Submission 1610

Submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee Re: National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

Dear Committee Secretary,

I am writing to make a personal submission regarding the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026.

I understand the Committee is accepting personal experience submissions where they specifically address aspects of the Bill. I am sharing my brother’s lived experience because it directly relates to the consequences of any changes that may clarify, restrict, reduce, delay or narrow access to NDIS supports for people with severe psychosocial disability.

The Government has stated that the Bill is intended to protect the NDIS, clarify eligibility and supports, address fraud, and update governance and administrative arrangements. I support genuine reform, fraud prevention and good governance. However, I am deeply concerned that if these changes result in reduced, restricted or destabilised supports for people with complex psychosocial disability, the consequences will be severe.

My brother has severe, complex and enduring mental illness. He lives with treatment- resistant paranoid schizophrenia, narcissistic personality disorder, borderline personality disorder and substance use disorder involving drugs and alcohol. For decades, he lived rough on the streets and moved in and out of hostels and unsafe accommodation because of his unstable mental health and substance use.

My father and I have been very active in his life. We love him and support him as much as we possibly can. But we are not mental health professionals. We cannot provide 24/7 supervision, psychiatric support, drug and alcohol support, behavioural support, crisis prevention, supported housing and community safety on our own.

My brother’s NDIS package has changed the trajectory of his life.

Submission 1610

Because of his current NDIS funding, he has been able to access the level of community-based support he requires. This has helped him remain in long-term rehabilitation, become clean, and live harmoniously in a 24/7 assisted home with two other individuals who also live with severe mental health disorders, under the care of support workers.

For the first time in decades, my brother has had safety, structure, stability and the right level of support around him.

The results have been significant.

With appropriate NDIS-funded support, my brother has been able to remain out of acute mental health facilities. His mood has stabilised. His risk has reduced. He has been able to participate more in society. Up until recently, with this level of stability, his medication burden was also able to be reduced.

This is what the NDIS is supposed to do.

This is not waste. This is not misuse. This is not over-servicing.

This is disability support working.

My brother’s NDIS package is not evidence of excess funding. It is evidence that proper support works.

We use his funding appropriately and only when necessary. His package is not a luxury. It is the reason he is housed, clean, safer, more stable, more connected, and not repeatedly cycling through homelessness, addiction, police, emergency departments, acute mental health admissions and crisis services.

Submission 1610

My concern with this Bill is that any move to narrow eligibility, restrict what supports can be funded, change access rules, or place greater administrative barriers around plans may place people like my brother at serious risk.

For people with severe psychosocial disability, stability is not passive. Stability has to be actively supported. If the right supports are removed, delayed or reduced, the person does not simply “cope with less.” They often deteriorate.

In my brother’s case, if his current level of support is reduced or removed, the likely outcome is not independence. It is collapse.

He is at high risk of returning to substance use, homelessness, unsafe hostels, mental health crisis, acute hospital admissions, and potentially death.

This also needs to be understood in the context of the broader system. In Queensland, families know the reality: acute mental health beds are extremely limited. There are not enough long-term rehabilitation options. There are not enough safe supported accommodation options for people with severe and complex mental illness. There are not enough safe hostels that do not expose highly vulnerable people to further harm, extploitation, substance use or instability.

The NDIS cannot be viewed in isolation from the health system, housing system, justice system, emergency system, drug and alcohol system, or family carer system.

When NDIS support is reduced, the need does not disappear.

If the NDIS is reduced for people like my brother, the cost will not disappear. It will simply move to emergency departments, police, homelessness services, ageing parents, exhausted siblings — and eventually, coroners.

Submission 1610

My father and I are broken and exhausted from years of care. We love my brother deeply, but love alone is not a service system. Families cannot be expected to replace properly funded disability and psychosocial support.

I ask the Committee to ensure that any reform to the NDIS does not unintentionally punish people with severe psychosocial disability, particularly those whose support needs are complex, fluctuating and high-risk.

I ask that the Committee recommend strong protections for participants with psychosocial disability so that changes to eligibility, funded supports, reassessments, plan processes, governance, fraud prevention or administrative rules do not result in people losing the very supports that keep them safe and stable in the community.

Fraud prevention must not become disability exclusion.

Financial sustainability must not be achieved by pushing people with complex mental illness back into homelessness, addiction, hospital crisis, prison pathways, unsafe accommodation or family collapse.

The NDIS must remain a scheme that recognises individual need, complexity, dignity, safety and community participation.

For my brother, NDIS support is not an added extra.

It is the difference between stability and collapse. It is the difference between community and homelessness. It is the difference between recovery and relapse. It is the difference between life and serious harm.

Please do not allow reform to remove or destabilise the supports that are keeping people like my brother alive, housed, safe and out of crisis.