National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 1950 - Supplementary Submission
Additional Submission to NDIS Amendment (securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill
I have additional comment in regards to the bill and it is in regard to the direction to disregard effects on families and friends when assessing access and before a plan is approved or funded for a participant. That family and friends may be expected to do more in the view of the minister and the new bill.
I wish to comment to the committee that families take on a huge amount of formal and informal caring and that minister should not be trying to further commodify this and lean on those relationships further for savings in the scheme.
A family can have many responsibilities to many people including other children, siblings, relatives, work for example. A family must be able to be supported to care, live, earn income, and rest and have time to recuperate including sleep and leisure time. As well as ofcourse responsibilities to other family members. For older participants many family members are ageing and I ask is this the cohort that more savings are being asked to be gained from? The same people that the scheme was supposed to also assist and to give them some respite and for the Participant and family to develop independence as in a normal life.
As for mentioning support available from friends to be measured for a participant, does that mean that the scheme in the future will require that a participant must ask for charity in lieu of the scheme paying for such care? As relying on the acts of people who have no family connection for support, then this must logically mean asking for charitable acts from them for support of a disabled person?
A friend is just that a friend, how can a friend who is not even legally bound in anyway to a participant be measured or commodified in a scheme for any person be they disabled or not by a government or any other body?