National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 2137
NDIS Amendment Bill Submission
Submission on the NDIS Amendment Bill
Name:
I am a: Disabled person Family member / supporter
- Introduction / my connection to this issue
I’m and I’m a young disabled person on the NDIS for my autism, but also live with ADHD, CPTSD, and several other conditions and chronic illnesses that impact my daily life and my ability to function. The NDIS is a lifeline for me and yet it only covers some of my support and the risk of losing these supports, is the difference between me living and hardly surviving (if I do). I also have experience as a young carer and come from a single parent household, where we don’t have access to any support otherwise. I am submitting because this Bill will be extremely harmful to my community and will make things harder than they already are. I barely have the capacity to write this, but I’m sick of disabled people being used as a scapegoat for the media and the Government to further isolate us from society and encourage more discrimination towards us and making decisions without us.
- My overall position on this Bill I do not support it
I do not support this bill and ask that the Government withdraw this Bill, as it does not consider the lived experience of disabled people and the wider community including carers, support workers and other healthcare workers.
- My key concerns ☐ Communication access: Despite the NDIS being for disabled people and many disabilities impacting communication the NDIS does not consider all communication needs and the new suggested provisions will prevent accessible communication even further, which restricts participants accessing appropriate supports
☐ Administrative burden: There is already an extreme administrative burden that impacts the way I’m able to access supports both within the NDIS & outside the NDIS, due to time and energy, but also funding as I require support in managing my funds and supports, which causes extreme admin fatigue and reduces being able to stay engaged with supports, but also being able to keep up with daily life and things like studying. There are often times I miss accessing supports such as therapies as
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 2137
some sessions have to be fully dedicated to the amount of admin needed. The idea that this frustrating and exhausting burden could increase, will not only impact participants but workers’ ability to support them.
☐ Loss of supports: The risk of losing any of my supports makes me distressed and drastically reduces the potential for me to have any quality of life. This is guaranteed for me and several others in the community. These supports help us survive and they are all necessary. We should have just as much right as everyone else to live a good life. Why should able-bodied people decide what is ‘reasonable’ for something they don’t have to struggle with?
☐ Crisis / “not contactable” rules: As someone who really struggles with communication often due to being incredibly overwhelmed, burnout and crisis/other issues, this is something that would highly affect me and I know would make me incredibly distressed that my supports could change because I’m unable to communicate. These provisions don’t consider various situations that could impact people’s communications, which is harmful and unfair.
☐ Children and early intervention: As someone who is autistic I am extremely concerned about autistic people being removed from the NDIS and the implementation of Thriving Kids which encourages masking and other therapies that have been found to be harmful to autistic people. I have a lot of medical trauma, particularly around being an autistic child and the way I was able to access support. I was made to do therapies that viewed me as a problem and made me more suicidal and only made me struggle more, I was often referred to needing fixing. The discussion around cures for autism and growing out of being autistic are so harmful and dismissive.
☐ Eligibility / assessment changes: To get on the NDIS is a lengthy and frustrating process and requires reports from various doctors, which are also often required for assessment changes. Most of these reports are self-funded out of pocket and expensive for disabled people who are already more likely to be unemployed and earn less than the able-bodied population, which can lead to people sacrificing other needed support and daily living expenses. It’s also incredibly time consuming for both participants and doctors, particularly due to wait times just to see doctors to get one report. For this to potentially become more restrictive, as well as added provisions on eligibility that don’t consider progressive conditions and prevent people accessing the NDIS if there are appropriate treatments, is enraging. Many treatments are inaccessible, due to things like cost or location. But also even when many treatments are helpful, it doesn’t mean I won’t require other support. As someone who is autistic and lives with a dynamic disability, I live a constant up and
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 2137
down life, where some periods are better than others, even with consistent supports that are helpful, this should not impact my eligibility. I already have to self-fund most of my supports because the NDIS can only look at one diagnosis I have, even though everything impacts each other.
☐ Automated decision-making: Automated decision-making is wrong, especially when it’s decisions being made about a human and how it will impact their everyday life. This doesn’t consider the circumstances or needs of each individual and has a ‘one size fits all’ approach, which is ridiculous as people with the same disability will still have completely different experiences and needs. It’s challenging enough having able-bodied people make decisions about my disability, when they don’t know what it’s like, so to think that those decisions could be made without human input is deeply worrying.
☐ Funding / ministerial powers: It’s incredibly frustrating that all these supposed NDIS cuts will help our economy, but there is no discussion about all the money that will be lost due to these cuts. The NDIS creates jobs and allows for participants to access so many supports that would be unable to access otherwise, and many of those supports would be unable to run without NDIS participants. Cuts are likely to cause more strain on emergency healthcare and the wider health system in general due to things like not being able to access certain therapies and going into crisis or having accidents that require immediate medical attention as a result of not being able to access support workers/nurses/carers.
☐ Foundational supports / system changes: The focus on ‘value for money’ supports completely disregard the needs of individuals and what is going to be beneficial. I understand we need to save money, but I thought the NDIS was supposed to be about participants, what will be best for them and their quality of life? The system is already inflexible and so challenging to navigate for those functioning with adequate support, so what about those who don’t? I have so many people telling me I should be getting more support or that I should have access to specific support and I have to keep saying I can’t and I don’t and it’s exhausting.
- My lived / professional experience
Before getting on the NDIS I was receiving no support as all public options had been exhausted due to things like funding and coming from a household where one parent had died, the other has to work part-time to care for my disabled sibling and I, and we had no family/friend/community support and couldn’t afford out of pocket supports, so I went into crisis. I didn’t know how to exist in a world where I didn’t feel I belonged and my support needs were increasing. Getting on the NDIS led to me
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 2137
being able to access one of my most crucial supports, art therapy, where the approach was beneficial and not harmful, unlike previous therapies I had tried. A few years ago, that support truly was the only thing keeping me alive. I was really struggling with school and although I got into uni, I was unable to go. Since then my chronic illnesses and other disabilities have progressively gotten worse, but due to NDIS only accepting my autism, rather than me as a whole, I’m limited to what I can access, even when supports would be beneficial and directly related to my autism and NDIS goals. I have to manage and fund all my other supports though and it’s exhausting and I’m so burnt out. I usually have at least 2 or 3 appointments a week and then have many medications I have to purchase each month and all together it costs me hundreds to a few thousand dollars each month and that’s even with Medicare and the PBS. I’m currently unable to work or find accessible work and I’m currently only able to keep going to uni with the help of support workers, otherwise I don’t think I would be going at all. A couple of my NDIS goals include being able to build social connection, finish uni, get my drivers licence and move out of home, but so much of this feels practically impossible as supports are becoming more challenging to access and I am becoming more isolated from my peers and other people my age, which is only likely to solidify if this Bill passes.
- What I believe this Bill gets wrong
The Bill makes the assumption that disabled people already have someone to care for them, someone who can give up work to care for them, or have supports readily available otherwise. It just doesn’t consider disabled people appropriately and lacks so much understanding of what is needed. It’s supposed to secure the NDIS for future generations and create a fairer NDIS but everything it’s suggesting does the exact opposite. This is going to be incredibly damaging for disabled people and they have made it incredibly convenient to even just allow us such little time to submit to oppose this bill, when so many of us require more time and support to make our submissions.
- What needs to change or be protected
The NDIS needs to look at every individual and their whole background rather than one diagnosis or disability. We are all different and all impacted differently, therefore we all need different supports.
- Final statement
NDIS is crucial for the quality of life for disabled people and these supports are crucial in suicide prevention. The NDIS was always to be described as the gateway for disabled people to live more ‘independently’, but for us to live independently we do in fact need support and there shouldn’t be any shame or discrimination in that.
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 2137
Please don’t let my disability be the reason I don’t get to achieve my goals in life and live up to my potential. I’ve been told by various people that I will do good in this world and the world needs more people like me, but I need help to do that and this Bill will directly impact my ability to do that. Please don’t let anyone’s disability be the reason they don’t get to have a good quality of life. We deserve the same rights as able-bodied people whether we ‘contribute’ to society or not.
I ask the committee to consider my lived experience and all disabled peoples lived experience when reviewing this Bill. Many of us will not get the chance to submit and not all of us have the capacity to, so please also take this into consideration.
Thank you,