National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 326
23 May 2026
Committee Secretary
Senate Standing Committees on Community Affairs
PO Box 6100, Parliament House, Canberra ACT 2600
Submission to the Senate Inquiry into the NDIS Amendment (Securing the NDIS) Bill 2026
I am the parent of a high-school aged daughter who is Autistic. She has a formal diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder Level 2 - affecting both social communication and restrictive and repetitive behaviours - along with ADHD combined subtype and sleep onset difficulties. These are not minor conditions. They have shaped every part of her life and, for much of the past few years, have kept her from being able to engage with the world the way most young people do.
NDIS funding has made it possible for my daughter to see a psychologist consistently. That consistency has mattered and, over time, it has helped her work through the behavioural and communication challenges that made daily life so difficult, address school refusal (which many in the community call ‘school can’t’), and begin to recover from autistic burnout. Recently she agreed to try online schooling through Curtin University. For a long time her world had shrunk to the walls of her room, so this is a big step forward for her.
My fear is straightforward. If we lose that funded psychology support, she will retreat. The progress she has made depends on the relationship and the continuity that NDIS funding has made possible. Without it, I do not think she will sustain the attempt at online schooling. I think she will go back to her room, and I am not sure when, or if, she would come out again.
The 2023 independent review of the NDIS was clear that foundational supports community-based services sitting outside the scheme that reduce pressure on it - were a non-negotiable precondition before any changes to eligibility or funding levels. Those supports do not exist. The roadmap for building them has been abandoned. This bill would remove approximately 160,000 people from the scheme and cut average plans by around $5,000. None of this was put to the Australian people at the last election.
Autistic people make up roughly half of all NDIS participants and close to four in five new entrants. The scheme was designed, in significant part, to serve this population. When NDIS support is removed, the cost does not go away - it moves into hospitals, mental health services, and unpaid family care. The projected savings in this bill are not savings at all. They are a transfer of cost onto families who are already carrying more than they should.
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 326
I am asking the committee not to pass this bill until the foundational supports the independent review considered essential are in place. Changing who is eligible for the scheme before there is anything adequate to support those who are removed from it is not reform. My daughter’s situation is not unusual. There are tens of thousands of families like ours, and we deserve better than legislation that treats the existence of our children’s needs as a budget problem.
Yours sincerely,