Dear Committee,
I am writing to ask that the National Disability Insurance Scheme
Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 be
rejected in full. This Bill feels rushed, inaccessible and already decided.
Disabled people gave evidence to the Disability Royal Commission at great personal cost, often sharing painful experiences of neglect, violence and exclusion. Those findings should have been the starting point for any NDIS reform. Instead, this Bill appears to move ahead without genuine co-design and without proper regard for what disabled people have already told government.
I am especially worried that people may be removed from the NDIS before safe alternatives exist. A referral is not support. A promise is not a service. Families, schools, hospitals, state systems and community
organisations are already stretched. If people lose NDIS supports before other systems are properly funded, tested and available, the result will be harm, not reform.
I also oppose the proposed reliance on standardised functional capacity assessments. Disability is not a neat checklist. Capacity can
fluctuate from day to day, or even hour to hour. A short assessment cannot capture pain, fatigue, communication barriers, trauma, culture, poverty, housing stress, family violence or the daily effort it takes to appear “okay”.
Decisions about support should be based on the whole person and
evidence from people who actually understand their life.
This Bill also gives too much power to the Minister and the NDIA, while weakening participant rights, appeals, choice and control. That is
frightening. The NDIS should help disabled people live with dignity and
independence, not place them under a heavier compliance regime. Please reject this Bill and begin again with disabled people at the centre.
To enable the NDIS to yield even greater economic benefits (approx $2.4 dollars for each dollar spent), it would appear of greatest benefit to improve the ability of participants and families to be able to report dangerous or unscrupulous providers with greater efficiency and
immediate outcomes - where historically and globally the large providers are the ones with frequent records of dubious and harmful practices. Removing inefficient local area coordinators, as well as poorly trained and
uninformed/non-specialised staff at the area of plan determination (NDIA) will also ultimately reduce the frequent legal costs associated with court proceedings - whilst not compromising the humanity of Australia any
further. The goal should be a society and actions that future historians can recount with pride and admiration and not with the abject horror that is often reserved for some of the more shameful moments of the past and present of humanity. Disability is the one group that anyone can join at any moment - and it is always one of the first groups that serve as a
barometer of where a society is willing to compromise integrity and honor. The disabled population is also where a large proportion of some of the most underestimated pools of determined and community-driven
Australians belong to. Many - out of sheer practical necessity - can optimize, refine, and clearly identify unnecessary barriers to efficiency in
bloated and poorly designed systems which lack integrated consideration for longevity or societal impact beyond what benefits a few.