National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

Submission 214

The NDIS has improved my life greatly. I would be dead without it. The proposed changes scare me greatly, and I am not sure how I’ll survive if my supports are taken away. My support worker and cleaners have helped me manage to change my bed sheets more than once every few months, to walk my dog without exhaustion and pain, and lend a supportive ear when I’m in trouble and alone. I do not have a good relationship with my parents, I do not have friends nor a partner, and my parents do not have much money. Without the NDIS, I will slowly get worse, I know this for certain. My mother and brothers are the same. They have had so much stress lifted from their lives after receiving NDIS supports.

The NDIS is a support in our capitalist world that allows for a modicum of the community support that lasted for thousands of years before capitalism. There is evidence in archaeological studies that a disabled person lived to old age, and not only that, was fed so many dates and figs that their teeth were unusually rotted. This is evidence of care that communities can no longer provide for free. The government cannot keep house prices high, take money from fossil fuel investors, and not care about the quality of life of the average Australian overall, then expect that disabled people will just be taken care of by their communities, which may be non-existent, in my case. We need government support to survive.

And we matter. Disabled people are not broken, we aren’t leeches. We do not defraud the NDIS when we get support to get our hair cuts. It is the NDIS organisations that take advantage of our funding which are defrauding. And I think the Labor government knows this, but these organisations have enough money to make the strategic political donations needed in order to shift the blame on to the vulnerable recipients.

To anyone in power who may read this, understand this; you can become disabled at any time. Anyone can. If you live long enough, you will become disabled. Disabled people are not a separate, useless group in society that you can discard. They are just people. And they can be productive, and useful, and kind. I hope you will consider my message and keep supporting the participants of the NDIS. The focus should not be on recipients, if costs need to be cut. It should be on the organisations and support who charge exorbitant fees. It would be far cheaper and less controversial to limit what NDIS providers can charge, than taking away the supports from vulnerable people altogether.