National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 23
Submission to the Senate Inquiry into the NDIS Amendment Bill
To the Committee,
Thank you for the opportunity to provide a submission regarding the NDIS legislation currently before Parliament.
I am making this submission as a mother, a disabled person, an educator, and a professional working in the disability sector.
I am the mother of Imogen, my 15-year-old daughter, who has Autism Level 3, moderate intellectual disability, ADHD and anxiety. I also live with Multiple Sclerosis myself. Professionally, I have worked for the past two years as a Positive Behaviour Support practitioner, and I have 20 years of teaching experience across mainstream schools, support units and Schools for Specific Purposes. My qualifications include a Bachelor of Teaching, a Bachelor of Health Science, a Graduate Certificate in Specialist Inclusive Education, a Certificate IV in Training and Assessment, and I am currently studying a Graduate Certificate in Child and Adolescent Mental Health.
I understand the need for sustainability in the NDIS. I understand that public money must be used carefully, ethically and effectively. But sustainability cannot be achieved by narrowing access, reducing flexibility, shifting impossible burdens onto families, or creating systems that fail to understand the real lives of disabled people.
The NDIS was designed to support people with disability to live ordinary, meaningful lives. For many families, including mine, it has been the difference between crisis and survival.
Social and Community Participation is not optional
One of my greatest concerns is the proposal that would allow the government to reduce funding for particular groups of supports, such as social and community participation.
This may sound administrative or technical, but in real life it is not. Social and community participation is not a luxury. It is not an optional extra. It is often the support that allows a disabled person to leave their home, build skills, participate in family life, attend appointments, exercise, engage in recreation, access services and be part of the world.
Minister Mark Butler has referred to the average NDIS participant having approximately $31,000 in social and community participation funding. At the weekday hourly rate of $70.23, this equates to around 441 hours per year, or approximately 8.48 hours per week.
That is already a very small amount of time.
How would most Australians feel if the government told them they had to complete every task outside their home in 30% less time than they currently do? Shopping for food. Attending medical appointments. Exercising. Working. Travelling. Seeing family. Going to therapy. Participating in community life.
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 23
Now imagine that the original amount of time was only 8.48 hours per week, and that you already could not fit everything in. A 30% reduction would take that down to approximately 5.9 hours per week.
For many disabled people and families, that is not a small adjustment. That is the difference between participation and isolation.
When my daughter Imogen was younger, our family was incredibly isolated. We had no practical supports to help us access the community safely. Despite ongoing therapies, specialist schooling, and our family implementing every “strategy” we were given, we could not safely leave the house.
By safe, I mean safe for Imogen, who would abscond and run towards roads. Safe for members of the public, including other children, because Imogen could become physically aggressive when overwhelmed. Safe for us as her parents, because when we tried to keep her safe or intervene to protect others, she would often physically attack us.
As a result, we became trapped at home.
The frustration and aggression escalated. There were holes punched in walls on a weekly basis. There was ongoing physical aggression, usually directed towards me as her mother, resulting in injuries and constant significant bruising. There was regular absconding from the house, including running onto major roads. We slept with our keys under our pillows because we were so afraid she would escape.
Eventually, things became so severe that DCJ Family Preservation became involved because we did not know how long we could continue caring for our own child.
I do not think people understand what that feels like unless they have lived it. To have to say out loud to strangers that you do not know whether you can keep caring for your own child. To love your child completely, and also be physically and emotionally broken by the intensity of their needs. To wear long sleeves every day to hide bruising caused by your child, because you are afraid people will assume your husband did it.
I am not someone who gives up easily. I am a teacher. I have two Bachelor degrees. I have run businesses. I am naturally motivated, capable and enthusiastic. But that period of our life broke me physically and mentally. I was on antidepressants, seeing a psychologist regularly, and struggling to keep my head above water.
When Imogen finally received funding for social and community participation, our lives began to change.
We could start accessing the community as a family. We could work on community access skills, social skills and recreation. We could attend a family birthday or barbecue without leaving in tears after 40 minutes. Imogen began building skills with trained support workers. We were able to breathe.
And what happened when she began accessing the community regularly?
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 23
The holes in the walls gradually decreased. The violence towards us decreased. Imogen stopped trying to run away from home at every moment. She finally felt like she was part of her world. She finally felt heard.
The importance of social and community participation cannot be overstated. It is not appropriate to lock disabled people away from the world because support is considered too expensive. Disabled people have the right to be included in their communities in ways that are meaningful, safe and relevant to them.
“Reasonable and necessary” must not become a mechanism for shifting costs onto families
I am also deeply concerned by proposed changes to the reasonable and necessary criteria, particularly the consideration of “family contributions,” NDIS sustainability and consistency with other service systems.
Families already contribute enormously. We provide unpaid care, advocacy, transport, crisis response, behaviour support, emotional regulation, system navigation, administration and constant vigilance. We do this while working, paying mortgages or rent, managing cost-of- living pressures, maintaining households, caring for other children, and trying to preserve our own physical and mental health.
For families like mine, caring responsibilities are not occasional. They are lifelong and intensive.
If “family contributions” are going to be used to reduce what the NDIS funds, then the government must be honest about what it is asking of families. How are families expected to provide increasing levels of unpaid support while also earning an income and maintaining their own wellbeing? How are carers supposed to keep caring if they are pushed into burnout, poverty or ill health?
If the government intends to rely more heavily on informal supports, then it must also consider formal recognition and compensation for that labour. Other jurisdictions, such as New Zealand, have explored paid family carer models. If family contribution is to become a serious policy lever, then so must paid carer recognition.
It is not acceptable to quietly assume that families, and particularly mothers, will absorb the gap.
The permanence test must not force people through harmful, expensive or inappropriate “treatments”
The Bill’s proposal to tighten the criteria around establishing that a disability is permanent is also concerning, particularly if people are required to have undertaken “all appropriate treatments.”
This raises serious questions.
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 23
Who decides what “all appropriate treatments” are? What evidence will be used? Will disabled people and families have genuine choice? Will treatments need to be culturally safe, trauma-informed, neurodiversity-affirming and clinically appropriate? Or will families be pressured into interventions simply because they are listed as available?
Autism is a clear example. Applied Behaviour Analysis, or ABA, has long been promoted by some as a treatment for autism. However, there is debate in the community and many Autistic people have described ABA as harmful, coercive and traumatising. It is also extremely expensive.
Would families be expected to pursue approaches like this before being considered eligible for the NDIS? Who pays for those treatments before NDIS access is granted? What happens if the treatment is inaccessible, unaffordable, not available in a person’s area, or contrary to the values and wellbeing of the disabled person?
A disability does not become less real because a family refuses a harmful or inappropriate intervention. Permanence should not be assessed through a narrow medical model that assumes every impairment can or should be treated away.
Other government systems are not adequate substitutes for NDIS support
I am also concerned by proposals allowing the NDIA to take into account an applicant’s eligibility for other government schemes when assessing NDIS eligibility.
This is already a significant problem, especially in relation to psychology and mental health supports.
Currently, many NDIS participants are refused access to psychology because they are told it is available through Medicare under a Mental Health Care Plan. But this is not a realistic or adequate substitute.
A Mental Health Care Plan provides access to 10 sessions. That is not sufficient for many disabled people who experience ongoing mental health impacts connected to their disability, including anxiety, trauma, depression, social isolation and emotional dysregulation.
Mental Health Care Plans also do not cover the full session fee charged by most psychologists. The Australian Psychological Society has stated that only around one in four psychologists bulk bill. This means many people face a gap fee, and many families supporting disabled people simply cannot afford that gap.
I have personally begun studying a Graduate Certificate in Child and Adolescent Mental Health because I wanted to better understand where I could refer my clients when they were experiencing mental health challenges. I thought I must be missing something.
The more I study, the more I realise that I am not missing something. The services simply are not there, or they are not appropriate, accessible or affordable for many NDIS participants.
This is not good enough.
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 23
Disabled people experience disproportionate rates of mental illness, often directly linked to exclusion, trauma, communication barriers, sensory overwhelm, lack of appropriate support and the cumulative impact of living in systems not designed for them. It is deeply problematic when the NDIS refuses to recognise that a person’s mental health needs may be directly connected to their disability, while other systems are unable to meet those needs in practice.
The existence of another government scheme should not be treated as evidence that support is actually accessible, sufficient or appropriate.
Automated decision-making is a serious risk
I am deeply alarmed by the proposal to allow automated decision-making in the NDIS.
There may be a place for automation in administrative tasks that do not significantly affect a person’s rights, safety or supports. But automated decision-making in the NDIS raises enormous ethical and practical concerns.
If automation is used in decision-making, it could potentially affect:
who gains access to the NDIS
what supports a person is considered to need
what funding is approved
whether a complaint is heard
whether safety concerns are recognised
whether a person’s lived reality is properly understood
I cannot comprehend how this can be proposed without extremely strong safeguards. Disabled people and their families are already at risk of being misunderstood by systems. Many NDIA staff and delegates do not have specialist disability training and do not understand the lived experience of disability. Automation will not fix that. It may worsen it.
Disabled people do not fit neatly into boxes.
The government has already acknowledged that classification by diagnosis does not work. Replacing that with classification by functional capacity, potentially interpreted through automated systems, risks creating another rigid system that fails to understand complexity.
An algorithm cannot understand what it means for a child to appear regulated in a short assessment but then collapse at home for days afterwards. It cannot understand a parent’s fear when their child absconds towards a road. It cannot understand the bruises hidden under clothing, the sleep deprivation, the trauma, the skill-building that happens slowly over years, or the way one support can prevent an entire family from falling into crisis.
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 23
Any decision that affects access, funding, complaints, safety or support needs must involve human judgment, procedural fairness, transparency, review rights and genuine understanding of disability.
Functional capacity assessments must not flatten complex lives into a score
The proposal to define functional capacity for NDIS eligibility also raises significant concerns.
Who will sit on the Technical Advisory Group? Will disabled people be meaningfully represented? Will families and carers be included? Will there be people with expertise in intellectual disability, autism, psychosocial disability, complex communication needs, behaviour support, fluctuating conditions and child development?
Who will conduct functional assessments? What training will they have? How will they understand a person’s functioning across home, school, community, work, relationships, sensory environments and unfamiliar settings?
It is not possible to gain a clear understanding of a person’s functional capacity across their whole life in a two- or three-hour assessment.
Many people, including Autistic people, mask in formal settings. Many children hold themselves together at school or during assessments and then collapse at home. Many disabled people have fluctuating capacity. My own experience with Multiple Sclerosis has taught me that capacity is not fixed. Some days a person can do more. Some days they can do far less. That does not mean their disability has disappeared, and it does not mean they no longer require support.
Fluctuating capacity is part of the human condition, and for many disabled people it is central to their disability experience.
A functional assessment system that does not properly account for fluctuation, masking, informal support, environmental demands, sensory load, communication barriers and cumulative stress will produce inaccurate and harmful decisions.
Professional experience confirms these are systemic concerns
My concerns are not only personal. They are also professional.
Across my years as a teacher in mainstream settings, support units and Schools for Specific Purposes, and now as a Positive Behaviour Support practitioner, I have repeatedly seen what happens when disabled children, young people and families are not properly supported.
Behaviours of concern often increase when people are isolated, overwhelmed, misunderstood or unable to access meaningful participation. Families reach crisis when they are left to manage complex needs without skilled support. Schools struggle when children do not have consistent support across home, community and education. Mental health deteriorates when people are excluded or when their needs are treated as inconvenient, excessive or someone else’s responsibility.
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 23
Support is not just a cost. Support prevents crisis.
It prevents family breakdown. It prevents hospital presentations. It prevents child protection involvement. It prevents school exclusion. It prevents carer burnout. It prevents trauma. It helps people build skills, relationships, confidence and safety.
When the NDIS works well, it does not just fund services. It gives people a pathway back into life.
Recommendations
I respectfully urge the Committee to recommend that the Bill be amended to ensure:
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Funding for social and community participation cannot be reduced through broad category-level cuts without individual assessment of need, human rights impacts and safeguards against isolation.
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“Reasonable and necessary” criteria must not be changed in ways that shift unsustainable unpaid caring responsibilities onto families.
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Any consideration of “family contributions” must be accompanied by genuine carer recognition, including consideration of paid family carer models where appropriate.
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The permanence test must not require people to undertake treatments that are harmful, unaffordable, unavailable, culturally unsafe, non-affirming or inappropriate.
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Eligibility for another government service must not be used to deny NDIS support unless that service is genuinely accessible, affordable, appropriate and sufficient for the person’s disability-related needs.
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Psychology and mental health supports must be recognised as disability-related where mental health impacts arise from, interact with, or are exacerbated by a person’s disability.
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Automated decision-making must not be used for decisions affecting access, funding, complaints, safety concerns or support needs unless there are strict safeguards, transparency, human oversight and accessible review rights.
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Functional capacity assessments must be co-designed with disabled people, families, carers and appropriately qualified professionals.
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Functional assessment processes must account for fluctuating capacity, masking, informal supports, environmental demands, sensory needs, communication needs and the person’s real-world functioning across settings.
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The Technical Advisory Group must include disabled people, families, carers and professionals with deep expertise across autism, intellectual disability, psychosocial disability, complex behaviour, children and young people, and fluctuating conditions.
Conclusion
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 23
I ask the Committee to remember that behind every line of legislation is a real person and a real family.
For my family, social and community participation funding was not an optional support. It was the beginning of safety. It was the beginning of connection. It helped reduce violence, isolation, distress and crisis. It allowed my daughter to begin participating in her world.
The NDIS should not be redesigned in a way that makes people prove their suffering more harshly, pushes families further into unpaid labour, or allows automated systems to make decisions about complex human lives.
Disabled people deserve more than survival. They deserve safety, dignity, participation, and the chance to live meaningful lives in their communities.
Families like mine are not asking for luxury. We are asking for the support required to keep our children safe, included and alive to possibility.
Yours sincerely,