National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 3107
To whom it may concern. I am writing to you to oppose these amendments to the NDIS as I believe the changes will have devastating impacts on the lives of disabled Australians and their loved ones and does nothing to financially safeguard the NDIS or its participants by addressing ‘rorting’ and fraud. I am an unpaid carer for my mother who has been an NDIS participant for the last 5-6 years. In that time her NDIS funding has prevented her from requiring any emergency or hospital treatment and improved her quality of life. NDIS support has helped us access services that kept My mum and I from becoming homeless. I can say with 100% certainty that Community and Social Participation has had the biggest impact on her health and wellbeing and that any changes to the NDIS that frame these supports as dispensable are short-sighted and not fair or evidence-based. Cuts to these supports will socially, psychologically and literally physically alienate and harm participants.
I am also deeply concerned about proposed changes around the definition of the permanence of someones disability and requiring people to undergo and provide detailed documentation that they have tried all ‘appropriate treatments’.
The definition of appropriate treatments is vague and lacks nuance. It leaves disabled Australians vulnerable to having their human rights required to be voided in order to access supports and would cause great harm of medical abuse. Proposed notes in this legislation clarifying chemical and other forms of restraint do not fall under this definition are a step in the right direction but are not sufficient in upholding a disabled persons human rights and autonomy. We all deserve have choices about the kind of treatment we receive and to reasonably refuse treatments that are not appropriate to us as individuals. Treatment that is for example: not invasive, that is culturally appropriate, trauma informed and accessible. Australians should not have their supports and funding denied because they lack the supports or funds to access ‘all appropriate treatments’ that they need to be eligible for supports and funding. This is an absurd Catch 22 nightmare. Current requirements for NDIS access already hugely disadvantage people from a low socio-economic background, almost as if their low socio-economic background is directly related to their disability and unmet support needs. Access already requires a huge amount of documentation and evidence, thousands of dollars of diagnostic assessments and thousands of dollars of functional capacity assessment. These proposed changes will only further exacerbate this issue by adding more burden of proof on the vulnerable disabled person and their family. Is this really where we as a society want to cut costs? Leaving vulenerable people out in the cold?