National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 2858
Submission on the NDIS Amendment Bill
I am a disabled/ chronically ill person and a disability support worker. I wish to express deep disappointment in the proposition of this bill and reject it wholeheartedly.
Without mincing words, this bill will cause mass death in the disabled community.
My main concerns with the bill are:
● The removal of thousands of Australians from the NDIS scheme. The farce of ‘low support’ participants is well known to be a myth in the disabled community, as it is extremely difficult to get accepted onto the NDIS in the first place. I have loved, known and supported many people who have been rejected from the NDIS for ‘not being disabled enough’ even when their daily support needs have been clearly demonstrable as at least medium if not more. ● Cutting participants’ funding to access things like mental health care and ‘community access’ e.g. going to a doctor’s appointment is extremely dangerous and irresponsible. Shunning disabled people from public life is a grave injustice. It is a great shame that I should even have to assert that disabled people deserve to leave the house, and to live full private and public lives. Extreme isolation and lack of access to health care services, to community, to food pantries, to friends and family, to culture will cause not only regression (costing more financially for the administration and excluding disabled people from the workplace) but also put essential valuable members of our society at risk. ● Disabled people’s ability to participate in the workforce, in commerce, in creating art and culture, goods and services is fruitful for the economy. It is a poor economic decision to exclude a whole group of people from participating. This bill ensures a mass exodus of disabled people from employment and ensures that others could never build the capacity to make it there. From an economic standpoint I also reject this bill. ● All of the support workers I know are disabled themselves, or chronically ill. The flow on effect of cutting the work hours of the thousands of people who do this work is also unjust and economically irresponsible. Support workers deserve stable living wages and enough hours to survive. This work is the only thing I have found that I can do while managing my own disability as well.
An example from my experience: ● I support an autistic person whose support needs have been for the most part met by her plan for the past few years. Her psych has pinned her as a perfect example of the NDIS working well. If her supports were to be shifted or changed especially in the proposed ‘community participation’ category, the dramatic and immediate regression and isolation she would experience would be very dangerous for her. I would fear for her happiness and safety. She relies on NDIS support to leave the house, take medication, engage in personal hygiene, eat meals, pay bills, buy groceries, book and attend appointments, reply to emails, participate in exercise, socialise, run errands and complete chores. She
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 2858
cannot do these things without support and this bill threatens to take all of that away from her.
What I want the committee to understand is how intimately this bill threatens the dignity and right to life of disabled people. There are many routes to fund the NDIS and cutting the most vulnerable from the scheme and reducing the supports of others is an optional and violent trajectory. I must express with every fibre of my being how I, as an Australian citizen, want and need the NDIS to be adequately resourced and for participants to be kept safe. I would also like to assert that the disabled community is the only minority you can join, and every Australian deserves the right to live in happiness and safety no matter what.
Thank you.