Submission 3180 — Ms Narissa Niesler — NDIS Future Generations Bill

from the desk of

NARISSA NIESLER

Creative · Technologist · Inclusion Champion

1 June 2026

Inquiry: The National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment

(Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

Submission by: Narissa Niesler (née Wilson)

About Narissa Niesler

I am a proud disabled woman who lives on the Sunshine Coast with my husband. I have Spinal Muscular Atrophy and have used an electric wheelchair since the age of

6. I have been an NDIS participant since the scheme’s introduction, and before that I self-directed my supports under state funding through a hosting model. I have been directing my own support formally and informally since the age of 17.

   I submitted to this same committee in March 2021 regarding the proposed

Independent Assessments (Submission 236). Many of the concerns I raised then are directly relevant to this bill. That submission is on the public record.

I have been an active participant in disability advocacy for over two decades. I served as a CRU Advisory Group member, and as a CRU Board Director and Company Secretary. I have presented at state disability conferences, international keynote speaker, served as a panellist at parliamentary and community events, and advocated for self-direction across that time. I am not speculating about what this bill will do to people’s lives. I have been in the rooms where this policy is shaped. I understand the system from both sides. My submission comes from that experience.

I am plan-managed, with support coordination and self-direct my ‘service for one’. I am the direct employer of my Disability Support Professionals (Support Worker)

who  I choose, who  I employ.  I direct how they work, and what we accomplish

together to achieve my daily activities. I am the CEO of my own life. The NDIS made that possible.

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My recommendations are:

1. Remove the “financial sustainability” qualifier from the objects of the Act. The objects must remain unconditionally person-centred.

2. Do not proceed with standardised functional capacity assessment. It will repeat every failure of the 2021 Independent Assessment pilot.

3. Do not proceed with the 50% reduction to social, civic and community participation budgets.

4. Restore plan carryover of unspent funds for self directing participants.

5. Ensure all proposed changes include co-design with NDIS participants run by DPOs not consultation after the fact.

6. Exempt participants with progressive, degenerative, or neuromuscular conditions from the reassessment conditions in proposed section 48A. Restore the 21-day response time for these participants.

7. Restore “arising from an impairment” in proposed section 34(1)(aa), or define “directly from” to cover cascading and compounding effects of a primary impairment.

8. Accessible and appropriate contact and mandatory risk assessment before any plan suspension under proposed section 40A. Legislate a clear

reinstatement pathway.

9. Exempt lifelong neuromuscular conditions from the treatment exhaustion requirement in proposed section 25A. Restore the protection from NDIA v Davis [2022] FCA 1002.

10. Amend the definition of functional capacity in proposed section 9B to account for the person’s use of assistive technology, home modifications, and support workers. A definition that strips these out does not measure functional capacity. It measures diagnosis within a medical model .

11. Remove or clarify the “day-to-day living costs” principle in proposed section 17B(3) to make explicit that the contingency held by self-directed participants as part of their financial governance is not a day-to-day living cost.

12. Exempt individualised self-directed support arrangements from the lower- cost comparator requirement in proposed section 34(1A). Years of built knowledge and relationship cannot be replaced by a lower hourly rate.

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Introduction:

The introduction of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) transformed my capacity as an individual and Australian citizen. The NDIS increased my contribution to my communities and enhanced my valued role as an individual within its inaugural stages however, the last two years have felt like imprisonment within my own home and life.

Currently the NDIS claims to focus on a ‘person-centred’, ‘goals focused’ approach yet the changes proposed in this bill risk diluting the existence of any disabled person and quite frankly re-introducing and reforming and institutionalisation of disabled people.

There is no doubt that the NDIS has improved my life however on the other hand it has quite frankly destroyed and hope left of a life living that is independent and individualised. Reforming the NDIS must include an apology to disabled people as well as reconsideration of this bill. This must remain at the top of our government agenda. We must remember that the NDIS is a government lead initiative by the people for the people. It is the government initiative that Australia has got right. Without government funding, disabled people would be valued and unable to contribute to our society. This bill must not undo what has already been built.

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The objects of the Act:

This bill proposes to amend section 3(1)(d) to add the words “so far as is consistent with the financial sustainability of the scheme.”

Those words have never been in this Act before. They should not be in it now.

The NDIS was built on a simple premise: that people with disability have the same right to a good life as anyone else, and that the Australian government will fund the supports necessary to make that possible. The financial sustainability of the scheme is an operational responsibility of government, not a constraint that should sit above a participant’s right to support.

Once those words are in the objects, they become available as justification for every decision that gives a participant less. Every review, every appeal, every planning conversation. The scheme’s budget becomes a legitimate reason to reduce what someone receives. That is a fundamental change to what the NDIS is. It is not a technical amendment. It is a values amendment, and it moves the scheme away from the people it was built to serve.

The Bill goes further. It inserts a new section 17B, scheme sustainability principles. This section states, among other things, that participants should be responsible for their day-to-day living costs, including living costs incurred whether or not a person has a disability. That sentence has real consequence for some people with a disability as day-to-day living costs can actually be life-saving expenditure that reduces costly hospitalisation or medical expenses. Characterising this as a living expense that should be paid by the disabled person or their family themselves when it is a direct impact of the disability. It is unrealistic to expect a person’s support system (if they even have any), to absorb the unexpected of a health event, changing support availability or equipment failure. Don’t let this be a technical adjustment that people have to bear themselves.

I also want to name the process that produced this  bill.  It was introduced to

Parliament on 14 May 2026. The original Senate inquiry close date was 29 May 2026 which is fifteen days from introduction. That deadline was extended only after significant community pressure. A bill of 109 pages that reshapes the foundational objects of the Act, cuts participation funding by half, and reintroduces a rejected assessment framework and provides the most vulnerable group with significant impairments fifteen days for public response, is laughable. People with disabilities should not be spoken about and should always be included in conversations about them. This process is the same violation at a larger scale: decisions about our lives, made without us, on a timeline that ensures we cannot properly respond.

I ask that the financial sustainability amendment be removed from the bill entirely, and that the consultation process be extended and genuinely co-designed.

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a) Schedule 1, Part 1 — Functional capacity assessment In 2021, I participated in the Independent Assessment pilot. I described that

experience to this committee in Submission 236. It was “3 hours of justifying my existence for data, that may not fit the spreadsheet in order to receive funding for supports, for my basic human rights.”

The assessor sat at my dining room table for 3 hours with minimal eye contact and a coldness towards my life. The questions were confusing, not relevant to my situation, not flexible to my answers, and at times intrusive and dehumanising. The assessor took it upon themselves to answer questions about my disability based on what they saw in front of them, not on what they knew about my life. Service providers and allied health who have worked alongside me for years are the people who truely understand my needs. A stranger with a laptop does not.

That assessment also required a conversation with someone who knows me well about me, without me in the room. My husband and I refused to participate in that part. As I said in Submission 236: “People with disabilities should not be spoken about and should always be included in conversations about them.” We refused because it goes against everything we believe about inclusive and meaningful lives. That principle does not change because the framework has been renamed.

That pilot was stopped. The community said no.

This bill reintroduces the same framework under the language of “consistent, objective and evidence-based assessment of functional capacity.” The structure is identical: a defined tool, applied by an assessor who does not know me, producing a result that determines my funding.

My functional capacity cannot be captured in a single assessment. It changes depending on the day, the season, my pain levels, whether I have slept and if I was able to get transferred into my wheelchair by paid supports. A standardised tool cannot hold that complexity. It will flatten my individuality into a spreadsheet, as it did in 2021. In my earlier submission I said that “introducing a standardised

assessment  tool  will  dilute a person’s  individuality and reform an

institutionalisation of people with disabilities.“ That remains true.

The Bill defines functional capacity in the new section 9B as the person’s ability to undertake an activity without assistance from other people, assistive technology, or modifications. That definition strips out everything I use to function in the world. My electric wheelchair does not exist in that calculation. My support workers do not

exist. My home modifications, the  sliding door, the  tiled  floors, the switches

positioned so I can reach them, Siri, none of them exist. It’s hard enough when the electricity goes out let alone a part of the bill removing it because of a definition clause.

The assessment does not measure my functional capacity. It measures what would remain if everything I have built were taken away. That is not an assessment of my life. It is an assessment of my diagnosis.

I urge the committee to oppose the functional capacity assessment framework in this bill.

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b) Schedule 1, Part 4 — The 50% reduction to social, civic and community participation budgets

This is the provision I am most alarmed by. Goodbye social life, and hello institution!

The Bill does not name a specific percentage. It delegates that determination to the

Minister by  legislative instrument, with no  floor and no sunset  clause. The

government has announced a 50% reduction as the intended starting point. That discretion does not expire. It can be used again.

Late last year and earlier this year I posted on my social media about how I don’t want to be a disabled person any more. This isn’t because my arms and legs don’t work but because disabled people are forced to rely on a system that constantly berates them and makes them feel like a burden on society. The NDIS is a broken

system. This entrenched infrastructure that cuts  social,  civic and community

participation budget is directly placing disabled people institutionalisation within their own homes within their own communities.

In December 2025,  I posted that  I haven't been to the hairdresser in over a year.

Now that has been nearly 2 years. Going to my hairdresser would be any 40-year old woman’s downtime, that time to groom themselves and have themselves looking ready for their life and work. Instead of going to the hairdresser regularly,

this activity  will be stripped and  I  will have to go back to improvising. This

completely disregard any social role valorisation pathways that have been made within our society today. This means disabled people no longer have the capacity all the right to look and feel good. They must just make do with what they have in their institution.

My participation in community life is not a bonus. It is not a discretionary extra that

sits on top of my "real" supports.  It  is how  I build and sustain the web of

relationships and safeguards that makes everything else possible. In my published

writing on self-direction,  I have described how it takes years,  sometimes many

years to build that web. You cannot shortcut it, and you cannot recover it quickly once it is gone. Maybe my mother was right, I should have never watched the movie

go interrupted.  I feel like my days are coming,  I might be sharing a room with

Winona Ryder or Angelina Jolie in the institution.

There is also a regression risk I have lived and documented. Before I self-directed, I lived under a service model that enforced bed curfews. Friends stopped visiting because workers told them it was my bedtime, because their shift finished at 10pm. My social life was not mine to manage.

The participation cuts create conditions for exactly that kind of regression: workers

managing schedules  tightly because the funding does not allow  for proper

community support, visits getting cut, outings becoming exceptions rather than the norm. I have already lived that. I should not have to describe it to this committee as a future risk. I should not have to miss out on going to the Sunday markets with my husband or meeting a friend for coffee.

Participation funding is also connected directly to my home. My home is what it is because I can leave it on my own terms. I arranged my own housing specifically to have a life I could live, a sliding door I designed to operate independently, tiled floors for hoist mobility, modifications so I could move freely. Home sovereignty and community presence are not separate things. If the funding that supports me being in the world is cut by half, what I can do with that door becomes less.

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The government frames participation support growth as a problem. The growth happened because for decades before the NDIS, people with disability were denied these supports. They were isolated and told their presence in the community was not a priority. The NDIS said otherwise. The growth in participation spending is what access looks like when it finally arrives. Cutting it by half is not a reform. It is a return.

The NDIS exists, in part, to support people with disability to hold valued roles in society. Not just to receive support but to be present as a wife, a community member, an advocate, a daughter, an aunty, an employer and a friend. My participation in my community is what makes those roles real. You cannot hold a valued role from home, in isolation, with no funding to be anywhere.

You are cutting the mechanism by which disabled people hold a valued place in the world. I ask the committee to oppose the participation budget reduction entirely.

c) Schedule 1, Part 5 — Unspent funds not carrying over I manage my NDIS funding the way I manage any business. The business of my

support  includes budgets,  reviews, and contingencies  built  in  for  illness,  for

unexpected needs, for moments when support must be drawn from a different part of the plan. Applying structured financial governance alongside a long-term vision for my life has worked for me. I have written about this framework in detail. The two have to work together. The float I carry is not waste. It is strategy. The float of unspent funds is not to be misused but to put into good practice of what can be ‘saved’ and put back into meaningful support.

Removing the carryover of unspent funds punishes the people who plan well. It creates pressure to spend before the plan end date for the sake of spending. This just creates unnecessary waste and is exactly the kind of waste the government says it wants to prevent. It removes the contingency that self-directed participants rely on to manage a support system that does not always go to plan.

For participants who self-manage, unspent funds are not evidence of over-funding. They are evidence of good management. The response to good management should not be to take the funds back. Additionally, we need to consider that unspent funds often can also mean unserviced supports. Do we need to be asking the question are people receiving paid supports, can they access paid support, is there a broken system?

Part 6 of the Bill also inserts a new requirement at section 34(1A): when deciding whether a support represents value for money, the CEO must consider whether

comparable supports are  available  at lower  cost.  For a  service-for-one

arrangement, the implication is clear, a registered provider can be cited as a lower cost comparator. But a registered provider cannot replicate what I have built. My team knows me. They know my communication, my routines or as I like to call them support sequences because I’m not a routine, my health patterns, my risk indicators. That knowledge was built across years of deliberate relationship and leadership. It does not appear in a cost comparison. Section 34(1A) has no column for what I have built. It has a column for hourly rates.

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d) Schedule 1, Part 2 — Restricted plan reassessment Proposed section 48A. Commences 7 days after Royal Assent.

I requested a plan reassessment. My SMA has progressed significantly. My functional abilities have reduced. Secondary conditions have developed because of that progression, which is what SMA does over time. That request was made more than three months ago. I am still waiting. This is the current system, before this Bill passes. Under the proposed section 48A, I may have faced additional conditions before I could even make that request and required to demonstrate my deterioration had already reached a specified threshold. It would not matter that I could see the trajectory coming. Only that it had already arrived.

Part 2 of the Bill replaces the current open reassessment process with a multi condition test. To request reassessment, a participant must demonstrate: (a) a significant change to their ongoing support needs arising from an impairment; AND (b) that the change results from either a significant and ongoing alteration to their functional capacity, or an unanticipated and significant change to their personal or environmental circumstances. Both conditions must be met. The functional capacity alteration must itself be significant and ongoing and must directly relate to a change in an existing impairment or arise from a new one. If the conditions are not met, the request is refused. Where they are met, the NDIA now has 90 days to respond, up from 21. And instead of reassessing, the CEO may redirect a participant to a new framework plan, which is not a reviewable decision.

SMA is a progressive, degenerative condition. It does not hold steady. The way I manage my life and the way I have managed it for 39 years (#not40yet) is by

staying ahead of change, not by responding to crisis.  I plan,  I review,  I meet with

people about my support and services and I make time each day to look at what is and not working within my life and support. I wake up each day committed to the decision to self direct. This is proactive by design this is how self-directed supports, a service for one works.

Part 2 removes the mechanism that makes proactive management possible. Under

this provision,  I cannot request a reassessment until  I have already experienced a

substantial reduction in my ability to perform daily activities. I must already be substantially worse. That is not early intervention, it is crisis management legislated as policy. For someone with a progressive condition, being required to reach substantial deterioration before asking for help is not a safeguard. It is a trap. It’s re institutionalising disabled people.

The 90-day response window compounds this. Even where the test is met, I wait three months with an outdated plan while my condition continues to progress. This will put disabled people who are already marginalised into further vulnerable situations. I am asking the committee to exempt participants with diagnosed progressive, degenerative, or neuromuscular conditions from the reassessment conditions in proposed section 48A; restore the 21-day response time for these participants; and ensure any CEO decision to redirect a participant to a new framework plan is a reviewable decision.

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e) Schedule 1, Part 3 — Strengthening the link between impairment and support Proposed section 34(1)(aa). Commences 7 days after Royal Assent.

Part 3 changes a single word in the Act but the consequence is significant. The existing law funds supports where the need “arises from” an impairment. This Bill changes that to “arises directly from” an impairment. In February 2026, the Federal Court confirmed in CEO of the NDIA v Eastham [2026] FCA 147 that the law requires supports to be funded even where a need has multiple causes, as long as one cause is the qualifying impairment. The Government calls this an “unintended expansion.” This Bill overrides that decision.

I have had SMA since birth. I am 39 years old. My body does not produce a single isolated need that traces cleanly to one cause. It produces cascading, interacting effects: respiratory function affected by posture, fatigue shaped by the cumulative load of a body that works harder to do what other bodies do automatically, pain management built around a specific set of supports and positions that took years to develop. These needs do not arise “directly” from SMA in the way a simple mechanical cause-and-effect would suggest. They arise from 39 years of living in a

body with SMA. That  is the nature  of progressive neuromuscular  disability.

Additionally, because of the NDIS, because of good support, because of technology and science disabled people are living longer! Life for a 40-year-old person with

SMA  is unknown, we don't know what the effects of the disability  is, what's

happening to the body, because people have not lived this long! It’s uncharted territory for many people.

Under this provision, every one of those needs becomes challengeable. A planner or an automated system can determine that the link is not “direct” enough. The word “directly” is not defined in the Bill. There is no guidance on what it means. It will be filled by whoever processes my plan. Did they study medicine?

In 2021, I described my independent assessment as “3 hours of justifying my existence for data, that may not fit the spreadsheet in order to receive funding for supports, for my basic human rights.” Part 3 adds another spreadsheet column. This time, the column is unlabelled.

I am asking the committee to restore the previous language “arising from an impairment” in proposed section 34(1)(aa); or, if “directly from” is retained, provide a legislative definition that explicitly covers needs arising from the cascading or compounding effects of a primary impairment.

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f) Schedule 1, Part 7 — Plan suspension and participant revocation Proposed section 40A. Commences 1 October 2026.

Part 7 allows the NDIA to suspend my plan if it makes “reasonable attempts” to contact me and I am not contactable. This is pretty much the one that is going to piss off most of the disabled community. Did you get AI to write this part of the clause for you? Let’s get real here! NDIA call you from an unknown number, they often text you at the time they’re calling or you receive it while you’re receiving the phone call or if it’s a really bad day, my support worker has probably forgot to charge my phone, forgot to to put it on my wheelchair and I can’t even access my phone anyway! Don’t forget this happens quite frequently in my day-to-day, not to

mention all the other things like if  I answer your call while I'm eating  I will most

likely 100% aspirate, so would that be classified as negligence on the NDIA’s behalf?

If my plan remains suspended for 90 days, my status as a participant can be

revoked,  I lose access to the NDIS entirely, whoopsie! The  Bill does not define

“reasonable attempts.” It does not require those attempts to accommodate my accessibility needs. It does not require the NDIA to consider whether suspension would place me at risk before acting.

I know what a hard week looks like. It looks like BiPAP through the day, a breathing machine that keeps me alive while my body is in severe pain from the complications of my condition. During those days I still complete the high-priority administration that keeps my support system running. What waits until I am well enough, a few days later are the calls, the communications, the lower-priority contact. Sometimes I organise my support workers to assist with those tasks when I cannot do them myself. That is not disengagement. That is a self-directed system operating exactly as designed, with triage, with delegation, and with the understanding that some things can wait and some things cannot.

My model of support involves contact across multiple channels support and services that I engage. During a difficult week, a health event, an acute period, a period of household strain, those channels are not reliably monitored in real time. Let’s face it, I definitely don’t go to the toilet on my own, don’t shower on my own, don’t eat on my own and I definitely don’t pick my nose on my own so having a moment for my own headspace is non-existent. A household of strain is actually putting it lightly. This is not a failure of my character, it’s a complex life, living with disability and burden by a system that designs bills like this one especially section 40A creates a structural problem: it requires a participant to initiate contact during the exact period a health event made them unreachable. The barrier is not the health event. The barrier is a system that treats unreachability during a health crisis as a compliance failure rather than as evidence that the participant needed their supports most.

If my plan is suspended, my supports stop. A household where one person cannot breathe without support cannot absorb that outcome. A life where I can literally not get out of bed without someone helping me.

The Bill does provide a narrow window: if I contact the Agency within 90 days of the suspension decision, the CEO must act to either cease the suspension or make a new information request within 28 days. But that window requires me to initiate contact during the very health crisis that made me unreachable in the first place. If the suspension continues past 90 days, the CEO may revoke my participant status entirely under the amended section 30. Once revoked, there is no reinstatement process described in the Bill. Reapplying means starting from the beginning.

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Not to mention, what about privacy? What about all those people that have to divulge and share their life with paid support or people that really don’t want to know their business just so they can access the phone call to call the NDIS?

I am asking the committee to: define “reasonable attempts” to require accessibility appropriate contact methods based on each participant’s documented communication needs and support arrangements; require a formal risk assessment before any plan suspension, with suspension prohibited where it would place a participant at risk of harm; and legislate a clear, time-limited reinstatement process that does not require a participant to reapply from the beginning.

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g) Schedule 1, Part 8 — Tightening permanence: the treatment exhaustion requirement Proposed section 25A. Commences 1 January 2028.

Part 8 changes what it means for an impairment to be “permanent” under the Act. From 2028, an impairment will only be considered permanent — and therefore NDIS-qualifying — if: all “appropriate treatment” to remedy or alleviate it has been undertaken; no other treatment is likely to materially improve its impact; and it is likely to be lifelong. “Appropriate treatment” means treatment that is evidence based, can reliably be expected to materially improve, reverse, or alleviate the impairment, and is regularly undertaken in Australia.

This reverses NDIA v Davis [2022] FCA 1002, in which the Federal Court found that where treatment exists, but a person cannot realistically access it — because of cost, geography, or other reasons — that fact does not bar them from accessing the NDIS. This Bill overturns that finding.

I have SMA. Treatments for SMA have expanded significantly in recent years Spinraza, Zolgensma, and others. These treatments can slow the progression of the condition. They do not reverse it. They do not make it not-SMA. Clinical suitability, age at diagnosis, disease progression, and personal medical decisions all affect whether any given treatment is appropriate for any given person.

The word “alleviate” in proposed section 25A sets a very low bar. A treatment that produces any improvement however partial, however temporary could be deemed to alleviate the impairment. If such a treatment exists and I have not accessed it, the Bill as written could be used to argue my impairment is not permanent. I have been living with SMA for 39 years. My impairment is not a status awaiting administrative confirmation.

"Appropriate treatment regularly performed  in Australia"  is not the same as

“appropriate treatment accessible to me.” Cost, clinical suitability, geography, and informed patient choice all affect access. The Bill reverses Davis and removes the protection that recognised this reality.

I am asking the committee to: exempt participants with lifelong neuromuscular

conditions  including SMA from the treatment exhaustion requirement  at

reassessment; amend the definition of “appropriate treatment” to require that it be accessible to the specific participant, not merely available in Australia in the abstract; and restore the protection established in NDIA v Davis: that inability to access treatment does not bar NDIS access.

The provisions compound and together they close a loop.

I want to close this section by naming what these provisions do together, not separately.

Part 3 changes what supports can be funded to those “directly” arising from my impairment placing the cascading needs that 39 years of SMA produces at risk of

challenge. Part 2 means  I cannot request reassessment unless  I have already

substantially deteriorated. Part 5 means my plan auto-renews without review and any one-off or time-limited contingency funding is lost at end date. Part 6 means the NDIA must now weigh scheme sustainability against my individual need in every planning decision. Part 7 means that if I miss contact during a health event

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during the very deterioration these provisions force me to reach before I can ask for help, my plan is suspended and, after 90 days, revoked.

These are not five independent risks. They form a closed loop. And Part 8 waits at the end of it: if I reach the point of reassessment after all of this, the Bill may then require me to demonstrate that I have exhausted all appropriate treatment for SMA before my participation in the scheme is confirmed. A participant with a progressive condition deteriorates. They cannot reassess until that deterioration is substantial. Their plan auto-renews unchanged. Sustainability caps constrain what can be funded. They are harder to reach during a health crisis. They miss contact. They lose access.

These provisions do not just reduce services. They dismantle the conditions under which a valued life is possible. My ability to hold the roles that make my life good as a wife, as a community member, as an advocate, as the employer of my own support team depends on my capacity to plan proactively, to maintain community presence, to direct my support with the financial governance of someone running a small organisation. Take away proactive reassessment, cut participation funding,

remove  carryover, subordinate my needs  to scheme  sustainability, and the

mechanism that makes those roles real is gone. What remains is not a disabled life well-supported. It is a disabled life managed.

That is what this Bill, as written, produces for participants like me. I am asking the

committee to see  it whole not as a  list of provisions, but as a system and to

understand that the people who will fall through it are not the ones who were doing the wrong thing. They are the ones who were already managing the most complex lives.

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Conclusion

I have been living a good life. A life I have designed, with support I have directed, within a system that trusted me to do that. The NDIS made that possible. Not perfectly. Not without effort. But it gave me the framework to be the director of my own life.

This bill moves in the opposite direction. It tightens who deserves access. It cuts the funding that enables community presence. It removes the financial flexibility that self-direction requires. It adds language to the objects of the Act that positions the scheme’s budget above the participant’s right to a good life. And it does all of this on a timeline that makes genuine consultation impossible.

I am asking the committee not to let that happen. The NDIS needs to be improved. I am not arguing otherwise. But improvement means building on what works person centred planning, genuine choice and control, individualised funding not dismantling it.

People with disabilities should not be spoken about and should always be included in conversations about them. It is my hope that this inquiry will ensure the voices of participants are genuinely heard before any of these changes proceed.

I want to be disabled again!

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