Submission 1840

Dear members of the Senate Enquiry

Thank you for the opportunity to provide feedback on the proposed ‘Future Generations’ NDIS legislation currently before Parliament.

I am the mother and Nominee of two participants and also work in the disability sector. I believe wholeheartedly that the NDIS needs urgent improvement to guarantee it is sustainable for future users. I also recognise the need for enhanced regulation and oversight within the Scheme.

I do not believe that this is best achieved by cutting supports to participants. Cutting funding from individual plans simply shifts the costs into other systems. The NDIS should be made sustainable by addressing waste, fraud, poor planning decisions and administrative inefficiency.

The very tight timelines of this process are inadequate for the significance of the impacts. I think the Bill needs to be suspended until such time that thorough consultation is conducted with the disability community. We stand ready to help the government find safe and effective measures to reduce expenditure. This is in keeping with your own principles:

• (8) People with disability have the same right as other members of Australian society to be able to determine their own best interests, including the right to exercise choice and control, and to engage as equal partners in decisions that will affect their lives.

• (9A) People with disability are central to the National Disability Insurance Scheme and should be included in a co-design capacity.

Government budgets are designed round priorities. Keeping vulnerable people safe should be your priority. The planned changes do not keep people safe. Please slow this process down and take due care – this is literally impacting lives and livelihoods.

Issues of Concern

Blunt force changes are unsafe. An estimated 240,000 people will be removed from the Scheme in the coming years. Mr Butler has advised that Community Participation funding will be cut by 50% and therapy by 10%. The Minister will be able to make decisions without them going through the Parliament. None of this was taken to the Australian people at the 2025 Federal election. There is no mandate. In fact, the Labour government promised to save the NDIS and have broken that promise.

This is cost shifting, not cost cutting. Reducing support funding does not save the Federal budget money. It shifts the costs into hospitals, emergency department’s, housing crisis services and mental health systems. It shifts the burden onto the unpaid labour of families, usually women. For my family, this means I will need to quit my job to care for my daughters.

This Bill ignores independent advice. The independent review in 2023 produced a road map of 26 recommendations and 139 specific actions with one explicit instruction: implement them as a whole. Foundational supports were prescribed as a non-negotiable precondition before any changes to participant eligibility or plan funding. That road map has been abandoned without explanation. This Bill will eject people from the Scheme with nowhere else to go for support.

The NDIS delivers $2.25 to the Australian economy for every dollar spent. Many people with disabilities work in the disability sector, so cuts to the NDIS will reduce both their supports and their opportunities for work.

Autistic people account for nearly half of all NDIS participants. Mr Butler says they don’t belong on the Scheme. The productivity Commission who designed the NDIS identified autistic people as

Submission 1840

exactly the population the scheme was designed to serve: any claim that they were never meant to be in the Scheme is false. Autistic people have potential to learn, work and contribute to society. They also have 8 times higher rates of suicide and 8 times higher unemployment. A little funding can go a long way to ensuring that autistic people do not become welfare dependent for life.

SDA and SIL: why does the NDIS guarantee rental returns of 12-15%, or 4 ties market rates? It is widely reported that 5% of NDIS participants are using 40% of the budget to pay for their home and living, and that the NDIS is bleeding money to prop up property investors. The bricks and mortar part of this is astounding. I read one report that the providers of group homes previously run by Victorian Dept of Families, Fairness and Housing receive $160 - $200K per year for the use of those group homes as SDA. $200K every year for a property that Victorian tax payers already paid for in full – plus the residents paying Board - how is that justified? These same properties previously had annual maintenance budgets of $35K per year under DFFH – why is NDIS paying them $200K every year?

The price list also shows that new build properties for a single occupant attract $100K per year. So, if I built a new property with 10 single units for people with disabilities, the NDIS will pay me a million dollars a year forever? And I can also charge rent? That strikes me as a very obvious place to start looking for cost savings!

We have already seen deaths as a result of NDIA not supporting people adequately. In recent months two families with boys with autism have taken their children’s lives because they were unable to imagine a future where those boys would be adequately supported. Noah Johnston died in December 2025 because his night shift was not adequately funded for a nurse to be present to manage his ventilated tube. Koa Gibson died at just four years old after her nursing supports were cut back to three hours per week and her mother’s request for emergency additional funding was declined. When the disability community tells you that people will die, these are some of the examples that are sitting close to our hearts.

On the 2nd of July 2024 a minister told parliament that ‘billions of dollars’ were being rorted from the NDIS. The confirmed fraud figure at the time was only $34.5 million across 72 active cases in a $42 billion scheme. The government has never provided any evidence for their claim of billions of dollars of fraud. In fact, fraud accounted for just 1.05% of the projected savings in this budget.

It is widely reported that 90% of ART cases in 2023-24 found against the NDIA. This Bill is designed to strip people of their appeals process. Doesn’t the high rate of failure, despite the massive spend on lawyers, prove beyond doubt that the NDIA is demonstrating poor decision making? Whatever you pass into law, the Agency will then need to implement, and their track record is appalling. As a previous employee of the Agency, I can promise you that both the culture and capacity of NDIA staff is sadly lacking. Please don’t give them more power to ruin lives.

Australia is a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. It is literally point 1A in the NDIS Act. I’ve popped it in here, so you don’t need to look it up. This Convention guarantees genuine participation by people with disability in decisions that affect their lives. The principles of the Act expand this further – I have included a few of them as well. The promise of lifelong support once permanent access is granted was made explicitly and publicly to every person who entered this Scheme. Would you slash Medicare to this extent?

Objects of Act

(1) The objects of this Act are to:

Submission 1840

(a) in conjunction with other laws, give effect to Australia’s obligations under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities done at New York on 13 December 2006 ([2008] ATS 12);

General principles guiding actions under this Act

(1) People with disability have the same right as other members of Australian society to realise their potential for physical, social, emotional and intellectual development.

(2) People with disability should be supported to participate in and contribute to social and economic life.

(3) People with disability and their families and carers should have certainty that people with disability will receive the care and support they need over their lifetime.

What does this mean for my family?

Under the proposed changes my daughters may lose access to the Scheme entirely. After a lifetime of being too disabled for childcare; too disabled for mainstream kindergarten; too disabled for our local primary school; too disabled for our secondary school; and too disabled for local employment at Maccas or Coles like other kids their age, suddenly they are not disabled enough for the NDIS. Without their supports, I am likely to need to leave the workforce to become a full time carer. My daughters are likely to lose the progress they have made towards independence over 7 years of being Scheme participants. We are likely to become reliant on welfare systems for the rest of our lives.

Their Plans are both small but impactful. They receive some capacity building therapies, and both have potential to do some tertiary study and eventually find employment. But we aren’t there yet. Investment in them while they are young will literally mean the difference between them being welfare dependent for life, or having an education, a vocation, and to contribute to the economy.

Questions for the Committee

I would like to understand why in March 2026 the government voted down a Senate Inquiry into NDIS fraud. If fraud is such a terrible problem for the NDIS and is being used as the justification for these upcoming cuts, why would you vote against an Inquiry to find out what is actually happening?

Can the Senate committee request the government to table the complete evidentiary basis for the July 2024 fraud claims, and reconcile the statement that billions were being rorted with the confirmed fraud figure of 34.5 million?

The foundational supports that the disability review prescribed as non-negotiable preconditions do not yet exist. Will the Senate query on what basis the government is proceeding with eligibility changes when there is currently nowhere else for people to go if they are not eligible for the NDIS?

What does Treasury project that hospitals, mental health services, housing, and family systems will spend absorbing what the NDIS drops? Has that modelling been done, and if so, why has it not been released?

How is it possible that at the same time that NDIS plans will be slashed, particularly for children, than the government is also announcing reduction of disability funding to schools?

Submission 1840

What gender impact assessment has been conducted on the workforce participation, superannuation, and lifetime economic impacts on women who are carers who will absorb the work these cuts displace?

Why do we not have a Human Rights framework in Australia yet? When will the government introduce a Disability Rights Act that makes the rights of people with disability legally enforceable regardless of which minister holds power?

Why should NDIS participants be at the mercy of a minister with new powers to make decisions without taking them via the parliament?

Request to the Senate Committee

These are the biggest cuts to a social system in any single budget in Australia’s history. Please slow down and give it due diligence. Lives depend on you.

• I’m asking the Senate committee to reject this Bill until foundational supports are fully in place and accessible to everyone who is not eligible for the NDIS.

• I’m asking the Senate committee to require the government to table the downstream cost modelling, and the anticipated impacts for women who will fill the gaps

• I’m asking the Senate committee to require an independent human rights assessment before this Bill passes, and to recommend a Disability Rights Act as a precondition for any further changes.

• I’m asking the Senate committee to extend the process of introducing this Bill to allow for proper and thorough consultation with the disabled community who will be directly impacted by the changes to this bill.