National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 2571
Submission on the NDIS Amendment Bill
About me:
I am , I am an Independent Disability Support Worker and take pride in my work in the community. I am qualified in mental health and counselling and currently undertaking post-graduate studies in psychology. I take my work seriously as a support worker and regularly attend conferences to better understand and engage with the disability community and the specific conditions my clients live with.
- Reduction of Supports/Ministerial Power My main concern about this bill is the powers given to the minister to reduce funding for types of support (particularly community participation). The only restraint put on this power is that the minister is required to “have regard” for the safety of participants, and unquantifiable and extremely broad limitation. As a disability support worker, who works with participants who are mostly living with complex and lifelong psychosocial disabilities, I can tell you that there is not one single participant I work with will not have their safety risked with a reduced community access budget. Examples of community participation that I provide are mostly NOT social. They are essential visits to hospital and medical appointments, allied health appointments, seeing the GP, and visiting the chemist. Disabled people make these visits often as they often experience complex physical, neurological, immune and psychological conditions that overlap. Social or community activities are usually a form of sensory or exposure therapy, for example, driving to the local green space to walk in nature after they have spent a week afraid to leave the house, or visiting a public space that makes a participant feel anxious. We do this safely and with scheduled check ins to expand the participant’s window of tolerance and capacity to manage these kinds of community visits on their own. These are not simply “fun” activities and as a support worker I certainly do not spend them on my phone or distracted. This bill is an overreach of ministerial power and fails to understand the dimensions and reality of community access for people living with disability.
Suggestion: Please do not cut community participation budgets or reduce the amount they will be cut.
- Suspension of Plans I am also very concerned about the fact that participant plans can be suspended if they do not respond to requests for information from the NDIA within 28 days. The same goes for the rules around “information gathering” and allowing the NDIA to request a participant appear in a 14-day window. So many participants have such functional impairments in communication and day to day capacity, caused by their disabilities. I work with clients who
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 2571
have severe cognitive impairments that mean they may, for example, forget to respond, throw a letter they receive in the bin, not realise they have received a request for contact, or who are living in unstable housing and having to move due to discrimination and financial instability. These time restrictions are incredibly ableist and don’t take into account the very vulnerabilities of the people it is supposedly here to help. Speaking specifically from a psychosocial perspective, removal of supports leads to very rapid decompensation of a person who relies on those supports. Participants will fall through the cracks and fall into crisis.
Suggestion: Please make the time limits much longer or remove them.
- Registration of Providers I am also concerned about proposed requirement that all providers to be registered – this is not because I am resistant to becoming registered myself, as long as the cost and administration process is reasonable and fair for a sole trader. I see the value of checks and qualifications in this high-risk industry and the need to have risk management strategies. However, how this is implemented has the potential to negatively impact participants. Many people living with a disability, those I work with and also those I engage with more broadly, have a preference for a team of independent, qualified workers who they trust and feel safe with. Participants rely on us to help them eat, help them shower, ground them during emotional crises. Participants must have the right to choose their workers as a matter of safety and consent. If large, commercial providers are supported by government legislation and independent support workers are vilified or punished, this will remove choice, consent and control from the individuals NDIA is claiming to support – the participants.
Suggestion: If registration is required, please make it fair and affordable for independent support workers.
For the above reasons, I do NOT support this bill.
As a conscious citizen and experienced community mental health and disability worker, I want the committee to understand how dangerous removal/reduction of supports can be for participants, how demoralising and infantilising it is to remove the participants freedom to consent to who supports them in daily living, and how life-threatening it is to suspend someone’s supports after only 28 days of no-contact. Participants falling into crisis will not just impact the participants. It will lead to further strain on our overloaded hospitals and mental health services, incredible stress on families and informal supports, and cost the government further when participants who are now in a stable condition start to decompensate.