National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 2601
To the committee
I am an NDIS participant, a carer to a partner who is an NDIS participant, and have immediate family outside my household who are also NDIS participants as well. So I would like to write on behalf of at least 4 participant adults (and their loved ones) to protest and share concerns on the proposed NDIA changes.
I am 31, my partner 35, we’ve only been on the NDIS a handful years but it has been revolutionary for us. As neither of us can easily leave the house due to physical disability (and car centric economy) we were highly isolated prior to the NDIS. Also struggling to pay for specialists & supports on just 2 disability pensions, despite taking in housemates to help pay our rent. We use community access funded support workers to attend the grocery store, walk in the park, travel to weekly hydrotherapy, dr appts, and visit the library. Which is both largely our sum total and a bare minimum of healthy human interaction - mainly essential services. Life should be broader than survival essentials, not less than - we strongly oppose dramatic cuts to community participation funds.
Cuts seem extra illogical when the system typically prefers us to use support worker funding for everything possible. I had to ask for years to be allowed to use some of my (plentiful) funding for a grocery store delivery sub, despite it being far cheaper and effective than paying a weekly support worker. I then had to campaign for half a year after it was granted to switch to annual billing ($100), instead of an invoice that I had to file weekly at far higher yearly cost. Last year, this support was removed due to not being explicitly on the “in” OR “out” list. Took me another year to get it reauthorized. Part of that year that included 4 months of emailing and calling my designated Local Area Coordinator every fortnight (the time reception would say she’d call back by) before I got any response.
As to automated decisions - well, someone/thing in the system has changed my autism diagnosis on file to “inactive autism.” Even though it’s likely a computer error, I’ve been unable to remedy it for over a year now, as they want me to get diagnosed with autism a second time - likely to cost me thousands. As someone who’s worked with computers at advanced level - the technology is not yet an appropriate quality to be making major decisions (and may well never be). Government and vulnerable people’s money will be wasted, lives will be harmed, just as with robotdebt.
And lastly and especially, removing access to review and to appeal, particularly in conjunction with automated decisions, is unreasonable and inequitable. The framework was already inequitable… I have more than one degree, and my mother and sister are much higher educated and I have still had to help them extensively to gain access to the scheme as newer participants this year. I pity deeply those without any informal support, or even slight struggles with reading comprehension/formal writing. But replacing the entry pathway with internal assessments by civil servants armed with a questionnaire tool will see it even harder to get needed support.
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 2601