant to be reassessed is once again just showing complete and utter disregard and/or lack of understand for how stressful and mentally draining this process can be. Disabled people do not have the capacity to keep proving ourselves, nor should we have to. All of the reassessment framework that is discussed in the proposed bill has yet to be designed, leading to ever increasing uncertainty amongst participants and in our community. It is wholly unfair to put forward these proposals without any solid plan in place for what this means for OUR future.
Myself and great number of other participants are stressed, worried and scared that the new framework will mean we are no longer eligible for the scheme that proved to be life changing, and in some cases, lifesaving. The intention of removing up to 240,000 people from the scheme is absolutely heinous. Disabled people do not become less disabled or less deserving of support with the invention of new framework. A person can become disabled at any time. Trying to save money by cutting people from the scheme does not stop people becoming disabled and needing support.
This bill has not even passed, and it is already causing unfathomable amounts of stress in myself and in other participants I know.
Submission 1496
The uncertainty of the framework, the blanket cuts to funding at the CEO’s discretion, plan reassessment and removal- none of the things I have mentioned in my submission so far do anything to address fraud. Very little in the bill actually addresses fraud at all. All this proposed bill sets out to do is actively cause harm. And it will.
These changes and proposed cuts are a horrific recipe for disaster. You will be taking away support from and making life harder for the most vulnerable people, some of whom will die without this funding. Disabled people listened when Mark Butler said, “The NDIS is expanding too rapidly and that is not acceptable”, but what we really heard is, “We Are Expendable.”\n I ask that this bill be withdrawn from Parliament. My life depends on it. My fellow disabled lives depend on it. Do not let us die. Do not let this bill pass.