10 July 2026
Committee Secretary
Senate Standing Committees on Community AƯairs
PO Box 6100
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600
community.aƯairs.sen@aph.gov.au
Via Web portal.
Dear Committee Secretary,
Re: National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for
Future Generations) Bill 2026
I am grateful for the opportunity to provide a submission on the bill. I will outline a little about myself and the points I wish to raise in relation to this bill.
I am a parent of a 23 year old lady. I also have three step-sons (ages roughly spanning 30-40 years) and another younger daughter who is 21 years old. My step-sons have four beautiful grandchildren. Our family have a dog and two cats too. Just an ordinary life, right?
Further background on myself is that I am an allied health professional and have worked for national institutions in public health and for myself since 2009. To perform these roles I completed and undergraduate and post graduate degrees. This was after leaving school at the age of 15 and working full-time while studying accounting at TAFE at night.
My personal interests and hobbies only developed in the last 6 years, after my divorce and after my daughters were out of school, because I have always worked and studied to improve my life choices and financial status and provided the care for all of my family. Now I enjoy personal interests in volunteering, doing bush regeneration and as a citizen scientist. My developing skills in playing music is a great joy as it brings me into a very special community and something I never thought I would ever do, coming from a poor working-class family.
Before having children I had done everything I could with two degrees and good employment, to be equipped financially to have children.
Yet now, as the rock of my family, I am one of the many victims of the cruel lottery that the NDIS set out to redress.
Here is my position that I ask you to consider in terms of the bill before you.
My overarching recommendation is that this bill not be passed.
Overall the new bill, National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026, is a misnomer. Securing the NDIS for future generations is merely a sales pitch. This bill in its current form is about reducing cost at the expense of current participants receiving reduced funds that were intended to support them live an ordinary life, reducing the total number of participants by shifting them to proposed schemes that do not exist as yet, and raising the level of diƯiculty even higher for future generations that might have the unfortunate win in the cruel lotttery.
Despite the prominence of fraud prevention in the public media that the Government found was more palatable for the Australian community to accept via Redbridge Media
focus groups (NDIA Reform Communications Testing: Round Two Focus Group Research Report
October 2023), only the amendments in Schedule 2 and, tangentially, a few parts of Schedule 1, have a clear connection to fraud. Fraud is largely irrelevant to the more substantive changes proposed by the Bill, and the way these changes will aƯect people with disability. The extent of fraud and non-compliance in the NDIS scheme has still not been identified by the parliamentary inquiry report on July 2, 2026, yet cuts to participant’s supports, community access and access to the scheme is already proposed in this legislation. So the less palatable cuts in the bill that Australians would not favour, are hidden by the media fanfare of rorts in the scheme.
I support all the recommendations made by the Justice and Equity Centre, Submission
- Supplementary submission and the Every Australian Counts submission 268. I support the submission of Intrepidus Law submission 404.
I am against the repealing of Section 31. This is the basis of our human rights.
Section 34A must be removed as it allows the Minister too broad and sweeping executive authority, that cannot be reviewed. This is a disturbing grab for power against those without a voice. Classes of participants, humans, can have funding or access cut in a whim without recourse to parliament. This is not an acceptable way to treat our most vulnerable in our society. This bill also allows the Minister to set participant care ratios, funding ratios or intensity ratios to “classes of participants”. In other words a return to forced group homes or other congregate living arrangements.
Proposed Section 50A in which a Successor Plan is introduced allows the Minister to decide any alteration to any participant’s plan which again is not a reviewable decision.
Regarding women, families and informal supports
The EAC submission 268 item 5.9 Parental responsibility and unpaid care notes that the Bill risks shifting greater responsibility onto families and unpaid carers, particularly mothers, single parents, disabled parents, ageing carers and families in regional and remote communities.
I agree that this is a serious human rights issue that is currently labelled “informal supports”. However informal supports are typically women who are overburdened and excluded from having a life outside of unpaid labour. The EAC reminds this committee and proponents of the bill that the UNCRPD Article 23 protects respect for home and family. Article 19 protects independent living and inclusion. An adult should not lose access to disability-related supports from the NDIS because a family member is presumed able to provide even more unpaid labour. Many families are already exhausted. Increasing reliance on unpaid care can lead to burnout, family breakdown, unsafe support gaps and crisis.
I would go further than the EAC submission and point out that structurally enforced unpaid labour of women is very much like slavery. Australian is a signatory to the UNCRPD and is opposed to Modern Slavery. Slavery is a criminal action under Australian law, unless the Government enacts this bill such that for parents, mostly women, who are parents of a disabled adult slavery is convenient and described as informal supports.
In conclusion, as a female, ageing single parent of an adult daughter with significant disabilities I can see the regression this Bill would take Australians into. Where adult disabled people are hidden, institutionalised and neglected. The Minister and Parliament need look no further than the Disability Royal Commission into neglect and abuse of people with disabilities to see the real harm that will come from this regressive legislation. Please do not pass this bill. We Australians require an equitable approach to redressing the cruel lottery, not a step towards modern slavery of women and hiding disabled people away from society once again.
Yours sincerely,