Submission 2702
Submission to the Senate Community Affairs Committee
Inquiry into NDIS Supports and Proposed Funding Reductions
Submitted by: Name withheld
Date: May 2026
PUBLICATION REQUEST: The author consents to this submission being published on the public record. However, the author requests that their name and contact details be redacted prior to publication to protect their privacy.
Introduction
I write as both a person with a disability and a former paramedic to provide evidence to the Committee regarding the proposed reductions to NDIS funding. I also have a close family member with a severe intellectual disability, and my own disability shares some characteristics with theirs. I bring to this submission lived experience as an NDIS participant, intimate familiarity with the experience of families caring for a person with high support needs, and professional experience of the consequences for individuals and families, when disability support needs are not adequately met. I ask the Committee to weigh all three perspectives seriously.
- My Background and Contribution I worked as a paramedic. In that role I contributed to my community in a direct and meaningful way, responding to people of all backgrounds and circumstances, and paying tax as a working member of society. I valued that work deeply and wanted to continue it.
My disability made sustaining employment over medium to long periods extremely difficult. I attempted to return to work as a paramedic on three separate occasions. Each time, the attempt ultimately failed, not through lack of commitment or capability, but as a result of my disability and the reduction or withdrawal of supports, predominantly informal supports, that had been holding things together.
I have now left the paramedic industry.
This is not an experience I understand only in the abstract. I have a close family member with a severe intellectual disability. I know firsthand what it means to watch someone you love struggle to access the community and the life they deserve, and I know what it costs the people around them when the support they need is not there.
- The Impact of NDIS Support I was connected with the NDIS only recently, within the last year. The change has been significant. With only a few hours of support per week, I am for the first time beginning to feel that sustained long-term employment may be achievable. It is not certain, but it is possible in a
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way it has not been before. The prospect of returning to work as a paramedic, of contributing again in that meaningful way, is no longer out of reach.
Without the NDIS, I failed repeatedly, and despite genuine effort. With a small, targeted, and reliable support, the trajectory has changed. This is precisely the case for maintaining and adequately funding these supports. The return on a modest investment can be a person returning to a skilled, essential, and socially valuable profession.
- What I Have Witnessed as a Paramedic I want to provide the Committee with evidence drawn from my professional experience, because I have seen directly what happens when disability support needs are not met.
I have attended parents who could not see a way forward. The weight of caring for a family member with disability, without adequate support, had become untenable. These were not people who lacked love or resilience. They were people who were failed by a system that did not provide enough.
I have attended people whose health had begun to compound, where unmet disability support needs had created a cascade of secondary health consequences that placed them in crisis. Needs that could have been met with early, modest support had become acute, complex, and costly.
I have seen people withdraw entirely from society, isolated, invisible, and unreachable, because they did not have the community support that would have kept them connected.
And I have seen the other side. I have seen people with appropriate support living stable, healthy lives. I have seen carers who were able to maintain employment and their own wellbeing. I have seen families who were functional and connected because the supports around them were adequate.
The difference between those two outcomes is not individual character or family circumstance. It is support.
- The Fiscal and Social Argument The cases I attended as a paramedic were not free. Crisis intervention, emergency response, hospitalisation, mental health services, these are among the most expensive points of contact in the health system. They are also, in many cases, the direct consequence of support needs that were not met earlier, at far lower cost.
Reducing NDIS supports does not eliminate these costs. It defers and amplifies them, and transfers them to the acute health and emergency services sector. As someone who worked in
Submission 2702
that sector, I can say with confidence that it is the wrong place to be absorbing the consequences of inadequate disability support.
- Summary of Concerns • I am a person with disability and a former paramedic with direct professional
experience of the consequences of inadequate support
• I have a close family member with a severe intellectual disability, and my owndisability shares some characteristics with theirs, I understand this issue from every angle
• I attempted to sustain employment as a paramedic on three occasions and wasunable to do so without reliable support
• Since connecting with the NDIS, a small number of support hours per week hascreated a realistic prospect of returning to meaningful, skilled employment
• As a paramedic I witnessed the direct human cost of unmet disability supportneeds, including family breakdown, cascading health crises, social isolation, and carers who could no longer see a way forward
• I also witnessed the clear difference that adequate support makes to individuals,carers, and families
• Reducing NDIS supports does not save money, it transfers and amplifies costsinto the acute health and emergency services system
• The return on targeted, modest NDIS investment can be a skilled workerreturning to an essential profession and contributing to society and the tax base
Conclusion
I urge the Committee to recommend that NDIS supports, including Community Access and Capacity Building funding, be protected from reduction. I ask that the evidence of participants with both lived and professional experience be given genuine weight in this process.
The difference between a person in crisis and a person contributing meaningfully to society is often small, targeted, and reliable support. I have seen that truth from every angle, as a person with disability, as a family member, and as a paramedic. I ask the Committee to act on it.
Name withheld [Contact details provided separately and not for publication]
The author consents to publication of this submission with name and contact details withheld.