National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 2988
RE: National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for
Future Generations) Bill 2026
Dear Committee Secreteriat,
I tried to find your terms of reference but couldn’t find them.
I wasn’t going to make a submission, they don’t seem to get published these days, I remember back when Liberal were in government and there would be so many in the thousands, so I know a lot more should be added then what there are. A lot has changed since then. Now, under Labor, it seems so disempowering to be a disabled person or carer. By carer, I mean the unpaid informal support - not the paid support worker who should never be called a carer.
Back when Liberals were in and they were trying to bring in all of these scary changes, we fought so hard, thought Labor were on our side. This turned out to be a huge mistake, not only has it created so much more cost by prolonging changes, there’s been pointless reviews, consultations and the like, simply wasting more and more money. Perhaps this was always the point, creating wealth for the fortunate at disabled people’s expense? Now, we are left with changes, much more severe then what the liberals ever proposed. We are left with changes being introduced abruptly and pushed through, with little consideration for those that these changes impact.
I find with the changes that have been implemented under Shorten such as support lists and the like, make NDIS more confusing and vague then ever, not only that, knowing about the changes coming to registrations, people having their plans drastically cut or being kicked off has been so disempowering, not knowing when a support is going to be taken away, what is the point in trying something new when your plan could be drastically changed in an instant with no proper rights to review like before? Then the separating of disabilities instead of whole person, how do you divvy up what bits come from NDIS when they’re all so intertwined, making functioning and capacity worse? It all seems pointless.
Now I read about these new changes that seem so drastic, removing disabled people’s rights. Labor, already gutted reasonable and neccasary and now you want to make what is left not even matter?
The worst bit is, NDIS has inflated support and therapy costs so much that it is even harder to fund your own supports now then it was before NDIS began. Everything is so expensive combined with the huge increase in costs of living and housing shortage. On top of that, a huge chunk of disabled people are stuck on job seeker that’s not even fit for an able person. How do you expect people to survive?
What does this mean by permenantly disabled in that a disabled person is meant to have tried everything first? I kind of thought this was already necassary, is this going to be even worse now? What is everything? How would that apply to an Autistic person or psychosocial? What about an ME-CFS person where realistically there isn’t anything? Even physical disabilities? I know someone who tried many years ago and
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 2988
was knocked back because they were told they could have their shoulders reconstructed. Um, this is complicated and is done backwards only being able to offer a maximum 50% of functioning with no guarantees. But not only that, this person is a red alert patient who is at great risk of dying on the table. I am sure she’s not the only one out there…
Now let’s look at social and community funding, oh boy. Where I live there still isn’t really adequate social and community supports that are empowering, it is still a growing industry. NDIS was meant to be an insurance scheme that invests in disabled people enabling them to build capacity and hopefully join the work force and pay taxes. Social and community funding is an important step towards that. You risk preventing disabled people from contributing to society.
On the other side of the coin for those unable to achieve employment etc you risk isolating them causing mental health and/or behavioural problems. Not only that, you risk the independence and ability to contribute and pay taxes for disabled people’s carers, meaning more people out of the workforce and on pensions to care for a disabled person, usually a family member.
Social and community has the most potential to build people up and create an inclusive society.
I know someone who died a few years ago, they had a good amount of funding in core supports for SIL, their pension would go on the rent, utilities and $100 for groceries per fortnight with a little left over that was managed by public trustee. It’s not really much to survive on. The core supports paid for the daily care in the SIL, which I question but I can’t prove anything. They did have a few hours a fortnight for a mentor but that was stopped a month or two before they died, they were told they were running out of funds. That was it. No social and community, making them very isolated. Social and community helps protect disabled people from being isolated and abused. It also helps their mental health from deteriorating. It helps to give them friendships and hope.
I know of another person, just starting adult hood and they have had to move 4 times this past year.
NDIS and housing, is unstable already and Labor want to make it so much worse?
So many things that could go wrong. I don’t thing Labor truly understands how much more poverty, dependence and risk to life, they will create.