NDIA Accountability Project

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Submission 3225 — Dr Damien Williams — NDIS Future Generations Bill

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From ‘demand-driven’ to supply constraint: on the use of ‘sustainability’ to justify cuts to the NDIS.

Summary: in this brief submission, my aim is to bring to the attention of the Senate the Australian Government’s use of the term sustainability as an ideological cover for its desire to reduce the price and size of the NDIS. The pursuit of this vague and ill-defined principle unfairly punishes some of the most vulnerable members of our society, while contradicting evidence that the scheme offers a positive return on investment. It further diminishes the rights of disabled people to full equality in our society, which Australia has committed itself to uphold in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of

Persons With Disabilities.1

  1. My name is Dr Damien Williams. I live in Melbourne, on Bunurong/Boon Wurrong Country. I am a graduate of the University of Melbourne, with a PhD in History. For the past ten years, I have lived with several permanent, stable and disabling chronic conditions. I am not an NDIS participant, but I have worked in the sector as a researcher for a support coordinator and as a non-registered provider for NDIS participants.

  2. While I thank the Senate for the opportunity to make this submission, I also note that the amount of time that Parliament has allowed for the public to respond to the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 (hereafter, ‘the Bill’) is far too short. There ought to have been more generous allowances made for the limitations in time, energy and resources that participants, their families and supporters experience in living with disability. The short timeframe for responses has caused an unnecessary level of anxiety and stress among people who are most likely to be affected by the amendments in the Bill. Further, I note that the committee’s website lacks an easy English version for people with cognitive impairment, acquired brain injury or other

    conditions that make reading difficult. If Parliament genuinely wishes for people of all abilities to

participate in the committee process, then the ways it takes submissions should be urgently reviewed and improved.

  1. Disability is something that can affect us at any time during our lives. It can be present at birth, arise through illness, or come about through misadventure or accident. The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) reported in 2022 that over five million Australians, or more than one-in-five residents, now live

1 Ratified 17 July 2008.

with one form or another of disability.2 Most of us are only a single life event away from becoming disabled, making it an ever-present risk.

  1. In advanced, capitalist societies like Australia, risk is the background static to our lives. We can mitigate against risk by taking out insurance products with private insurers, or by legislating for single-payer public insurance schemes such as Medicare or the NDIS. Knowing that the risk of an adverse event will be mitigated by insurance, helps to bring about peace of mind. It enlarges our ambitions and lifts our horizons. It fosters trust and encourages people to pursue their goals, in spite of risks they may face. For carers of people with disabilities who are parents or relatives, the NDIS helps to reassure them that their child or loved one will be adequately supported after they die, or become incapacitated. The proposed amendments in the Bill unfairly chip away at that peace of mind through the application of a principle of sustainability, all in the name of reducing the number of participants to 600,000 by 2030-31.

  2. It is not the fault of participants that the Australian Government underestimated the number of people who would successfully make a claim on the NDIS. When Prime Minister Julia Gillard rose in the House of Representatives to speak during the second reading of the NDIS Bill in November 2012, she said:

This is a complex bill, yet at its heart is a very simple moral insight:

Disability can affect any of us and therefore it affects all of us.3

Gillard went on:

The risk of disability is universal, so our response must be universal. The only solution is therefore

a  nation-wide, demand-driven system of care  tailored to the needs of each individual and

established on a durable, long-term basis. That can only be accomplished through the united effort of the community through the positive action of government, supported by the Australian people through our public revenues. Therefore, this bill will inscribe in our laws a substantial and enduring reform that will fundamentally change the nature of disability care and support in this nation:

the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

The scheme is ambitious, and necessarily so. Because more than 400,000 people are living with significant and permanent disabilities. Because carers are required to stretch the bonds of obligation and kinship past breaking point. Because the nation is being robbed of the human and economic potential of people living with disability and the contribution they can make to our shared future. Because while the promise of fairness and equality that lies at the core of our national ethos is denied to some Australians, we are all diminished.4

2 ABS, “Media release: 5.5 million Australians have disability,” available online at https://www.abs.gov.au/media-centre/media-releases/55-million-australians-have-disability. Accessed 28 May 2026. 3 Hansard, 29 November 2012. 4 Ibid.

  1. In a report published in 2021, Per Capita calculated that the return on every dollar invested in the NDIS was $2.25.5 This raises an important question for the committee to consider: with an ROI of $2.25, how can the increase in the number of participants beyond the figure of 400,000 assumed in 2012 suddenly make the scheme unsustainable? Yes, the costs are larger, but so too are the benefits.

  2. In 2024, former support worker and independent expert reviewer, Chris Coombes, published a reflection on the Per Capita report in which he concluded:

For a Scheme that was introduced to give effect to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities, there’s very little discussion in the sustainability space about the value attached to human rights. How much value do disabled people attach to accessing bathrooms, buildings and workplaces? Where’s the modelling on sustainability based on what disabled people value?6

  1. To that, we could ask about what workers in the NDIS value. After all, they are the ones who create and recreate the NDIS every day of the week, but they have no formal representation on its board or say when it comes to questions about the Scheme’s performance and long-term viability. The government could have chosen to rectify that situation in this Bill, but chose not to. This is a great opportunity missed, because when it comes to matters of financial mismanagement or bad practice, workers are usually the first to notice it.

  2. When we read, for example, in Part 6 of the Bill, to repeal paragraph 3(1)(d) and replace it with ‘(d) provide NDIS supports for participants in the NDIS that are reasonable and necessary, so far as is consistent with the financial sustainability of the scheme’, we can see how the Government’s focus in this Bill is on the cost side of the equation, to the detriment of the scheme’s benefits. As Coombes notes above, this may also be to the detriment of disabled people’s human rights. It could see the Australian Government being placed in the embarrassing situation of needing to defend itself at the UN against accusations that it has breached a convention designed to protect those rights.

  3. If I had more time and energy, I would like to expand further on the points raised here about the use of sustainability in this Bill. I would urge the committee to recommend that the Government avoid using such a broad term to justify cuts to its spending and find a better way to incorporate the views of participants and NDIS workers in calculating the benefits that the scheme brings to our society.

1 June 2026.

5 Per Capita, “Not a One-Stop Shop: the NDIS in Australia’s social infrastructure,” available at https://percapita.org.au/our_work/not-a-one-stop-shop-the-ndis-in-australias-social-infrastructure/. Accessed 1 June 2026. 6 Chris Coombes, “Scheme Sustainability - Something doesn’t add-up,” available at https://teamdsc.com.au/resources/scheme-sustainability-something-doesnt-add-up/. Accessed 1 June 2026.