National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 2218
I am writing to express my significant concerns regarding the recently introduced National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026. As the parent of my daughter who is a 21-year-old woman with Down syndrome, I am deeply worried by the government’s proposed cuts—specifically the projected reductions to social, civic, and community participation funding.
Government analysis recently revealed that people with Down syndrome will be among the hardest hit by these structural funding reductions. My daughter is at a crucial juncture in her life. She works part-time in food preparation, an achievement that requires immense dedication, routine, and targeted capacity-building support. The NDIS funding she receives does not just fund “activities”; it provides the scaffolding that allows her to maintain her employment, build life skills, and stay connected to her community. Crucially, this funding allows her to engage support workers who provide the essential, hands-on assistance she needs to travel to, attend, and successfully participate in both her workplace, community activities and various social events.
Her social participation funding directly covers her attendance at music events, fitness classes, and short breaks away from home. These are not luxuries. They are key to her enjoying a normal life and maintaining her physical and mental health. If her community participation and capacity-building funds are slashed, her world will shrink. Stripping away these supports directly threatens her part-time employment, risks forcing her into social isolation, and causes an undoing of her hard-earned daily living skills.
Furthermore, I want to convey the severe emotional toll that the constant NDIS changing regulations over the many years is taking on our family. The constant influx of changing regulations, shifting framework timelines, and complex administrative overhauls has turned navigating the NDIS into a source of chronic anxiety. As parents, we are forced to battle endless paperwork while enduring a painful lack of certainty about what her future looks like. It feels as though the scheme is shifting from an individualized, human-centric model of care to a rigid exercise in cost-cutting that appears to be slowly dismantling the scheme.
Compounding our fears is the fact that our other youngest daughter is also an NDIS participant due to autism. She already struggles significantly with community access and rarely goes out. If both of our daughters have their funding reduced or lost, they will both be largely confined to the home, creating an environment that will be incredibly challenging for our family to manage. My partner and I are approaching retirement age and simply do not have the physical or emotional capacity to indefinitely significant ongoing support. NDIS support workers are not an optional extra for our family; they are absolutely critical to securing our daughters’ future independence and ensuring our family’s long-term survival.
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 2218
We desperately need stability, transparency, and a system that views our daughters’ futures as an investment rather than a burden. I urge you to look closely at how these changes impact real lives, protect essential community participation funding, and offer families like ours the certainty we need to plan for our children’s futures.
I understand that budgets need to be balanced and government spending needs to be focused and beneficial, most notably its spending should serve the people of Australia first and foremost. I can see from the NDIS support they have received over the years that my daughters would be able to lead semi-independent lives in the future giving them a more rewarding life, reduce the caring burden on us and longer term lower the cost to the government. Maintaining the funding today will provide a long term financial benefits to the government as they can engage more into paid work, they will have improved mental and physical health and live more independently.
Any changes to the scheme need to be considered carefully as each disabled person has their own specific support needs and blanket cuts are not a viable way forward. Thank you for your time and consideration of our family’s reality as it not only impacts disabled people but their carers as well.