National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 2964
I am an NDIS participant. I am a late diagnosed autistic woman with a treatment resistant eating disorder and associated morbid obesity. This has led to me becoming an ambulatory wheelchair user. I have been on the NDIS since 2023. Over the following two years at the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, the NDIA accepted that my eating disorder was caused by untreated autism. As a result, my plan funded occupational therapy, psychology, dietetics, physiotherapy, meal delivery, short term accommodation, support workers, social and community access, incontinence consumables and transport.
Those supports have changed my life in practical ways. They have allowed me to keep working as a School Support Officer with the South Australian Department for Education, where I produce braille and large print resources for vision impaired students. They have helped me continue swimming and hydrotherapy. They have allowed me to get help with showering, dressing, compression garments and domestic tasks. They have also reduced the caring load on my 13 year old son. Without these supports, I would not simply become “less supported”. would lose my ability to work, move around my community, exercise safely, and maintain basic personal care.
I am deeply concerned about this Bill because autistic people are increasingly being treated as though they do not belong in the NDIS. That is not consistent with the evidence. Autism is the largest primary disability group within the scheme and represents a significant proportion of new entrants, particularly among children. The Productivity Commission, which designed the NDIS, clearly identified autistic people as a core group the scheme was intended to support. The suggestion that autistic people were never meant to be included is not supported by the original design of the scheme.
I grew up in a regional area without the right early support. I am now living with the long-term social, emotional, physical, medical and psychological consequences of untreated autism. These consequences cost far more than early support would have cost. I am frightened that autistic children will be pushed out of the scheme before any real alternative exists. Proposed foundational supports programs cannot replace individual disability supports, especially for children in regional areas. Without early intervention, many of those children will become adults like me, with complex needs that cost state and federal systems much more over time.
The 2023 NDIS Review gave government a roadmap of 26 recommendations and 139 actions, with a clear emphasis on staged and coordinated implementation. Foundational supports were intended to be established alongside, or prior to, significant changes to participant pathways and funding. Those foundational supports are not yet in place in any consistent or accessible way. I ask the committee: on what basis has the government proceeded with eligibility and funding changes when the required supports outside the NDIS are not yet available?
I also ask the committee to consider the broader economic impact. Independent modelling has suggested that every dollar invested in the NDIS returns more than its
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 2964
cost to the Australian economy through increased participation and reduced downstream demand. Cutting plans does not make need disappear. It shifts costs to hospitals, emergency departments, mental health services, housing crisis services, schools, state systems and unpaid family carers. What modelling has been done on these downstream impacts, and will it be made public?
I hear daily from participants and parents through my in-person and online networks. People are having supports reduced without a clear understanding of what disabled people and their families actually face. I recently attended the Roundtable on Information Access for Print Disability. I could only attend because I had support workers and because my occupational therapist helped me plan ahead. At that roundtable I met blind and vision impaired people, including people who also use wheelchairs, who are frightened by the proposed changes. Many are especially worried about the proposed independent assessment processes, sometimes referred to as ICAN, because of poor past experiences with similar approaches. Trust in the NDIA has been significantly damaged.
The government has also relied heavily on claims about fraud to justify changes. However, publicly reported figures indicate that confirmed fraud represents a very small proportion of total scheme expenditure, while a significant share of projected savings is expected to come from changes affecting participants, including children. Statements made in July 2024 referred to billions being lost to fraud, while confirmed cases at that time were in the tens of millions within a scheme worth tens of billions annually. These statements require clarification. I ask the committee to require the government to provide the full evidentiary basis for those claims and reconcile them with confirmed figures.
Australia has signed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Disabled people have the right to be involved in decisions that affect their lives. The NDIS has also been consistently described as providing ongoing, reasonable and necessary support to eligible participants. People have made significant and often irreversible life decisions based on that understanding. I am one of those people.
I ask the committee to reject this Bill until foundational supports are genuinely in place and accessible, require the government to publish downstream cost modelling, and require an independent human rights assessment before any changes proceed. I also ask the committee to recommend stronger legislative protection of disability rights so that access to essential supports is not dependent on shifting policy positions.