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

Submission 2541

Submission to the Senate Inquiry into Proposed NDIS Reforms

I am submitting these comments as a member of the public.

This is not a technical policy submission. It is simply a concern that I cannot stop thinking about whenever I hear discussion about reducing NDIS participant numbers in order to reduce NDIS costs.

The government keeps talking about reducing the cost of the NDIS by reducing the number of NDIS participants.

Read that again.

Reducing the number of participants.

And how exactly are they planning to do that?

Are they going to magically make people better?

Are they going to cure permanent disabilities?

Are they going to restore lost function, eliminate chronic illness, reverse neurological conditions, or somehow remove the challenges that caused people to qualify in the first place?

Of course not.

The only way to reduce the number of participants is to reduce the number of people who qualify.

Not by reducing disability.

By reducing access.

Not by eliminating need.

By eliminating eligibility.

That should concern every Australian.

Because if eligibility is genuinely based on need, then the number of participants should simply be whatever number of Australians meet the criteria.

If more people qualify than expected, that doesn’t mean the need isn’t real.

It means the original assumptions were wrong.

A person does not become less disabled because the government changes the rules.

A person does not wake up one morning and discover their disability has disappeared because a policy document was rewritten.

Their need remains.

Their challenges remain.

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

\Submission 2541

Their limitations remain.

The only question is whether society chooses to recognise those realities or ignore them.

The message this sends is deeply troubling.

It suggests that support is available only while the cost remains politically comfortable. It suggests that eligibility is not ultimately about need. It suggests that if too many people qualify, the solution is not to understand why so many Australians require support.

The solution is to change the rules.

Imagine applying that logic anywhere else.

Too many people need hospital beds. Too many people need cancer treatment. Too many people need aged care.

Would we solve those problems by changing the definition of who counts?

Would we declare success because fewer people were eligible?

Of course not.

We would recognise that the demand reflects a real need.

That is exactly what should happen here.

The NDIS was founded on a simple principle: that disability should not condemn people to isolation, poverty, dependence, or a lifetime spent pleading for assistance.

Yet many people now fear we are drifting back towards a system where support is available only to those who can most effectively prove, justify, document, argue, appeal and re-prove their suffering.

People with disability should not have to continually justify their right to participate in society.

They should not have to prove their worth to a spreadsheet.

And they should not have to live in fear that the definition of disability will be narrowed simply because the number of people needing help turned out to be larger than expected.

The central question is simple.

Should support be based on need?

Or should it be based on how many people the budget is prepared to acknowledge?

Because those are two very different principles.

And only one of them places human need ahead of accounting targets.