National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 2697
To whom it may concern,
I am making a submission to this inquiry to express my concern for the proposed changes to the NDIS and the potential harm they will have on participants, and to the community in general.
A number of my family and community members are NDIS participants or are support workers. Many of these support workers are sole traders, and proposed changes will have large impacts on their ability to continue working in the industry. Many work in queer and trans community, where it is not safe for both workers and participants to engage with mainstream support work organisations, who are not culturally competent in working with LGBTQIA+ communities. This would have devastating impacts on the livelihood of support workers, but more significantly on the lives of disabled LGBTQIA+ people.
Changes to support and eligibility rules proposed in the bill have the potential to have vast impacts on participants and their ability to get the support they need. Particularly around ministerial oversight. I support decisions around eligibility being made through legislation and parliamentary scrutiny.
Changes to criteria around permanence may also have very detrimental impacts on participants, whereby they may need to try all “available” treatments before being able to access NDIS support. This, even in the circumstance where that available treatment is not accessible to the person based on their location. This type of criteria is punitive and detrimental, misunderstands the lived reality of disability and should be removed from the bill.
This bill is being pushed through incredibly quickly, without appropriate time for lived experience and sector response to the proposed changes. I disagree fundamentally with the changes to the NDIS and framing of its necessary under budget cutting measures when the government continues to pour millions and billions of dollars into unnecessary and environmentally toxic defense contracts that do not have community support.
This submission urges the inquiry to not rush through changes rapidly and to value and centre the lived experience of participants in any changes that go ahead.