Submission 2782
Thursday, the 28th of May 2026
Submission addressing concerns around proposed NDIS Amendments.
To whom it may concern,
My name is Karene Gravener. I am a wheelchair user, a mother, and a person living with significant physical disability. I have also spent many years working in counselling, advocacy, and community-based roles. I am making this submission because the NDIS has fundamentally changed my life, and I am deeply concerned about the direction of these proposed changes.
The NDIS is not about luxury. It is not about extras, advantages, or unnecessary spending. For many people with disabilities, including myself, the NDIS is the difference between surviving and actually living.
Before I had access to proper support, my world was incredibly small. I experienced isolation, emotional exhaustion, a slow and painful loss of independence, and declining wellbeing. There were countless times in my life where I did not have access to essential care and support; I was effectively left to manage completely beyond my physical capacity. I was expected to function, and I could not properly care for myself.
No person in a country like Australia should be left in circumstances where their most basic needs are not adequately supported.
Over many years, I have also witnessed other people with disability living in situations that were completely unacceptable, isolated, neglected, and unsupported. Many people were and still are left to deteriorate physically and emotionally because adequate care Is not available. In my view, that represents a profound failure of social justice and human rights.
Nobody should fight endlessly for the right to receive basic care, personal support, dignity, and safety.
That is why these proposed changes frighten me so deeply.
What concerns me most is the increasing ability for broad decisions to be made about people with disabilities without genuinely understanding the complexity of individual lives and
Submission 2782
circumstances. I fear that these changes move toward sweeping assumptions about who is considered “deserving” of support and who is not.
Disability is not always obvious. It is not always visible. and it cannot always be neatly measured through paperwork, short assessments or evidence-based documentation alone.
Many people live with chronic pain, severe fatigue, reduced functional capacity, emotional exhaustion, mental health impacts, and increasing isolation that cannot always be fully captured on forms or reports. Some people do not have the resources, support, education, or emotional capacity to constantly prove and justify every aspect of their disability in ways the system demands.
My fear is that these reforms will miss those people completely. When supports are removed, people with disability do not simply lose “services.” They lose their ability to function and their stability. They lose access to life itself.
The NDIS is often the tool that acts as our hands, our mobility, our access to the community, our endurance, and our ability to cope physically and emotionally day to day. Without adequate support, people deteriorate physically, mentally, emotionally, and socially. That deterioration may not always happen loudly or immediately. Sometimes it happens slowly and quietly behind closed doors until people reach a crisis point.
That is not what a fair society should accept.
I understand there have been genuine issues within the NDIS system, particularly involving providers who have acted dishonestly or taken advantage of the scheme. Those problems absolutely need to be addressed. However, people with disability should not become the collateral damage of attempts to repair failures within administration and provider systems.
The proposed cuts to social and community participation are especially concerning. Community participation is not an optional extra. Human connection, access to the community, and the ability to participate in family and social life are essential to mental health, emotional wellbeing, and quality of life.
I am a mother. I need support to participate in life alongside my children and within my community. Removing these supports does not simply remove activities. It removes opportunities to live fully and safely within society.
I also believe there is a serious lack of understanding about the pressure carried by families and carers. Families are often expected to absorb increasing caregiving responsibilities as though this comes without emotional, physical, or financial cost. Caregiving is exhausting. Families break under that pressure. Relationships break under that pressure. People burn out under that pressure.
Submission 2782
I strongly oppose broad funding cuts or restrictive approaches that occur without proper individual understanding and review. Disability is complex. Human lives are complex. No government can genuinely understand a person’s needs through assumptions, generalizations, or political narratives alone.
If reforms are going to occur, they must involve meaningful consultation with people with disabilities and their families. Decisions about our lives should not be made without us. Assessments must also be fair, transparent, and genuinely informed by lived experience. People with disabilities should not feel terrified to speak honestly about their lives because they fear losing support. Many people already live with constant anxiety about whether they will be believed, whether they sound “disabled enough,” or whether they will lose the supports that allow them to function.
That fear is real.
It may be argued that essential support is not currently being removed for people who need it, however in all honesty many people with disabilities are asking themselves a very real question: and that is, what comes next? When the voices of people with disabilities are reduced, ignored or silenced, what else becomes easier to take away?
Human Rights are rarely lost all at once. They are often reduced slowly, piece by piece, decision by decision, until people are left fighting simply to maintain basic dignity, care, and participation in society. My greatest concern is that in attempting to address legitimate issues within the NDIS, government will unintentionally punish ordinary people and families who rely on these supports simply to live with dignity and maintain some level of stability and participation in society.
Please remember that behind every policy decision are real human beings whose lives will be directly affected by these changes. People with disabilities are not financial burdens to be reduced. We are human beings, and we deserve the right to live meaningful, supported, and dignified lives.
Sincerely,
Submission 2782