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

Submission 1655

I am profoundly upset by the proposed changes to the NDIS act. This is using disabled people as a scapegoat for budgetary issues, and confining people to smaller worlds and vastly reduced quality of life and poorer outcomes for a budgetary benefit. The NDIS represents giving disabled people dignity. The right to access their community. To attend family weddings, engage in hobbies have a hygienic home, and other basic aspects of a full life.

As someone who has both worked as an NDIS support worker and who has deaf friends who rely on it, these changes strike me as unspeakably cruel. Removing community and capacity building supports is not trivial. These are not “nice to have” luxuries and disabled people are not entitled for relying on them. The current average funding supports participants receiving support to leave their homes for around an hour a day. That hour is vital for things like doctors appointments, seeing family, engaging in their religious community if they have one. And without support this does not become hard or unpleasant, becomes somewhere from unsafe, to impossible.

Disabled people deserve better than being relegated to isolation in their homes reduced access to medical care and the basic quality of life others take for granted, simply to reduce the cost of the government’s budget. This is especially foul since I know multiple people who have had to endure a farcical cycle of year after year, multiple professionals are paid by the NDIS to review the need for certain supports. And year after year, the amount of time, work hours for NDIS workers, and money put into this exercise becomes exorbitant as needed, recommended accommodations stall indefinitely.

If the government is concerned about NDIS money that could be allocated better they should do something about the years of paying for occupational therapists who say the same thing - for example, this wheelchair user needs a amp to leave their house. Which is then never installed, resulting in endless wasted time and money as more reports are ordered, ignored, repeated, asked about, and so on. The problem with the NDIS is not disabled people wanting basic dignity. It is the farcical bureaucratic bloat where millions of dollars go down the drain for accommodations that are approved year after year, promised year after year, and quietly forgotten about while the participant suffers their absence.

I am also deeply concerned about the changes to the definition of permanence There are so many circumstances where a treatment which is theoretically available is also functionally untenable. Circumstances where someone has

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

Submission 1655

additional surgeries that they could theoretically try, but which have unacceptably high risks of paralysis, death, or other complications. Treatment which are prohibitively expensive, only available too far away, or where the recovery would be dangerous or impossible without the very care the person could not access without the NDIS.

These are all examples drawn from difficult situations people I personally know have been in. At difficult times where someone has to choose about, for example, the potential benefits of a surgery with an 80% chance of causing permanent paralysis, it is ridiculously cruel to gate dignity and quality of life behind taking that risk, potentially against the advice of their medical support team.

If these changes to funding, community and capacity supports and eligibility are implemented, the best case scenario for any given individual is that their family and friends do their best to fill in the gap. As an unpaid carer, I know the amount of time that represents. This will be bad for the economy as people have to withdraw from work to care for loved ones, making this whole exercise a waste. And that is the best case scenario. Worse options include people losing support and risking infections in uncleaned homes, depression from isolation, any myriad number of worsened mental and physical health outcomes. People who lose their NDIS supports entirely may die from the gap in care.

Disabled people are frightened. Their loved ones are frightened. These changes are cruel, misguided, and will not solve any real problems. They will only cause suffering.