National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 3250
To whom it may concern
I am a disabled person in my mid 30s living in Greater Sydney area. I am not supported by the NDIS nor have I ever been. I receive the DSP for multiple lifelong physical impairments. I have in the past worked as both a registered and unregistered support worker. I am writing today to clearly state that I oppose all changes to the NDIS that seek to limit or reduce supports, or those that seek to make the application process more difficult or exclusionary.
I oppose the bill entirely
I personally have been attempting to apply for the NDIS for 4 years now and have still not sent my first application. The system is already highly difficult to access for disabled people, supports in applying are negligent, the process is so exclusionary, off-putting and difficult to understand. Every time I try I wonder if I am disabled enough to ask for help at all. I feel like an accused criminal trying to prove I am innocent. It is unbelievable to me that anyone would think its too easy to access. Despite being in place for over 10 years most doctors don’t know how, and many specifically refuse, to complete NDIS supporting documents. As a disabled person interacting with this system I feel completely alone.
The system is far from perfect and I have heard many stories of private providers claiming for supports they never provided. This is the first area I think should be looked at when we talk about reducing the cost of NDIS to the country. Its with the people making money out of the NDIS, not the disabled people who want to be able to choose their own support workers and go to the zoo.
Despite its flaws I understand that the NDIS was designed to give disabled people choice and control over their own lives and care. The proposed bill seeks to wind that back and use legislation to control what and how disabled people access the world. I oppose the re-framing/re-wording/ defining of ‘functional capacity’, reasonable and necessary”. The language of ‘necessary supports’ seeks to place value judgements on what is and isn’t required for a full life. To me it reeks of eugenics. If implemented it will reduce funding to cover only the basic aspects of survival. Those individuals with life experience in group homes and institutions (from which the NDIS rescued them) will attest that we have already tried that mode of care and it is insufficient, dehumanising and cruel.
Disabled people deserve the chance to live a full life, to have control over their own care and to enjoy community and society in the same way able bodied people do.
I agree that there is room to cut back on NDIS spending, but it is not in individual plans or in re assessing what constitutes a disability. There is cuts to be made in investigating provider fraud, and in scaling back the complicated admission process so that it doesn’t need to involve dozens of people and dozens of hours per applicant.
People die, and are dying today, due to lack of supports and lack of funding under the current system. We should look for ways to improve the current system so that no one is being under supported, rather than looking at how to support people less.
I oppose mandatory registration. Disabled people should be free to employ trusted individuals in their own circle if they so choose. Requiring accreditation only places another barrier to free choice.
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 3250
This proposed amendment reeks of misdirected suspicion. It is not privately employed support workers that are abusing the system – it is the private businesses. Requiring registration for support workers will not stop provider fraud, it will only affect individuals with disabilities. This proposition solves nothing and achieves only making disabled peoples lives more difficult. Bureaucracy at its finest.
I oppose re-defining the concept of ‘permanence’ and introducing the concept of ‘all appropriate treatment’. Disabled people, like all people in a free country, should be free to choose the treatments they are subject to. When I was 11 years old my parents were able to refuse a surgery to repair a leg injury that may have resulted in my being wheelchair bound for life. This should not be a privilege of able-bodied people but of all Australians.
Immediately I am concerned that such wording has potential to exclude fat people from the NDIS because they haven’t tried lapband surgery yet. There is so much potential for discrimination, particularly with fat people. It is so easy to say “Well your chronic pain could be exacerbated by your BMI and you haven’t tried everything to lose weight yet.” There are hundreds of disabilities where a fat person may be told to lose weight as part of treatment, yet an able-bodied fat person is not subject to the same demands.
I know someone who had a weight-loss surgery and suffered a seizure causing brain damage during it. They were previously not disabled but now they require full time care. Each procedure has risks and disabled people should be able to choose for themselves if the risks are worth it.
Making this a requirement of NDIS could easily cause family to coerce disabled people into procedures they would not choose for themselves. It will further victimise vulnerable people, not to mention the extra pressure on the medical system. Many treatments are also experimental or not fully understood. Requiring disabled people to have treatments in order to access life saving funds means we will become a class of guinea pigs – used to test treatments that able bodied people are able to refuse. You may recall the Nazis used disabled people this way too.
It is not lost on me the way the NDIS is subjected to the same attacks as Medicare has been. As a nation we pride ourselves on our systems of Medicare and NDIS yet the general population has no idea the amount of effort many political parties go to to try to gut them, strip them, or remove them entirely. The systems we rely on for basic quality of life are constantly under attack. Disabled Australians must be allowed to access care with freedom of choice and dignity, without having to fight for it at every turn.
I oppose the bill entirely