National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 1938
Submission to the NDIS Amendment Bill 2026 Senate Inquiry
Introduction
I am a 79 year old who has lived in the ACT for the last 52 years, and a retired TAFE teacher with children and grandchildren. I have experienced the trials and tribulations of Australian political life since the Menzies era.
Roughly 30 years ago, I taught computer literacy to a class of people with disabilities at Woden Tafe in the ACT. My background before that had been as a secondary college teacher of mathematics, computing, and physical sciences initially, but then I gained employment in TAFE at what was to become the Canberra Institute of Technology, and began teaching literacy, numeracy and introductory computing. I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to teach basic computer skills to students with the whole gamut of disabilities ranging from intellectual to physical. I found this inspiring, challenging, exciting, and marvellously rewarding because it turned out that in general most of them had not had a fair go in whatever sort of school they had previously attended, the assumption being that they were, irrespective of their personal capacities, incapable of successfully learning what “ordinary” students were taught.
I soon realised that this opportunity was a peak moment in my life because of the learning it stimulated for them and for me, which encompassed communication, language, and understanding, knowledge and skills, growth in confidence and life experience, interaction with fellow human beings, and simple things such as them travelling on public transport. Insight, surprise, and joy became the currency of our interactions.
Needless to say, teaching these special students was one of the most rewarding and satisfying periods in all my 40 years as a classroom teacher. My reason for wanting to comment on the changes proposed for the NDIS is primarily to ensure that people with disabilities continue to have opportunities, such as I have outlined above, which they as members of our Australian community deserve, and which most of the rest of us tend to take for granted.
The NDIS Must be Socially Sustainable
Recently the government has framed the NDIS as financially unsustainable, and so-called “cost blowouts” are being used to justify sweeping changes to it, and funding cuts. Simultaneously, media coverage of NDIS fraud and rip-offs have surged, often accompanied by misleading headlines implying that it is participants who are the primary perpetrators. Overcoming fraud is a big issue, but defrauding the scheme is overwhelmingly committed by providers, not participants in the NDIS, and bedevils every government social service, but the cost amounts to a small fraction of total spending. Fraud should not be used to undermine the rights of disabled people or their access to services necessary for them.
The problem is that the present disability debate reframes the disabled into people who have become liabilities. The NDIS is then positioned as a key area for savings, when enormous expenditure on pie-in-the-sky multi-billion dollar and in human terms, money-down-the-drain schemes like AUKUS, are stretching Australia’s financial resources beyond breaking point. The result will be that disabled people once again become stereotypes, relatively worthless, and dependent.
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 1938
The point is that disabled people need support to improve their well-being and quality of life. Their capacity to engage satisfyingly in daily life and paid work where possible is the key to their social sustainability. This is also the key to building an equitable, productive, and just Australian society. Removing barriers to appropriate participation enables people to live productive and fulfilling lives. When support roles for disabled people are pushed on to families, carers, and the already overstretched community sector, the unpaid labor involved falls disproportionately on women and forces many of them entirely out of the workforce. Yet many people with disabilities do not even have family members to step up for them.
Ultimately, cutting people off the NDIS will not reduce costs on the taxpayer, but will instead redistribute the costs in many less visible, less equitable, and ultimately more harmful ways. Without NDIS access, disabled people must navigate an arbitrary system that determines whether they can leave their house, access and maintain employment, or even have guaranteed basic care. For them, small reductions in support can mean the difference between independence and total isolation.
The initial intentions of the NDIS were laudable, including its structural commitment to dignity, autonomy, and inclusion. Reducing it to line items in a budget negates the reality of enabling people to live full, self-directed lives, and this is what I mean by socially sustainable care for people with disabilities.
For the many hundreds of thousands of Australians currently on the NDIS scheme and others in the disabled community, the Federal government’s saving measures as outlined must seem at this stage completely arbitrary and inappropriate, given the fact that so far the government has given so little information about eligibility criteria under the new regime. The public debate about support needs and “higher functional capacity” cannot even begin because of the dearth of available detail about the changes proposed.
Intentionally or not, this seems very much like a government scare campaign, with its use of new and threatening terminology which creates fear for people currently on the scheme, their families, and possible future participants including children. “People with significantly reduced functional capacity that impacts their day to day living needs” need to be explicitly reassured about how primarily the Commonwealth government will support and fund their needs, and at what level, and this must be done through consultation with the disability community and the wider Australian public. The essential components of the updated NDIS scheme must be made public and clarified so as to include details which make it comprehensible and sustainable for all of us.
So far Minister Butler and other members of the government have given no information about eligibility criteria under the new regime. Meanwhile the disability community and the public cannot even begin the debate about support needs and higher functional capacity until the government clearly and explicitly spells out its definitions and criteria. The rather threatening tone of repeated government pronouncements is a bad sign.
People currently on the scheme, future NDIS participants, and the families of people with significantly reduced functional capacity that impacts their day to day lives need explicit reassurance about how their needs will be supported and funded appropriately. The essential components of the updated NDIS scheme must be made public and must include details which make it comprehensible for this community and the rest of us.
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 1938
Conclusion
The initial conception and vision for the NDIS was a very significant moment in Australian history and must form an ongoing part of Australia’s social service provisions. The critical funding dilemmas currently faced by our federal system must also be tackled in a constructive way by the Commonwealth and the states, and under the rejigged NDIS all Australians no matter what their needs and ages must be able to live socially sustainable and fulfilling lives.
The new scheme will run alongside the proposed Thriving Kids program. Apparently this program will transition children under nine with autism and developmental delays away from the NDIS to programs jointly run by commonwealth, state, and territory services in partnership. It is to begin in October and is expected to be fully operational by January 2028. Otherwise we have very little information about it.
It is to be hoped that the rather threatening tone of the government and the department in this whole debate so far, and their refusal to specify key details, which is so unsettling for many of us, will not continue.
Only when Australia has a fully functioning NDIS scheme which directly addresses the needs of the disability community will Australians with disabilities really have the opportunity to achieve the interactions, insights, surprises, and joys which human agency and contact can bring.