Submission 2635
1
Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill
Committee Members,
You learn very early that the world could be cruel to people who are unique.
Long before you understood words like policy, inclusion, discrimination, or human rights, you
already understood fear and violence.
You understood what it felt like to be stared at.
To be underestimated. To be judged.
To hear laughter that was never meant kindly.
You experienced homophobia, violence, segregation, and isolation long before you even had the
language to describe your identity. You simply did not have a choice.
You experienced discrimination and violence at an age when you should have only been worrying
about school, friendships, and to dream big about who you might one day become.
You learned quickly how systems, structures, services, and people could reduce someone to a
problem needing to be managed instead of a person deserving dignity, respect, voice, visibility,
opportunity, and safety.
There would be moments where you questioned your worth.
Moments where the barriers and ableism felt endless.
Moments where you internalised the belief that the world was simply not built for people like you.
But there would also be people who believed in you before you fully believed in yourself.
People who created opportunities and space instead of barriers.
People who saw leadership, potential, and capacity where others only saw limitation, deficit, and
impairment.
With this slowly, over time, the gap between who the world expected you to become and who you
became began to close.
Not because discrimination disappeared.
Not because the violence stopped.
Submission 2635
2
Not because prejudice ended.
But because support, belief, dignity, and opportunity gave you the space to grow into yourself.
You were allowed to try and fail without being discarded.
To learn without being segregated or punished.
To participate fully with curiosity without constantly having to justify your humanity.
And one day, you would speak in rooms, places, and spaces others never imagined you entering.
You would advocate for people too often spoken about instead of listened to.
You would become a leader. You always have been.
Not despite your disability and LGBTQIA+ identities, but because surviving those experiences
taught you how urgently systems need compassion, justice, and humanity.
That is why this submission matters.
Because there are still people sitting where you once sat.
People with disability.
LGBTQIA+ people.
People trying to survive systems that too often make them feel invisible, burdensome, unsafe, or
unsupported.
The fear is that we are beginning to close the very gap that once allowed people like you to
survive and thrive.
The gap created by support.
By belief.
By optimism.
By opportunity.
By systems that invest in people and potential rather than reducing human lives to costs,
compliance, profit, or a problem to be solved.
The National Disability Insurance Scheme was never meant to simply keep people with disability
alive.
It was meant to create the conditions for people with disability to become the fullest version of
themselves.
Submission 2635
3
I know that because this is about me. .
This submission is about the future I want for me and all in my communities.
I make this submission not only as a person with disability, but as someone who has spent
decades advocating for disability and LGBTIQA+ rights, inclusion, and systemic reform across
government, community organisations, and the broader social impact sector in Australia and
internationally. I also write as a proud LGBTQIA+ person with disability who understands
personally and professionally the life-changing importance of the National Disability Insurance
Scheme (NDIS).
I acknowledge the importance of ensuring the long-term sustainability of the NDIS. However, I am
deeply concerned that the proposed reforms represent a significant shift away from the original
vision of the Scheme as a rights-based system grounded in dignity, autonomy, inclusion, and
participant choice and control.
While these reforms are framed around sustainability and administrative improvement, in my view
many aspects of the Bill risk increasing gatekeeping, reassessment, surveillance, and bureaucratic
control over the lives of Australians with disability.
For many people with disability particularly LGBTQIA+ people, First Nations communities, women
with disability, people with psychosocial disability, and neurodivergent Australians these reforms
may have devastating consequences.
One of my strongest concerns is the absence of meaningful intersectional analysis within the
proposed changes outlined in the Bill.
People with disability are not a homogenous group. Many of us experience multiple identities
alongside compounding forms of discrimination and exclusion. We know that LGBTIQA+ people
are far more likely to have a disability compared to the wider population in Australia, yet service
access remains a significant issue due to ongoing stigma and discrimination.
LGBTQIA+ people with disability experience significantly higher rates of homelessness, family
rejection, mental health concerns, violence, social isolation, unemployment, and poverty. For
many LGBTIQA+ people with disability, the NDIS is not simply a funding program it is the
difference between safety and crisis.
Submission 2635
4
In research commissioned by the Disability Royal Commission titled ‘Violence, abuse, neglect and
exploitation of LGBTQA+ people with disability: a secondary analysis of data from two national
surveys’ the findings confirmed that more than half, or 52.7%, of the young people with disability
reported experiencing verbal harassment due to their sexuality or gender identity in the past 12
months. This compared to 34.7% of the young people without disability. Likewise, 15.0% of the
young people with disability reported physical harassment due to their sexuality or gender identity
in the past 12 month compared to 7.5% of those without disability1.
Furthermore, the research found that among adults with disability, 60.5% of non-binary
participants felt socially excluded in the past 12 months. Participants who identified as pansexual
had the highest proportion, at 51.7%, who had experienced verbal abuse, closely followed by
50.5% of queer identifying participants2.
Many LGBTQIA+ participants with disability rely on the flexibility of the NDIS to access affirming
culturally safe supports, maintain connection to community, avoid unsafe environments, manage
psychosocial disability, and sustain independent living yet within the proposed reforms there is a
serious lack of consideration given to the availability of culturally safe and affirming services for
LGBTIQA+ people with disability.
The assumption that people can simply rely more heavily on informal or mainstream supports fails
to recognise the lived realities of many LGBTQIA+ people with disability. For some people,
informal supports do not exist. For others, those environments are culturally unsafe,
discriminatory, or traumatising.
I am also deeply concerned about the increased emphasis on standardised assessments and
functional capacity testing.
Disability cannot be reduced to rigid administrative metrics.
1 Hill, A. O., Amos, N., Bourne, A., Parsons, M, Bigby, C., Carman, M., & Lyons, A. (2022). Violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation of LGBTQA+ people with disability: a secondary analysis of data from two national surveys. Melbourne, Australia: Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society, La Trobe University. 2 Hill, A. O., Amos, N., Bourne, A., Parsons, M, Bigby, C., Carman, M., & Lyons, A. (2022). Violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation of LGBTQA+ people with disability: a secondary analysis of data from two national surveys. Melbourne, Australia: Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society, La Trobe University.
Submission 2635
5
The lived experience of disability is shaped not only by impairment, but by trauma, poverty,
discrimination, violence, inaccessible environments, and systemic exclusion. Standardised
approaches risk disproportionately disadvantaging people with psychosocial disability, autistic
people, neurodivergent people, trauma survivors, and those with fluctuating or less visible
disabilities.
People with disability should not be forced to repeatedly prove their humanity or justify their right to
live safely and independently within the community.
I also strongly urge the Committee to carefully consider how these proposed reforms align with the
findings and final recommendations of the Disability Royal Commission that included LGBTIQA+
people with disability as a priority population within the terms of reference.
The Royal Commission exposed the devastating consequences of systems that prioritised control,
efficiency, and administration over dignity, inclusion, and human rights. It documented widespread
violence, abuse, neglect, segregation, and exclusion experienced by disabled Australians across
multiple systems and institutions.
Importantly, the Royal Commission repeatedly emphasised the need for:
supported decision-making.
trauma-informed practice;
autonomy and self-determination;
genuine co-design;
inclusion; and
human rights-based approaches.
I am deeply concerned that aspects of this Bill risk moving Australia away from these principles
rather than toward them.
Australia cannot claim to have learned the lessons of the Disability Royal Commission while
implementing reforms that risk increasing trauma, fear, exclusion, and administrative harm for
people with disability.
For many participants, navigating the NDIS is already exhausting, adversarial, and psychologically
harmful. Additional reassessments increased evidentiary burdens, automated processes, and
narrowed support definitions may appear administrative on paper, but they have deeply human
consequences.
Administrative harm is real harm.
Submission 2635
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These reforms risk increasing distress, mental health deterioration, burnout, disengagement from
support systems, housing instability, and crisis presentations.
I am also concerned about the broader public narrative surrounding the NDIS.
Increasingly, public discourse has framed disabled people through the language of ‘cost blowouts’,
‘fraud,’ and ‘budget repair.’ This rhetoric is dangerous. It contributes to stigma and reinforces the
harmful idea that people with disability are economic burdens rather than equal citizens entitled to
respect, dignity, safety, participation, and opportunity.
I am equally concerned that some parts of the disability and social impact sectors including
organisations that publicly describe themselves as ‘quality’ person-centred, inclusive, or rights
based providers have too often failed to challenge these narratives in meaningful ways. In some
cases, the language of inclusion has been used while supporting reforms that increase
compliance, surveillance, gatekeeping, and administrative control over the lives of people with
disability.
I am increasingly concerned by the disability sector’s obsession with describing itself as a sector of
‘quality providers’ without adequately examining who gets to define quality, whose experiences are
centred in those definitions, and whether participants themselves experience services as safe,
affirming, and empowering.
Too often, ’quality’ is treated as a credential rather than an outcome. Registration status,
compliance frameworks, audit results, policies, procedures, and accreditation have become
proxies for quality, despite growing evidence including from the Disability Royal Commission that
significant harm can and does occur within organisations that are technically compliant.
Compliance may demonstrate that a provider has met a regulatory standard, but it does not at all
guarantee cultural safety, dignity, respect, ethical practice, inclusion, or positive outcomes.
As an LGBTQIA+ person with disability, in my work I have observed a troubling tendency within
parts of the sector to speak confidently about quality while paying insufficient attention to the lived
experience of participants navigating those services. For many LGBTIQA+ people with disability,
and those from marginalised communities, the true measure of quality is not found in an audit
report or registration certificate.
It is found in whether they feel safe and affirmed when disclosing who they are, whether they are
treated with dignity, whether their identity is respected, whether their support workers are
competent and culturally responsive, and whether they can exercise genuine choice and control
without fear of discrimination, stigma or harm.
Submission 2635
7
The Disability Royal Commission challenged Australia to move beyond a compliance mindset and
toward a human rights framework grounded in dignity, autonomy, inclusion, and safety. Yet much
of the sector’s advocacy continues to focus on provider viability, registration, market settings, and
stewardship while assuming that these factors will naturally produce quality outcomes. They do
not. Quality is not something an organisation should get to declare about itself. Quality is
something experienced, determined, and judged by the people receiving support.
Until the sector is willing to confront this distinction, there is a risk that we continue mistaking
compliance for quality, process for safety, and organisational reputation for participant wellbeing.
True inclusion cannot exist without genuine power-sharing, accountability, and the active centring
of the voices of people with disability, particularly those from marginalised communities. People
with disability should not be spoken about as policy risks or financial liabilities while institutions
continue to prioritise reputation, risk management, or profit over people and human potential.
The overwhelming majority of NDIS participants are not exploiting the Scheme. They are simply
trying to survive within systems that have historically failed them.
The NDIS exists because Australia failed people with disability for generations.
I urge the Committee to ensure that any reforms to the NDIS remain grounded in human rights,
inclusion, dignity, and participant choice and control.
The future sustainability of the NDIS matters. However, sustainability cannot come at the expense
of the rights, dignity, autonomy, safety, and futures of Australians with disability.
The true measure of these reforms will not be whether they reduce expenditure growth in the short
term.
It will be whether Australia chooses to build a society where people with disability experience
equity, equality, are genuinely safe, valued and included as equal citizens who are free to live self
determined lives.
I offer this submission not only as an advocate, but as someone who has lived these realities
personally.
As a proud disability and LGBTQIA+ leader in my community, I have experienced much
discrimination, homophobia, violence, exclusion, and a profound lack of cultural safety including
within spaces and systems that publicly claim to champion inclusion and human rights.
Submission 2635
8
I know what it feels like to walk into rooms where your existence is tolerated more than
understood. I know what it feels like to constantly assess whether a system, a service, or a
workplace will truly see your humanity or simply your risk, your complexity, or your difference.
For many LGBTQIA+ people with disability, these experiences are not isolated incidents. They are
cumulative. They shape mental health, trust, safety, participation, and whether people feel able to
seek support at all.
That is why these reforms concern me so deeply. Regardless of my concerns, I will always stand
alongside members of my communities. I will not allow these proposed reforms to leave my
communities behind.
Because when systems become more restrictive, more impersonal, more compliance-driven, and
less grounded in lived experience, it is always the people already carrying the greatest burden of
exclusion who are harmed first.
Thank you for the opportunity to provide this submission and for considering the voices of
LGBTIQA+ people with disability and those of us most impacted by these proposed changes.
People with disability should not have to fight to prove they are worthy of dignity, safety, and
belonging Please, I urge you to mind the gap.
.
May 31, 2026.