National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 2923
** Please keep my name and contact information private **
Submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee
Re: National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for
Future Generations) Bill 2026
I am a parent of an eight-year-old autistic child. I am writing this submission while tired, anxious, and deeply frustrated at the way the government has been treating our most vulnerable people. This Bill makes me fear for the little stability we have worked so hard to build.
I support efforts to improve the integrity and long-term sustainability of the NDIS, but this Bill does not feel like reform. It feels like the people making decisions have never had to live with them.
What we have already lost
Access to community-based programs that allowed my child to practise social skills in environments specifically built for neurodivergent children. Spaces run by neuro affirming businesses that understood them. For an autistic child, the ability to interact safely, on their own terms, in a place where they are not expected to mask or struggle through, is not supplementary. It is foundational.
My child spends most of their time at school, which is not a safe environment for them. Those community programs were where they could finally breath, unmask and be themself. Losing the program has been profoundly difficult.
Individualised support is not a luxury
It is what keeps our family functioning.
My child’s needs are specific to them. Autism does not present the same way in any two children, and what works, what is genuinely necessary, looks different for every family. This Bill would give the Minister broad power to adjust funding across entire cohorts of participants, which could include autistic children my child’s age, based on fiscal targets rather than individual need. That is not a minor technical change. That is a fundamental dismantling of what the NDIS was supposed to be.
These powers have no adequate safeguards
My family already faces inconsistent planning decisions and enormous barriers when we try to challenge them. This Bill would entrench and extend those risks, not just now,
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 2923
but under any future Minister who inherits these powers. We are not a budget line. We are a family trying to give our child the best possible life.
We were not given a real opportunity to respond
Families like mine do not have spare hours to analyse 113 pages of complex legislation in under three weeks. The consultation period has been inadequate. Our voices should matter most in decisions like this, and we were barely given time to find the submission portal.
I urge the Committee to recommend that this Bill not proceed without:
- Individual needs assessment remaining the foundation of all funding decisions
- Meaningful parliamentary oversight of Ministerial funding powers
- Accessible, robust review rights for participants and families My child deserves a scheme that sees them as a person, not a cohort. I am asking this Committee to make sure that is still possible.
Kind regards