Personal Submission to the Senate Inquiry into National

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

Why I Am Making This Submission

I am making this submission in a personal capacity.

I graduated as a Speech Pathologist in 1994 and, largely by accident, found my first job in the disability sector at The Spastic Centre, now known as Cerebral Palsy Alliance. At the time, disability was not considered an attractive career path. Funding was scarce. Salaries were low. Services were stretched beyond capacity. Many talented professionals chose other sectors.

I stayed because I loved the work. I loved my clients, I loved their families. I had the best, most clever, most innovative – on – the – smell – of – an – oil- rag colleagues that you could ever meet.

Over the next three decades I built my career alongside Australians with disability and their families. I studied, researched, published, attended conferences, presented at conferences, led teams, advised governments, supported providers and worked across both government and non-government settings.

Most importantly, I have spent more than thirty years walking alongside people with disability and the families who love them. That experience is why I feel compelled to make this submission.

I am concerned that much of the current discussion about the NDIS has forgotten why the scheme existed in the first place.

I Remember What Came Before

I remember the disability system before the NDIS.

I remember children who could not access communication devices because there was no funding available. Families would spend months, and sometimes years, applying to multiple charities in the hope of raising enough money for equipment that should have been considered essential.

I remember waiting lists. Long waiting lists. Waiting lists that stretched for months and sometimes years. I remember families being told there was simply no service available.

I remember people being forced to accept whatever service happened to exist because choice and control were concepts that did not apply to disability support.

If an appropriate service did not exist, families either paid privately or went without. Many simply went without.

I also remember the institutions. I worked in some of them.

The staff were often caring people doing their best under impossible circumstances, but there was never enough funding, never enough resources and never enough support.

Many people lived lives focused on survival rather than participation.

People rarely left the facility. Community life was limited. Opportunity was limited. Expectation was limited. Disabled Aussies were invisible to the general population.

I remember people having all of their teeth removed because ongoing dental treatment was considered too difficult or too expensive.

I remember one person dying after becoming so severely constipated that they were vomiting faecal matter.

These are difficult memories. They are also important memories.

Because this is what disability support looked like when governments failed to invest

in people.

The Promise of the NDIS

The NDIS changed almost everything. For the first time in my career I saw a genuine national commitment to improving the lives of Australians with disability.

Disabled Aussies were, for the first time – visible. At the beach. At the shops. At concerts and movies and street markets.

The market responded. Providers emerged. Innovation flourished.

Assistive technology became accessible. Therapy became accessible. Support became accessible. Families who had spent years fighting simply to be heard finally had some ability to influence the supports they received.

Children gained access to equipment that previously would have required years of fundraising. Adults gained opportunities to participate in their communities. People obtained jobs that would previously have been out of reach. Parents returned to work.

People with disability became visible in everyday Australian life.

For the first time, many Australians began to understand that disability inclusion was not simply about keeping people safe. It was about helping people live meaningful and connected lives.

The People I Have Met Along the Way

Over thirty years I have met thousands of people whose lives have been shaped by disability.

I have met parents who fought battles every single day on behalf of their children

while carrying levels of exhaustion that most people will never understand.

I have met children who found their voice through communication technology after

years of being unable to tell the world what they were thinking. I have met adults

who experienced genuine independence for the first time. I have met support workers 谁 routinely put the needs of others ahead of their own. I have met therapists who

stayed in a difficult sector because they believed every person deserved the

opportunity to reach their potential.

I have met small business owners who mortgaged homes, worked evenings and

weekends, and carried enormous personal risk because they wanted to create services

that did not previously exist.

The public conversation often speaks about participants, providers and workers as if

they are separate groups. In reality they are part of the same ecosystem.

When one part suffers, all parts suffer.

The Cracks Were Always There

It is important to acknowledge that the NDIS was never perfect. There were policy

gaps. There were weaknesses in regulation. There were opportunities for exploitation.

There were providers who behaved poorly. There were participants who misused

funding.

These problems should have been addressed.

However, many of the challenges now being used to justify significant reform are not

solely the result of participant behaviour or provider behaviour. They are also the

result of government decisions and administrative failures.

• My experience working through the transition period exposed me to many of these
• challenges firsthand. Concerns were raised repeatedly, too often they were ignored.
• The Agency became increasingly resistant to feedback from the very people working
• directly with participants and families.
• Planning quality remained inconsistent. Training remained inconsistent. Systems
• remained inadequate. Participants routinely received plans that did not reflect their
• actual needs. Families were provided with incorrect information.
• Providers and families spent countless hours navigating avoidable reviews,
• reassessments and appeals. Resources that should have been spent supporting people
• were instead spent correcting preventable mistakes. The cost of those failures has
• been enormous in both emotional and financial terms.

How We Lost the Narrative

Something else happened over the life of the NDIS. The public narrative changed at the hands of a very effective government PR campaign.

The conversation shifted away from inclusion and opportunity and became dominated by stories of fraud, waste and misuse. The NDIS became a public punching bag.

Today, I often avoid mentioning that I work within the NDIS system because I know what frequently follows. A criticism, a joke, an assumption that everyone involved is somehow benefiting from a broken scheme.

The reality is more complicated. Every large publicly funded system experiences some level of misuse. That reality applies to Medicare, aged care, taxation and social security. Yet the public discussion surrounding the NDIS has created an impression that fraud and waste are its defining features.

Lost within that conversation are the millions of ordinary moments that occur every day because the scheme exists.

Who Will Pay the Price?

The child who can communicate. The young person who can attend school. The adult

who can leave the house. The family that can finally sleep through the night. The

person who can participate in community life.

These stories rarely make headlines.

Who Will Pay the Price?

The people who are now being asked to carry the burden of reform are not the people

who created the problems. The people who will pay the greatest price are Australians

with disability, their families, their carers. their support workers, their therapists, their

communities.

And the thousands of small businesses that have emerged to support them.

Many of these businesses are owned or led by women. Many were built by people

with direct lived experience of disability. Many exist because governments were unable

or unwilling to provide the services required.

These businesses accepted risk, they invested, they employed staff. They created local

services and they solved problems. Today many find themselves facing profound

uncertainty- not because they have failed but because governments are seeking to

regain control of a market they failed to steward effectively.

The View From Here

I support reform, I support accountability, I support efforts to ensure the long-term

sustainability of the scheme. What I do not support is reform that diminishes the rights of people with disability. I

do not support reform that reduces transparency, I do not support reform that limits

access to review. I do not support reform that concentrates power while reducing

safeguards.

What History Teaches Us

I am old enough in this sector to remember what came before the NDIS. Many of the people making decisions about its future are not.

History matters.

The NDIS did not emerge by accident. It emerged because Australians recognised that the previous system was failing. It emerged because families demanded something better. It emerged because people with disability deserved something better.

The question before us is not whether the NDIS requires reform. It does.

The question is whether those reforms strengthen the original vision of inclusion, participation and dignity, or whether they slowly erode it. The question is simply, are we really prepared to send disabled Aussies back in time to live an invisible life.

I have seen what happens when support is absent. I have seen what becomes possible

when support is present. The decisions made through these reforms will shape the

lives of hundreds of thousands of Australians.

I ask the Committee to remember that behind every policy proposal, every budget measure and every legislative amendment are real people. People with hopes. People with goals. People with families.

People whose lives will be directly affected by the decisions made in this place.

I remember what life looked like before the NDIS.

I do not want Australia to forget.

Thank you for your time.

Chantelle Robards