Submission 1992
Dear Committee Secretary,
My name is Samantha Graf, and I am writing to you from Scarborough, Western Australia. I am a mother and full-time advocate for my four-year-old son, Otto, who was diagnosed in december 2025 with Level 3/2 Autism. He also has a severe language delay. We have been accessing the NDIS since September 2024 through the Early Childhood Approach pathway. I also volunteer on the committee of our local toy library to ensure children like Otto are catered for and represented, and I actively co-design resources with Children and Young People with Disability Australia (CYDA). Professionally, I am a graphic designer, and I use my skills daily to design and build custom visual communication aids and structured routines for Otto. I share this background because it is my specific professional and community experience that allows me to advocate in the way I do for him, translate his needs, and see firsthand where the NDIS backend systems are failing families like ours.
I write to express my uncompromising opposition to the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026. In its current form, this legislation will fundamentally fracture the developmental outcomes of young, vulnerable children and place a catastrophic, unsustainable burden on the families who care for them.
I must also state that the timeframe allowed for community feedback on sweeping, 100+ page legislative reform is entirely inadequate. Expecting families who are currently in the thick of intense early intervention, complex therapy schedules, and daily survival to digest and formally respond to this Bill in 15 days effectively silences the very people the Scheme was built to protect.
The proposed framework shifts the NDIS toward a rigid, one-size-fits-all formula, automated funding caps, and a requirement to seek “appropriate treatments” to alleviate or remedy a disability. This reveals a fundamental, dangerous misunderstanding of neurodivergence.
Autism is a fluctuating and dynamic disability. Its presentation changes month to month, week to week, day to day, and hour to hour. In our daily lives with Otto, there are periods where intense therapeutic support helps massively in the moment. There are other times where a strategy we practiced months prior finally comes full circle and clicks. And then, the wind changes direction, and the entire landscape changes again.
Science has proven time and again that autism is not a linear condition to be cured or remedied; it is a permanent neurological reality. Because support needs fluctuate intensely, a rigid, automated, or capped funding system is entirely unfit for purpose at best and dangerous at worst. Forcing a dynamic disability into a static box does not fix the problem or save public money. Instead, it will starve a child of critical early intervention, shifting the immediate crisis onto an already breaking education system and a failing mainstream health sector that neither will be able to cope with.
Because Otto cannot talk or advocate for himself, it is my job to do the absolute best by him and be his voice. As his Mum, I invest countless hours designing customised visual aids,
Submission 1992
communication tools, and structural routines to bridge the gap between home, community, and education. But I do not do this in a vacuum. My ability to step up, advocate, and build these resources is entirely dependent on the specialised, flexible guidance I receive from our independent professionals. They train me, they back me, and they understand Otto’s unique profile. Navigating his development successfully requires this trusted, highly specific support. I have built a dedicated allied health team for Otto; the deep trust and human connection in that independent team are 100% responsible for his progress—and for giving me the tools and confidence to be the advocate he needs.
Therapy cannot be standardised, and human development cannot be computer-automated. The proposed powers allowing the Minister to cap budgets, restrict provider types, and mandate registration for daily life assistance strip away the exact choice and control that keep families afloat. Forcing families into a government-dictated framework of large, registered providers will drastically reduce care quality. Large providers already suffer from blown-out waitlists and limited capacity. Independent, unregistered specialists are frequently the only professionals capable of delivering the niche, flexible support children like Otto require.
By stripping away early access and capping individual plans based on arbitrary fiscal targets, this Bill is engineering a massive societal and economic crisis. If you remove flexible early intervention, you create a downstream failure that will ultimately consume vastly more state resources in crisis management than are currently spent on proactive therapy.
Furthermore, the mental and emotional toll this text inflicts on families is diabolical. Carers in Australia are already at a breaking point. Did this Parliament learn absolutely nothing from the horrific family tragedy in Mosman Park, WA, earlier this year? The catastrophic consequences of cutting disability supports and leaving complex families isolated without adequate, flexible lifelines are real, immediate, and fatal.
The Government continually cites concerns regarding unregulated spending to justify these sweeping changes. However, this Bill penalises honest families for a backend system failure. Instead of building secure tracking infrastructure to catch actual fraud, the Government is using automated algorithms to choke a child’s clinical funding before they can even access care. Sustainability should be found by aggressively regulating corporate greed and fixing system loopholes, not by punishing a vulnerable child who is trying to learn how to communicate. I urge the committee to look at these alternatives instead:
- Stop Automated Capping: Funding and plan decisions must always be based on a real child’s clinical assessments and day-to-day needs, not top-down budget caps or computer algorithms.
- Design it with Real Families: Withdraw this Bill and rewrite it alongside a panel that actually includes autistic individuals, advocates, and parent-carers who live this reality every day.
- Protect Independent Therapists: Let self-managed and plan-managed families keep using independent, unregistered specialists. It keeps waitlists down and lets parents hire the specific professionals their children actually trust and connect with.
Submission 1992
- Cap Corporate Fees and Stop the “NDIS Tax”: Put a legal cap on the massive “administration and overhead” fees that large corporate provider networks take out of a child’s plan. Legislate strict rules so providers cannot charge a higher rate just because a client has NDIS funding compared to what they charge a private client for the exact same service.
- Audit the Providers, Not the Kids: Invest in automated systems that flag corporate over-billing, inflated travel claims, and dodgy provider behavior, rather than cutting a child’s therapy plan upfront.
Early intervention for autistic children is not an administrative line item to be trimmed; it is the vital foundation that determines whether a child grows up to communicate, participate, and achieve independence. What is the purpose of the NDIS if that is no longer the goal?
This Bill prioritises immediate fiscal cutting over the developmental safety net of Australian children. It introduces catastrophic risks to the mental health of families and the future of our kids. I urge the committee to recommend that this Bill in its current form is harmful and should not be passed by Parliament.
Thank you for considering my submission.
Sincerely,
Samantha Graf Scarborough, WA