Submission 177
I am writing as the parent of two autistic children living in QLD.
I am submitting this to the Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs in response to the NDIS Amendment (Securing the NDIS) Bill 2026.
I am writing about Schedule 1 of the Bill, which requires functional capacity to be assessed “without assistance” from supports, assistive technology or environmental adaptations, as far as possible.
My child currently relies on ongoing therapy supports, a support worker , visual schedules and sensory supports to manage their daily life. Without these supports, they cannot communicate, complete morning routines safely, access school and the community and in turn develop capacity to engage in society. These supports are not optional extras. They are what make daily life possible.
If my child is assessed as though these supports do not exist, the NDIA could determine they have low support needs — and then remove the funding that creates that stability. This is circular and dangerous logic.
A person appears to have low needs precisely because the support is working.
The assessment of how a person actually functions in their daily life — with their environment, their supports, and their routines in place — is the core expertise of occupational therapists and allied health professionals. The Occupational Therapy Society for Hidden and Invisible Disability (OTSi) has noted that the NDIS Review itself recommended that assessment processes allow for evidence from a range of sources, including treating professionals. The Bill moves in the opposite direction, favouring standardised snapshot assessments that cannot capture fluctuating needs, masking, or the invisible work that keeps an autistic person stable. My child’s occupational therapist, speech pathologist and treating team understand their functional capacity. A brief administrative assessment does not.
I ask the Committee to remove the requirement that functional capacity be assessed ‘without assistance,’ and to require instead that assessments reflect how a person actually functions in their real life, with their existing supports in place. I also ask the Committee to protect the role of allied health and treating professional evidence in all NDIS access, planning and
Submission 177
reassessment decisions, and to ensure that no automated or administrative assessment can override clinical evidence from a qualified practitioner.
Further to this I am concerned about the impact to women as carers and their ability to gain employment. The NDIA’s own quarterly data (March 2025) shows that carer employment ise 6 percentage points — from 46% to 52% — with access to the NDIS. This is not a coincidence. Formal support enables primary carers to participate in paid work. When support is cut, that participation is reversed. This is the direct, documented relationship between NDIS funding and workforce participation for carers.
Primary carers of autistic children and adults are disproportionately women. In 2018, there were an estimated 860,000 primary carers of people with disability in Australia. The majority are women. These carers consistently report reduced or ceased paid work, reduced superannuation, physical and mental health decline, and long-term financial disadvantage they do not recover from.
I personally reduced my working hours to accommodate the need to deliver supports to my children - I have lost income, career progression and superannuation I will not get back.
The proposed changes in this Bill — including pre-set funding tiers for autistic children, the requirement to demonstrate ‘appropriate treatment,’ and the diversion of children under 9 off the NDIS — will each individually increase the care burden on families. Together, they will push more primary carers — predominantly women — out of the workforce entirely.
The Bill makes this worse still through new provisions in subsections 34(1G) and 34(1H), which create a legal presumption that parents are responsible for providing supervision, personal care, transport, emotional support, behavioural support, and other day-to-day assistance to their children with disability. Under subsection 34(1J), the NDIS would be directed to ignore the pressure this places on families when deciding whether to fund a support. Families are already experiencing the consequences of this approach. During a Senate hearing on eligibility reassessments, CYDA CEO Skye Kakoschke-Moore shared this account from a family: “We were told that because my son was under 18 that everything was deemed parental responsibility. I was told that if I couldn’t fulfill my parental responsibility that I’d be reported to the department of Children’s Services.” These provisions do not reflect the reality of raising a child with complex disability needs. They reflect a policy decision to transfer costs from the NDIS onto families — and onto women in particular.
Submission 177
This is a gendered economic harm. I ask the Committee to remove subsections 34(1G), 34(1H) and 34(1J) from the Bill, to require a gender impact assessment of all proposed changes before this Bill proceeds, and to commission modelling of the effect on carer workforce participation if the proposed funding reductions are implemented.
Families like mine are already at breaking point. The deaths of autistic children in Perth in January 2026 and Campbelltown in May 2026 are evidence of what happens when support is withdrawn from families who have no capacity left. This Bill must not make that more likely.