National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 2355
deeply concerned about how many disabled individuals will be affected.
Dear Members of Parliament and Senate Committee,
Thank you for taking the time to review my submission.
I am writing to you as an ordinary citizen and a tax payer who is disabled and not on the NDIS, and the loved one of an Aunt who is on the NDIS with a lifelong degenerative muscle disease with no cure.
The NDIS is an extraordinary use of public funds that can help the most vulnerable and provide them with the accommodations they need to live their lives to the fullest. I know that I am proud that the job I work so hard for and the money I give helps others be lifted up and supported. That supporting others is the Australian way, that we band together and help our mates.
My Aunt is a wonderful person, educated, a person devoted to family, she is the hardest worker I know, teaching those who are down on their luck and do not have all the advantages that society offers how to run their own businesses and use their skills so they can create opportunities for themselves. However, she now lives with an incurable disease, through no fault of her own, but has been given accommodations through the NDIS which has enabled her to keep working for as long as she can and live a life that she had before the disease began to take its toll.
The proposed changes have sparked such a sense of urgency and dread in myself and for my Aunt. Ever since the news of the changes, where the Australian public was provided with minimal information on how an enormous number of people would be taken off the NDIS, I have wondering if the next phone call I receive from her will be her telling me that her funding has been cut off, and that she will no longer be able to have the treatments and accommodations that greatly aid her in the years she has left.
Upon reviewing parts of the bill, I am especially concerned by Section 92, 25A, meaning of appropriate treatment, by which: Treatment may be appropriate treatment for a person’s impairment or impairments regardless of whether the person’s individual circumstances restrict the person from accessing the treatment.
Note: A person’s individual circumstances include the person’s financial circumstances and geographical location.
We are in a cost of living crisis, which of course, has stopped even Australians with multiple jobs from affording the basics. I think it is entirely unreasonable for the government to expect disabled people, who already spend so much on trying their best to survive, with conditions that make it impossible to work, or their work taking up so much of their capacity that they have to pay for other accommodations themselves, or who have had to pay so much money for a specialist to diagnose this disability so that they can seek funding in the first place, to have to relocate or travel to try treatment before they are allowed to have funding.
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 2355
disproportionately affect those in rural areas, and travel is tiring and expensive for the most able body person.
I am not an expert in reading bills and appreciate the bill’s digest. In Recommendation 3: Provide a fairer and more consistent participant pathway, I do not understand how specific diagnosis’ can not allow for access. If a person has been diagnosed with a disability, and getting treatment and accommodations when they are diagnosed can help prevent a decline in their functioning, then is it not the responsibility of the government to help them now before their condition is worse and puts pressure on other parts of the health system? And what happens if the treatments that a person is having bring them to a functioning level that the NDIS decides is high enough to loose their funding? They are still disabled and will get worse. Another recommendation: ‘As at 31 March 2026 there are a total of 774,456 NDIS participants (NDIS Quarterly Report Q3 2025-26, p. 15). Should the Government reach its target number of participants, there would be around 174,000 fewer participants than are currently in the Scheme, as well as substantially lower growth than earlier projections.’
These are 174,000 people. A significant number. Many who are vulnerable people, who the loss of funding would be detrimental to their health and their personhood. Who will just be waiting with their lives and dignity on the line, while a faceless system decides whether they will be left without any support or hope. And with the rise of AI currently and in use in the government, you can trust that computers will decide whether or not that a person loses their funding. You can not tell me that by cutting so many people, that there are disabled people who will be subjected to lives that they can not afford and lives that those who cut the funding would never want for themselves or their loved ones. Funding can mean life or death for many people.
I am also concerned about the cuts to funding to social and community participation guidelines. If the Senate Committee can think back to COVID-19 lockdowns, where so many fully abled people were trapped inside. This is the reality of those who require assistance to do the things that many of us take for granted.
The NDIS is not a luxury, it is a necessary and crucial social service, it is the crux of the lives of many disabled people, and with no existence of alternatives, there is danger of leaving so many disabled people in the dust, of treating them as disposable and not important enough to live. Sure, it is not perfect, but surely cost cutting measures can be revisited and not come at the expense of the most vulnerable people in society.
I appreciate the time that the committee has taken to review our submissions, and that they will help defend a most crucial service.
Kindest regards,