National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 2867
The NDIS as it currently exists is by no means a flawless system. There are many things I’d change about how it functions to run better and make it better for participants. None of those changes are present in the proposals of the NDIS Amendment Bill.
I am a disabled person and close friend of many NDIS recipients. I have been disabled for most of my adult life. I have not been accepted to the NDIS, and the already daunting amount of administrative work & emotional fortitute needed to reapply has been beyond my ability to do so.
But I’ve still have seen how much access to the NDIS has transformed the lives of disabled people I’ve known over the years. All of them are deeply concerned about how these proposed changes will negatively impact them and other disabled participants, their families & carers lives.
I wholeheartedly do not support the NDIS Amendment Bill. Not only will these changes not address any of the incompetence, waste and exploitation present with the scheme but it will make these issues worse. These changes are punitive towards disabled people and if allowed to pass, will endanger and lead to increased loss of human lives.
I can’t say I can articulate every point with the detail and nuance and citations I would care to. We have not been given enough time to process let alone respond to the proposed Bill. The stakes are very high.
Many of these proposed changes are interwoven with and influence each other’s impact. We are dealing with how they will negatively affect people’s lives, which are complex and individual and unique, and in themselves are evidence why these top down cuts cannot be instated without blatant disregard for participants rights.
NDIS lifted some of my friends out of unspeakable horror. Before the NDIS they were “living” in group care homes where they had no agency in who took care of them or how, no choices in the most intimate and basic aspects of their lives. The group homes were overcrowded and poorly maintained. They were neglected & outright abused by workers from big registered providers who were overworked and poorly trained, being assigned to multiple people with complex individual care needs.
Access to the NDIS & unregistered sole providers specifically, has allowed them the ability to vet & choose their support workers personally. They choose people they trust. They’ve been able to build a life & that is meaningful to them, that affords them not only independence in their day to day living but helps them actually live their life rather than subsist within it. Create and maintaining relationships. Dedicate themselves to things that matter deeply to them. Share their perspective, personality, creativity, depth of knowledge with the world.
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 2867
Taking away their ability to choose their own care team means taking all of this away from them.
I’ve not once witnessed nor heard of a sole unregistered provider take advantage of an NDIS participant, overcharge them, abuse them. Big registered provider businesses on the contrary are so rife with stories of neglect and abuse I practically consider them synonymous. It is these same big registered provider businesses who hugely inflate the prices of their services and products, who take advantage of disabled people who have little choice in the matter. Yet this Bill rewards said businesses with an even more captive market.
So many of these changes are about taking away participants ability to have a say in what will happen to them. About making life harder for them. Why?
They have done nothing wrong.
Automating decisions without chance of appeal? Unconscionable.
Sweeping funding cuts made by the hands of the Minister without appeal. Unconscionable.
Increased administrative and compliance requirements, making life harder for disabled recipients and their carers and families.
Threatening withdrawal of support if participants are unable to be contacted, when inability to be contacted can be caused by existing as a disabled person, like being hospitalised experiencing housing instability, or being unable to access communication supports – something that is more likely to occur with big sweeping cuts to funding.
Threatening people with invading their privacy, going into their homes to investigate them. This is punitive behaviour without cause.
I can’t address everything here. I dont have the sufficent time to do so. All I can say is I implore you, what do any of these changes really achieve?
Nothing about us without us is a motto of disabled community. These cuts are antithetical to this: Nothing for us with us.
The NDIS works as well as it does because of the level of agency it gives disabled people to determine what is right for their own lives. Not in spite of it.