National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 1903
Submission: National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Individual Submission (Lived Experience)
I write you as an individual with lived disability experience as a participant, having substantial support needs and complex presentation. I am involved with initiatives to build foundational supports within my local community as a demonstration of the efficacy of disability communities on the ground in practical project leadership. I am making this submission as an individual with lived experience, not on behalf of an organisation.
I refer to: the cuts to support funding in participant plans, reduction of participant numbers by tightening of eligibility criteria, and authority for individuals at the NDIS to make substantive alterations.
These three proposed changes while feasible long term goals are preemptive and premature to legislate at this time. I need to tell you that at a ground level, communities are realising that much of the necessary infrastructure needs to be designed and built by us. The disability community as a whole is more receptive to and dynamic with progress in research and procedure than government possibly can be by its very nature, even when everything is going well.
“Nothing about us without us” is a long-lived slogan in disability with good reason; inevitably we find we are the ones who must do the most heavy lifting when we need the most help. Respectfully you are putting the cart before the horse and getting in the way of your own success.
What I am saying is that while state and federal governments are moving slowly and with apparent reluctance to implement and fund the necessary infrastructure, the community has been mobilising and standing on business. Not against the government, but to demonstrate by modelling how this is supposed to, and can easily go.
At this time, we as communities and individuals do understand the need for the NDIS to be sustainable and this means you backing your own investment. Yes foundational supports once built will absolutely take the pressure off, but if you try to divest before fruition of course the result will be a total loss, so to speak. Let your investment in the disabled community mature before attempting to recoup savings.
Energy cannot be destroyed, only transformed, and everyone out of high school should understand that that applies even to federal budgets. Cutting funds now won’t stop the need to build while maintaining support. This is economics not a game of Jenga.
I am not trying to be condescending, we have a restrictive timeline in which to meaningfully capture and illustrate how premature and shortsighted many of these bills would be. Once foundational supports in the infrastructure are accomplished, then it will be sound to calculate the reductions in cost. You could even add a funding category in community development if you really mean to accelerate sustainability.