Submission 1590

Submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee Inquiry into the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Prepared by: Erica Smith Focus: Incompatibility of proposed social and community participation funding cuts with Australia’s obligations under Articles 19 and 30 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD)

Introduction

This submission is presented in response to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee’s inquiry into the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 (the Bill). It is submitted with deep concern regarding the proposed 50% reduction to budget allocations for social, civic, and community participation supports, to take effect from 1 October 2026.

Australia ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) on 16 August 2008, making a binding commitment to uphold the human rights of people with disability in both domestic policy and legislation. The proposed cuts represent a direct contradiction of that commitment and a regression in the rights of people with disability in Australia.

This submission argues that the proposed reduction is incompatible with Australia’s obligations under Articles 19 and 30 of the CRPD, which enshrine the rights of people with disability to live independently and participate fully in community, cultural, recreational, and civic life. It further argues that the cuts were developed without meaningful consultation with the disability community, in violation of the participatory principles that underpin the Convention. The human cost of these cuts cannot be justified on budgetary grounds alone.

Relevant CRPD Articles

Article 19 — Living Independently and Being Included in the Community

Article 19 of the CRPD recognises the equal right of all persons with disability to live in the community, with choices equal to those of others, and requires States Parties to take effective and appropriate measures to facilitate full inclusion and participation in community life. Specifically, States Parties are obligated to ensure that people with disability have access to a range of community support services, including personal

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assistance, necessary to support living and inclusion in the community and to prevent isolation or segregation.

Community participation funding within the NDIS is a primary mechanism through which Australia fulfils this obligation. It enables people with disability to access social networks, engage in civic life, pursue recreational interests, and build the skills and relationships necessary for genuine inclusion. A 50% reduction to these supports will not simply reduce participation, it will, for many people with disability, eliminate it entirely. This is not a minor policy adjustment; it is a structural removal of the supports that make Article 19 meaningful in practice.

The UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has consistently emphasised that States Parties must not take retrogressive measures that undermine rights already enjoyed by people with disability. A funding cut of this magnitude, applied broadly and without individual assessment of need, constitutes precisely such a retrogressive measure. It places Australia in direct conflict with its binding obligations under Article 19 and sets a deeply troubling precedent for the treatment of disability rights in domestic policy.

Article 30 — Participation in Cultural Life, Recreation, Leisure and Sport

Article 30 of the CRPD recognises the right of persons with disability to take part in cultural life, recreation, leisure and sport on an equal basis with others. States Parties are required to take appropriate measures to ensure that people with disability have access to cultural materials, television, film, theatre and other cultural activities; have the opportunity to develop and utilise their creative and artistic potential; and can participate in recreational, leisure, and sporting activities, including within the school system and broader community.

Social, civic and community participation funding is the mechanism by which many people with disability are able to exercise these rights. For people with significant disability, in particular those with intellectual disabilities, funded supports are not a luxury; they are the essential bridge between isolation and community life. Simplican et al. (2015) argue that community participation and social interaction are foundational to belonging and social inclusion, and that people with intellectual disabilities are among the most excluded members of society, making accessible, funded pathways to participation all the more critical.

A 50% reduction in this funding area directly limits the capacity of people with disability to participate in the cultural, recreational, and civic life that Article 30 guarantees. Resetting budgets to 2023 spending levels, without accounting for cost of living increases, population growth, or increased demand, will result in real-terms cuts that far exceed 50% for many participants. This cannot be reconciled with Australia’s obligations under Article 30 or with its stated commitment to the goals of Australia’s Disability Strategy 2021–2031.

Submission 1590

The proposed cuts to social, civic and community participation supports will have profound and far-reaching consequences for the wellbeing of people with disability across Australia. Community participation is not peripheral to a good life, it is central to it. Simplican et al. (2015) demonstrate that social interaction and community participation are imperative to foster belonging, reduce isolation, and support the mental health and wellbeing of people with disability. For those who already experience significant social exclusion, the removal of funded participation supports risks compounding disadvantage in ways that are difficult to reverse.

People with intellectual disabilities are particularly vulnerable to the effects of these cuts. This cohort is among the most socially excluded in Australia, and community participation funding frequently represents their only structured opportunity for social connection, skill development, and civic engagement (Simplican et al., 2015).

The mental health consequences of increased isolation and reduced participation must also be acknowledged. Social disconnection is a well-established risk factor for depression, anxiety, and deteriorating physical health. For people with disability who rely on funded supports to access community life, these cuts may precipitate a crisis in individual wellbeing that will ultimately place greater pressure on health and other support systems at significant cost to both individuals and the state.

On Australia’s International Obligations

Australia’s ratification of the CRPD in 2008 created binding international obligations that cannot be set aside by domestic budgetary decisions. The proposed cuts represent a clear regression in the rights of people with disability in Australia. The UN Committee has explicitly stated that retrogressive measures are incompatible with States Parties’ obligations under the Convention. A 50% reduction to community participation supports, applied uniformly and without individual needs assessment, is precisely the kind of retrogressive measure the Committee has warned against.

Furthermore, these cuts contradict the stated goals of Australia’s Disability Strategy 2021–2031, which commits to protecting and promoting the human rights of people with disability in line with the CRPD, and to providing national leadership toward greater inclusion (Department of Social Services, 2021). A government cannot credibly commit to a national disability strategy grounded in the CRPD while simultaneously legislating cuts that undermine the very rights that strategy is designed to protect.

On the Disability Sector

The consequences of the proposed cuts extend beyond individual participants to the broader disability support sector. Service providers who deliver social, civic and community participation supports have built programs, workforces, and community infrastructure over many years. A sudden reduction in funding will make many of these programs financially unviable, forcing closures, staff reductions, and the dismantling of community connections that cannot easily be rebuilt.

The disability support workforce will also be significantly affected. Reduced funding means reduced hours and reduced employment, with flow-on consequences for workers and for the quality and continuity of care available to people with disability.

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The loss of experienced, skilled, and trusted support workers is not a cost that can be easily recovered.

Perhaps most significantly, the cuts risk destroying community infrastructure that underpin genuine social inclusion for people with disability. Unlike funding, the networks, relationships, venues, and programs cannot be simply switched back on. Once community programs close and trusted relationships are severed, the harm to participants is immediate, concrete, and lasting. The Committee is asked to weigh this reality carefully against the projected budgetary savings of the proposed measure.

Lived Experience Evidence

The Principle of “Nothing About Us Without Us”

The CRPD is unique among international human rights instruments in that it was developed in direct partnership with Disabled People’s Organisations (DPOs), imbodying the principle of “Nothing about us without us” (Mittler, 2015; Frohmader & Ortoleva, 2014). Article 4.3 of the Convention requires States Parties to closely consult with and actively involve people with disability, including children with disability, through their representative organisations, in the development and implementation of legislation and policies. The proposed cuts to social, civic and community participation supports appear to have been developed without meaningful consultation with the disability community, in direct contradiction of this obligation.

Co-design is not a procedural nicety, it is a human rights requirement. When people with disability are excluded from decisions that fundamentally affect their lives, the resulting policy invariably fails to reflect their needs, priorities, and lived realities. Mellifont and Smith-Merry (2016) found that Australia’s National Disability Strategy, despite its rights-based framing, suffered from significant implementation gaps precisely because the groundwork for genuine inclusion was not adequately laid at the policy development stage. The proposed cuts repeat this pattern of a top-down budgetary decision made without the meaningful participation of the people most affected. The contradiction is stark: a government that ratified a Convention built on cowdesign is now cutting the supports that enable participation without consulting the participants.

The Response of the Disability Community

The response of the disability community to the proposed Bill has been swift, unified, and unambiguous. Disabled People’s Organisations, service providers, welfare groups, and people with disability have come together in opposition to the Bill, representing the breadth and depth of concern across the sector (AFDO, 2026; People with Disability Australia, 2026a; People with Disability Australia, 2026b). This collective response is itself evidence that the cuts were not developed with genuine community input. A community that had been meaningfully consulted would not be responding with such alarm.

People with Disability Australia (PWDA) has been particularly vocal in its opposition, aruging that the proposed cuts will cause significant harm to the people the NDIS was designed to support and that they represent a fundamental breach of Australia’s

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human rights obligations (People with Disability Australia, 2026a; People with Disability Australia, 2026b). The Australian Federation of Disability Organisations (AFDO) has similarly called on the Government to abandon the cuts, highlighting the devastating real-world consequences for participants who rely on community participation funding to live full and connected lives (AFDO, 2026).

This unified opposition from the disability community must be understood not merely as sector advocacy, but as the lived expertise of the people most affected by these changes. The CRPD explicitly recognises the authority of this expertise. The Committee is urged to give it the weight it deserves.

What Community Participation Funding Makes Possible

To understand what is at stake, it is necessary to consider what social, civic and community participation funding actually enables in the lives of people with disability. Belonging is not a passive state. It is the sense of being a valued, connected member of one’s community. It is actively constructed through relationships, shared experiences, and regular participation in community life. Strnadová, Johnson and Walmsley (2018) found that for people with intellectual disabilities, belonging is deeply tied to feeling safe, having friends, and being able to engage in meaningful activities in their communities. Critically, their research found that fear and exclusion are significant barriers to belonging. Barriers that funded participation supports are specifically designed to address. Without this funding, those barriers become insurmountable for many.

Hall (2010) similarly found that spaces of social inclusion and belonging for people with intellectual disabilities are not naturally occurring, they must be deliberately created and sustained. Community program access funded through the NDIS represent exactly these kinds of spaces: structured, supported environments in which people with disability can build relationships, develop skills, and experience genuine inclusion. Hall’s earlier work (2005) further demonstrated that the geographies of exclusion and inclusion for people with disability are deeply entangled. Exclusion from community spaces produces compounding social disadvantage that is difficult to reverse once entrenched. A 50% cut to the funding that sustains these spaces risks precisely this kind of entrenchment.

Marston and Dee (2015) caution that social inclusion policy in Australia has often been characterised by rhetorical commitment without substantive structural change, describing it as a case of “old wine, new bottles.” The proposed cuts risk confirming this critique that reducing social inclusion to a policy aspiration while systematically defunding the mechanisms that make it real.

Recommendations

This submission respectfully puts the following recommendations to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee:

• Recommendation 1 — Reject the proposed cuts to social and community participation funding The Committee should recommend that the Bill not proceed with the 50% reduction to budget allocations for social, civic and community participation supports. The cuts

Recommendation

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are incompatible with Australia’s obligations under Articles 19 and 30 of the CRPD, contradict the goals of Australia’s Disability Strategy 2021–2031, and will cause serious and lasting harm to people with disability across Australia.

Recommendation 2 — Commission a human rights impact assessment

Before any further legislative or budgetary changes to the NDIS are considered, the Government should be required to commission and publicly release an independent human rights impact assessment measuring the proposed changes against Australia’s obligations under the CRPD. Budget decisions that affect the rights of people with disability must be assessed through a human rights lens, not a purely fiscal one. Mellifont and Smith-Merry (2016) found that without rigorous implementation planning grounded in rights-based frameworks, disability policy reforms risk producing outcomes that contradict their stated intentions. A risk that is acutely present in the current proposal.

Recommendation 3 — Ensure meaningful consultation with the disability community

Any future reform to the NDIS must be developed in genuine partnership with people with disability and their representative organisations, consistent with Article 4.3 of the CRPD. Consultation must be accessible, inclusive, and occur at the earliest stages of policy development, not as a post-hoc exercise after decisions have already been made. The principle of “Nothing about us without us” must be operationalised in practice, not merely acknowledged in rhetoric.

Recommendation 4 — Align NDIS reform with the CRPD and Australia’s Disability Strategy

All proposed reforms to the NDIS should be required to demonstrate alignment with Australia’s obligations under the CRPD and with the commitments made under Australia’s Disability Strategy 2021–2031. Where proposed changes contradict these frameworks, they should not proceed. Australia cannot credibly pursue a national disability strategy grounded in human rights while simultaneously legislating against those rights. As Marston and Dee (2015) caution, social inclusion policy that is not backed by genuine structural commitment risks becoming little more than political hetoric.

Recommendation 5 — Protect community participation as a rights-enabling support

Social, civic and community participation supports should be explicitly recognised within the NDIS framework as rights-enabling. As Hall (2010) demonstrates, spaces of belonging and inclusion for people with intellectual disabilities must be deliberately created and sustained; they do not emerge spontaneously in the absence of structural support. Community participation funding is that structural support, and it must be protected from broad, indiscriminate reduction.

Conclusion

Articles 19 and 30 of the CRPD are unambiguous: people with disability have the right to live in and participate fully in their communities, on an equal basis with others. These are not aspirational goals. They are binding international obligations that Australia accepted when it ratified the Convention in 2008. The proposed 50%

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reduction to social, civic and community participation supports in the NDIS Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 directly contravenes these obligations and represents a serious regression in the rights of people with disability in Australia.

As this submission has demonstrated, the consequences of these cuts will be profound and far-reaching. Belonging is not incidental to a good life; it is constitutive of one. The spaces and relationships through which people with intellectual disabilities experience belonging are fragile, hard-won, and dependent on consistent, funded support. Hall (2005; 2010) demonstrates that once the geographies of inclusion are disrupted, the resulting exclusion compounds over time and is difficult to reverse. A 50% cut to participation funding does not merely reduce community access. It risks dismantling the conditions of belonging itself for some of Australia’s most marginalised citizens.

Marston and Dee (2015) warn that social inclusion in Australia has too often been a hetorical commitment unmatched by structural action. The proposed cuts risk confirming that critique in the starkest possible terms. A government that ratified the CRPD, developed a national disability strategy, and built a disability insurance scheme cannot now cut the supports that make inclusion real without being held to account for that contradiction.

Budget decisions are not value-neutral. They reflect what a society believes its members are worth, and who deserves to belong. The Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee has an opportunity to reject this measure and to affirm that Australia’s obligations to people with disability are not contingent on fiscal convenience. This submission urges the Committee to do so, and to reaffirm that in Australia, every person, regardless of disability, has the right to belong.

References

Australian Federation of Disability Organisations (AFDO). (2026). Media release. https://afdo.org.au

Australian Human Rights Commission. (2012). Disability rights. https://humanrights.gov.au

Australia’s Disability Strategy 2021–2031. Department of Social Services. https://www.disabilitystrategy.gov.au

Berghs, M., Atkin, K., Hatton, C., & Thomas, C. (2019). Do disabled people need a stronger social model: A social model of human rights? Disability & Society, 34(7-8), 1034-1039. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2019.1619239

Department of Health, Disability and Ageing. (2026a). NDIS Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026: About the changes to the NDIS. https://www.health.gov.au/our-work/ndis-legislation-changes/amendments/ndis-amendment-securing-the-ndis-for-future-generations-bill-2026/about-the-changes-to-the-ndis

Department of Health, Disability and Ageing. (2026b). Securing the future of the NDIS for future generations [Media release]. https://www.health.gov.au/ministers/the-hon-mark-butler-mp/media/securing-the-future-of-the-ndis-for-future-generations

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Department of Social Services. (2021). Australia’s Disability Strategy 2021–2031. Australian Government.

Frohmader, C., & Ortoleva, S. (2014). The sexual and reproductive rights of women and girls with disabilities. Women with Disabilities Australia (WWDA).

Hall, E. (2005). The entangled geographies of social exclusion/inclusion for people with learning disabilities. Health & Place, 11(2), 107–115. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.healthplace.2004.10.007

Hall, E. (2010). Spaces of social inclusion and belonging for people with intellectual disabilities. Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, 54(s1), 48–57. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2788.2009.01237.x

McCallum, R. (2020). Australia’s compliance with the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Australian Journal of Human Rights, 26(1), 1–20.

Marston, G., & Dee, M. (2015). The social inclusion policy agenda in Australia: A case of old wine, new bottles? The Australian Journal of Social Issues, 50(2), 119–138. https://doi.org/10.3316/informit.280374448937866

Mellifont, D., & Smith-Merry, J. (2016). Laying or delaying the groundwork? A critical framing analysis of Australia’s National Disability Strategy from an implementation planning perspective. Disability & Society, 31(7), 929–947. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2016.1216392

Mittler, P. (2015). The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities: Implementing a paradigm shift. Journal of Policy and Practice in Intellectual Disabilities, 12(2), 79–89.

People with Disability Australia. (2026a). PWDA responds to the 2026–2027 federal budget [Media release]. https://pwd.org.au/media-release-pwda-responds-to-the-2026-2027-federal-budget/

People with Disability Australia. (2026b). NDIS legislative changes: PWDA statement. https://pwd.org.au

Simplican, S. C., Leader, G., Kosciulek, J., & Leahy, M. (2015). Defining social inclusion of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities: An ecological model of social networks and community participation. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 38, 18–29. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ridd.2014.10.008

Strnadová, I., Johnson, K., & Walmsley, J. (2018). “… but if you’re afraid of things, how are you meant to belong?” What belonging means to people with intellectual disabilities? Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities, 31(6), 1091–1102. https://doi.org/10.1111/jar.12469

United Nations. (2006). Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. https://www.un.org/development/desa/disabilities/convention-on-the-rights-of-persons-with-disabilities.html

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