Submission 1751
My name is . I am a disabled person whom these changes impact directly. I am making this submission so that my voice is heard and may influence your decisions on this issue.
Like many others, I believe these decisions should be made with disabled people, not above us. These changes are firmly above us. When you consider the historical context of disability in Australia, the proposed changes push us back toward a eugenic asylum model—where people like me are forced into institutions and denied the right to public life. This is cruel and inhumane.
My key concerns include: loss of supports, reduced community participation, changes to eligibility and assessment processes, automated decision-making, and placing accountability for service fraud onto disabled people through registration requirements—rather than providing adequate funding to the NDIS Safeguards Commission.
Access requirements:
Before one of my disabilities was formally recognised, my applications for support were rejected three times, regardless of inclusion of a functional capacity assessment. I am neurodivergent and physically disabled. At the time, I had lost my community supports, leaving me largely housebound and increasingly bed bound. My health continued to deteriorate until I experienced a major medical event. Only then was I finally accepted into the NDIS—but only for psychosocial disability, despite two occupational therapist reports documenting physical disability in my application.
I have a rare and complex disability profile, am an ambulatory wheelchair user and have a surgical medical device that facilitates weekly IV therapy. I have repeatedly tried to have my physical disabilities recognised—submitting reports, doctor’s letters, allied health reports and management plans—only for the NDIS to reject them while stating they would store my physical disability data as “background information” about me.
These decisions left me in a medically inappropriate wheelchair for several years, worsening my functional capacity. After the NDIS rejected my third occupational therapist report, I self-funded a medically appropriate manual wheelchair using savings reserved for rent, groceries, medication, and doctor’s appointments. My savings are running out. I still have to self-fund a hire electric wheelchair because I cannot push myself long distances to do things like walk my dog, and my support hours are limited. I am waiting for a power assist function for my prescribed wheelchair, but my physical disabilities remain unrecognised by the NDIS.
Functional capacity assessments are already frequently used in NDIS applications and funding reviews yet funding often does not reflect this. This Bill reinforces these funding short-comings at the expense of findings by Tribunals and Federal Courts, while continuing to require more reports which are costly and come at the loss of
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access to actual services and therapies.
Non-Contact Amendment:
Throughout that lengthy rejection process, an NDIS representative called me regularly to pressure me into attending meetings without my support coordinator—and without any intention of processing my claim to have my physical impairments recognised, which was the stated purpose of those reviews. The representative kept pushing me to proceed regardless of the fact that my physical disabilities had not yet been assessed.
Shortly after my physical disabilities were again rejected, another NDIS representative revealed that the first staff member had been fabricating the record—writing that I was uncontactable, even though we had spoken approximately every week for several weeks. I had been answering my phone and returning emails, repeatedly declining the meeting because I believed it would waste NDIS resources to hold a review before my physical data had been assessed. Even so, regardless of how much physical disability data I provided again, my physical impairments were again rejected.
Under the non-contact provisions this Bill proposes, I would have been left without any support—even though I was in fact answering my phone and responding to emails, and could provide evidence to prove it.
Realistically, if a disabled person becomes non-contactable to the NDIS, that should signal that something is wrong: that the person may need additional support, may be injured, may be in an unsafe environment, or may have died. These changes will cause further isolation and desperation, and will likely lead to more disability and death. I do not want to return to how I was living before. I may as well have been dead.
Assessment and Support Access
My experience of the assessment process has already poor, with no option for appeal—this was stated explicitly in my rejection documentation. One of the responses I received stated I hadn’t tried all treatment options - being surgery. I am anatomically complex with others with my same medical conditions being forced overseas to receive surgical intervention. If an intervention is not geographically available, and my treating team have excluded those interventions due to risk or inappropriateness of service, it is unreasonable to deny access to the Scheme on these grounds. This would be acting against medical device. This Bill would specifically reinforce rejections for access on these grounds, which is comparable American private health insurance system resulting in the unnecessary deaths of thousands of people. My physical disability data, which goes back to childhood, is apparently only good enough to be “background information.” The fact that my condition was leaving me bed-bound and destroying
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my neurological and organ function did not matter to the existing framework. The documentation I provided from multiple specialised doctors and allied health professionals was also rejected in favour of the opinions of unqualified assessor’s which this BIll only reinforces - This is dangerous and costly.
Community services and government-funded support were excluded as options for me, because these services in my location specifically exclude permanently disabled people—and I am very clearly permanently and severely disabled. These services consider this to be the role of the NDIS. I was left with nothing before my psychosocial disability was recognised, which gave me access to some—but not all—of the supports I needed. Realistically, funding my physical disabilities would reduce the funding needed for community access in my case.
Impact of the proposed changes
The proposed changes are likely to make this worse: Increasing strain on our hospital systems and community services, which are underfunded, staffed by overworked and underpaid workers, with governments committed to following the USA down the privatisation rabbit hole—despite clear evidence that this disables and kills people. While I have private health insurance, it does not cover the services I require.
Community participation is a crucial component of my supports. Because of the support I do have from the NDIS, I was able to re-engage with university study and am due to graduate this year, albeit in a different degree as I cannot complete my previous degree without my physical disabilities being supported through the NDIS. I cannot meet the university requirements without this. My independence would therefore be even higher if my physical disabilities were recognised —this would enable me to study on campus and pursue employment in my field. This Bill reinforces inaccess to education for me and many people like me.
Cuts to these services would mean I cannot attend all of my health appointments, engage in community art projects, go to the park, or navigate my university or town—especially slopes I cannot manage without a power assist function or a support worker to push me. I value my alone time and independence. I do not want to be dependent on someone pushing me around all the time or having to choose to miss out on opportunities that would further my education, carer, or mental and physical wellbeing.
Automated decision-making and fraud
Automated decision-making on healthcare issues is simply Robodebt 2.0. More public servants will lose their jobs, but this won’t save money—the responsibility will shift to hospitals and psychiatric wards. There are no beds, and when the presenting health issue is chronic, hospitals will not help us. This means we are left to deteriorate until we die. I believe the government
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knows this, and knows the name for this is “eugenics.”
Fraud has been front and centre in the media and on the lips of politicians who view people like me as getting more than we deserve, “rorting the system,” or expecting us to be self-funded. There is little evidence that rorting is an issue primarily coming from participants, yet this belief has been reinforced from our political leaders. I understand the Scheme needs to be sustainable, however successive governments pushing privatisation of health and disability services has pushed up costs and reduced access to public health services. There is no capacity in these systems to provide the services this Bill is suggesting.
A very clear solution is to properly tax large corporations and billionaires so the government has the capacity to adequately fund the services Australians need—whether health, housing, disability, aged care, education, or transport.
Choice, control, and accountability
My savings fund my basic life needs: shelter, food, water, electricity, and medical services, as I currently cannot work. I cannot draw from these savings for disability services without leaving myself short on shelter, food, electricity, or medical care. Receiving the right disability services through the NDIS, however, would enable me to work, increase my independence, and likely reduce some of the other services I currently rely on.
The NDIS was supposed to provide choice and control for disabled people. But when accountability fails, so does choice and control. Forcing disabled people into therapies, settings, and procedures we identify as unsafe, financially or geographically inaccessible is inherently damaging and a waste of resources. This Bill allows these harms to increase. I have experienced forced healthcare, and the consequences for my body and mind have been extreme for me and those who were forced to witness it.
Provider registration is not the solution. The only providers who have ripped off my funding have been registered providers. But because the Safeguards Commission is underfunded, there is no accountability for these dodgy providers—so the abuse of disabled people and government funding continues.
Conclusion
Realistically, the government knows that accountability failures are the reason for such a huge budget blowout. Privatising disability support while failing to fund accountability systems was always going to lead to the budget issues we see now. But rather than fixing accountability or returning to a public health model, you are instead choosing to reduce disabled people’s access
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to public life, health services, housing, life expectancy, and quality of life—which reduces these same aspects of life for our families and friends.
The thought of going back to how I used to be forced to live is horrifying. It was rot. Dreaming of what I could do if my physical impairments were recognised and supported is devastating and this Bill only makes those dreams a more concrete reality. I am scared I will run out of savings, be unable to work due to inadequate support, and end up homeless or dead. This is not why the NDIS is supposed to exist.
This Bill is cruel.
Respectfully, You need to listen to disabled people, our advocates, and the existing decisions by Tribunals and the Federal Courts. You need to ensure decisions of medical and disability care are made by medical and allied health professionals alongside the disabled person they are working with. Our healthcare and disability care works best when co-design is the central pillar.