National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 2676
Personal Submission to the Senate Community Affairs
Committee
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment
(Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submitted by: K’s Great Aunty | May 2026Who I Am
I am writing this submission as K’s great aunty. K is 13 years old and has Cri du Chat syndrome — a rare genetic condition that results in severe intellectual disability, significant communication delays, complex behaviours of concern, and high physical support needs. She is part of our extended family, and she is someone I see regularly and care deeply about.
I am writing because this Bill will cause harm to K and to families like hers, and because I believe that the voices of extended family members matter. We are part of the informal support network that surrounds people with disability. We see what life looks like from close up. We have a stake in what happens to the people we love.
What I Know From Being Part of This Family
I have been part of K’s life since she was born. I have seen her parents navigate a system that is, at its best, enormously helpful, and at its worst, exhausting and demoralising. The NDIS, when it works well, gives K and her family something invaluable: a degree of predictability. The knowledge that there will be a support worker at a family event. That K will be able to attend the pool. That there is someone skilled and familiar who can help K communicate and manage her emotions in a new environment.
I have attended family gatherings alongside K and seen firsthand what funded support enables. K can be part of the occasion. She can be herself. And her parents can be present for the whole family, rather than stretched impossibly thin trying to manage alone. What I have also seen is how hard K’s mother works every single day, and how much she has sacrificed — in her career, in her own rest, in the time and energy available for her other children — to care for K. The NDIS does not do everything. It provides enough to make the rest possible. This Bill will reduce even that.
My Concerns About This Bill
After learning about the proposed amendments, several things concern me greatly:
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The 50% cut to community participation funding from 1 October 2026 is a blanket reduction that takes no account of what individual participants actually need. For K, it will mean less access to the community, less time with her friends, and more isolation. For her parents, it will mean more of the burden that this funding currently helps to share.
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The Minister is being given the power to make further cuts to any support at any time, with no oversight and no avenue for appeal. This is a frightening level
Personal Submission — NDIS Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 | Page 1
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 2676
of unaccountable power over the lives of some of the most vulnerable people in our country.
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The Bill implies that parents should absorb more of the care themselves. K’s parents are already doing more than most people could sustain. There is no more to give without serious consequences for the whole family.
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The removal of appeal rights leaves families with no recourse when the system gets it wrong. Given that the NDIA loses the large majority of tribunal appeals, removing those rights does not reflect a well-functioning system — it reflects a system trying to avoid accountability.
My Request to the Committee
I ask the Committee to look beyond the framing of this Bill as a fraud-reduction measure and examine honestly what it will do to people with significant, permanent disabilities who were always at the centre of the NDIS’s purpose.
Please recommend the removal of blanket funding cuts, unchecked ministerial powers, and the elimination of appeal rights. Please direct reform toward the administrative failures and pricing decisions that have genuinely driven unsustainable cost growth.
K has a whole family around her who loves her and wants her to have a good life. We are asking the Committee to ensure the Government keeps its promise to do the same.
Note on Publication
The author of this submission requests that their name not be published. The submission may be published in de-identified form. Reference to ‘K’ is used throughout to protect the participant’s privacy.
Personal Submission — NDIS Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 | Page 2