National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

I am writing to express my consternation of the proposed changes to the NDIS. Below I have highlighted economic, ethical, and cultural reasons for my concern.

Economic

I have been severely-to-profoundly deaf from meningitis since I was four. I wear a hearing aid in my right ear (my left hear does not hear anything) and rely on assistive technology to hear in a conversation of more than one person. I am an associate professor at a university and I rely on technology to do my job. If I did not have access to the NDIS, I would need to pay for the technology myself, which would leave me much poorer than my nondisabled counterparts. Given that, as the Australian Bureau of Statistics reports, in 2018, people aged 15–64 with disability were twice as likely to be unemployed (10%) as those without disability (4.6%), it is remiss that 160,000 people are due to be stripped from the NDIS; their capacity for employment may be compromised without support from the scheme.

Ethical

The Australian government can afford to support the NDIS. If gas companies were taxed, the country would have enough revenue to provide for disabled people. Research by The Australia Institute indicates that a tax on gas companies would raise revenue of $17 billion per year. Labor’s choice not to tax gas companies and / or to find alternative sources of revenue indicates a disregard for the welfare of disabled people in Australia and ignores their professed vision for disabled people as outlined in Australia’s Disability Strategy 2021 – 2031, namely, ‘for an inclusive Australian society that ensures people with disability can fulfil their potential, as equal members of the community.’

Cultural

The amendments propose to reduce funding for social, community and civic participation. This contravenes recommendations arising from the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability, for example Principle 3 in Recommendation 6.6 (Supported decision-making principles), which states, ’All people must be treated with dignity and

respect and supported to take risks to enable them to live their lives the way they choose, including

in their social and intimate relationships.’ It is hypocritical for the government to contravene the

advice arising from a Royal Commission that it commissioned.

Additionally, research indicates that when disabled people are exposed to disabled people, stigma against disability is lessened. Disabled artist and writer Sunaura Taylor explains to philosopher Judith Butler that one of the reasons she moved to San Francisco is because:

   Buildings are accessible and what  this does  is  that  it also leads  to a  social

   acceptability that somehow because there’s physical access, there’s simply more

   disabled people out and about in the world. And so people have learned how to

    interact with them and are used to them in a certain way. And so the physical access

   actually leads to a social access and acceptance.

I was reminded of Taylor’s words when, out exercising recently, I passed a young woman with Down syndrome walking along a coastal park trail with her carer. I reflected that I had probably only seen one or two other people with Down syndrome in my life. I wondered where these people were, and realised that, until the NDIS, they likely would not have had the resources to find a carer who could take them for a walk. The NDIS thereby facilitates recommendation 4.12 arising from the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability — Positive duty to promote disability equality and inclusion — and, more specifically, to ‘address stigma, stereotyping, prejudice, violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation affecting people with disability and to ‘foster good relations between people with disability and other members of the community’. As noted above, the government’s decision to act against its own advice is farcical.

At the heart of these changes is a deep injustice. Disabled people are among the most marginalised in Australia, and Labor is destroying its social licence in stripping them of their supports. We are a wealthy country and can afford to support those who do not have the same opportunities as to their nondisabled counterparts.

Associate Professor Jessica White.

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