Submission 3267 — Teneille Williams — NDIS Future Generations Bill | External submission

Submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee

National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment

(Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submitted by:

Registered Psychologist (AHPRA) | Specialist in Neurodiversity

Mother of Two Neurodivergent Children, One NDIS Participant | Perth, Western Australia

31 May 2026

Who I Am and Why I Am Writing I am writing this submission in two capacities that are not commonly held simultaneously: as a Registered Psychologist who conducts neurodevelopmental assessments and who deliberately developed clinical expertise in Autism, ADHD, and Pathological Demand Avoidance profiles in order to better support my own child, and as a single parent to two neurodivergent children, one of whom is an NDIS participant.

I pursued specialised clinical training in the precise diagnostic and therapeutic field applicable to my child. I understand the neuroscience. I understand the evidence base for intervention. I understand the NDIS Act, the planning process, the review mechanisms, and what happens when each of them fails. I know how to write a clinical report, read a functional capacity assessment, and document a planning decision in language that survives scrutiny. I know which section of the Act has been breached and I know how to use it.

And this system is still breaking me.

If I, with all of that knowledge and all of those tools, am at the edge of what I can carry, I am asking the Committee to consider what this feels like for the parent who has none of those resources. The parent who does not know the legislation. Who cannot translate a clinical report into NDIS-approved language. Who sits in a planning meeting and does not fully understand what is being decided about their child’s life. Who does not know what questions to ask or what rights they have. How does anyone stand a chance in this system without those tools?

Every day I fight for my child across every system they are in: school, medical, NDIS, allied health, community, social, and family court. I fight planning decisions made by people who have not read the clinical reports the government funded and I waited months to obtain. I advocate to teachers, OSHC workers, doctors, community group leaders, Centrelink workers, and child support officers. I advocate to anyone who misunderstands, misinterprets, judges, or condemns my

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child. Parent carers are doing more than anyone in this building has measured, more than the research has fully captured, and more than this government has ever formally acknowledged.

And the legislation before this Committee proposes to give them more to carry. The government’s conduct through the NDIS changes of the last two years alone has been enough to cause significant mental health deterioration in this population. I have witnessed it in my clinic. I have felt it in my own home.

Through its actions, the government is saying, without a single piece of independent published evidence, that these families have the capacity to absorb more: you are not doing enough. Suck it up and keep going.

I watch parents in my clinical practice who all but bleed for their children. I have no doubt that if bleeding helped, they would. I would bleed for my child. This Bill does not see that. It does not measure it. It does not ask. It simply legislates more onto people who are already at the limit of what human beings can sustain, and calls it reform.

I am writing this submission because my child deserves better. My clients deserve better. Their families deserve better. And someone with the clinical training, the legal literacy, and the lived experience to say it clearly needs to say it, on the record. The urgent and critical nature of these changes must be taken seriously. Please hear this clearly: lives are at stake.

Schedule 1 Part 5: NDIS Impunity

I am including this not as a personal grievance but as documented evidence of what this Bill’s provisions will make permanent and unreviewable. What happened to my family on 28 May 2026 is the real-world version of what Schedule 1 Part 5 codifies.

My daughter Zoe has held an NDIS plan since October 2022. Across every plan period, the transition has followed a consistent and established process: the plan is rolled over, existing support arrangements continue, and unspent funds carry into the new period. I managed her support budget, provider relationships, and invoicing on the basis of that consistent four-year practice.

Approximately five months before the end of Zoe’s current plan, I was contacted without prior notice by Rebekah B, Delegate of the CEO, National Early Childhood Branch. The contact was unannounced. No prior notice had been given that a

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reassessment had been initiated. When I raised concerns that I had not been notified and had not had the opportunity to obtain updated clinical reports from Zoe’s treating team, the matter was escalated. I was then advised, in a call documented under receipt number , that because the NDIA had not contacted me as required, the plan would be rolled over and the subsequent appointment would be for the purpose of updating Zoe’s information only. Zoe’s father was separately contacted by the NDIA on 28 May 2026 and was also advised using the word rollover.

On 28 May 2026, contrary to what both parents had been told, a brand new plan was approved. Not a rollover. A new plan, with a total funding amount of $22,971.89.

The previous plan held an unspent balance of $23,296.80 at the point of transition. That balance has not carried across. It has returned to the NDIA.

Twenty-three thousand, two hundred and ninety-six dollars and eighty cents. Gone in five hours. Gone because the NDIA misrepresented what rollover meant, despite a four-year documented history of Zoe’s plans being rolled over. Gone because I attended what I understood to be an information update appointment and left it having had my daughter’s plan replaced without my knowledge, without updated clinical evidence, without my consent, and without any genuine opportunity to participate in that decision.

I called within minutes of discovering what had occurred. The planner could not be reached. I made three attempts at contact. I received three different explanations across those three calls. I had made financial commitments to Zoe’s providers for supports already delivered under the previous plan. Outstanding invoices are now due. The only currently accessible funding in the new plan, the first quarterly allocation of $5,617.98, is wholly insufficient for Zoe’s ongoing support needs for the current quarter.

This is not a planning error at the margins. The NDIA gave an explicit verbal assurance, documented under receipt number , to both parents. It then did the opposite of what it promised, without notice, without updated clinical information, without consent, without meaningful participant direction, and in breach of sections 48(6), 50(3), and 31 of the National Disability Insurance Scheme Act 2013. A formal complaint has been lodged. A plan variation under section 47A has been requested. The right to internal review has been reserved.

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Schedule 1 Part 5 of this Bill proposes to remove review rights for automatic plan renewals. The NDIA already processes plan transitions incorrectly, provides inconsistent information to families, and is capable of removing $23,296.80 of a disabled child’s funding in five hours while telling both her parents that would not happen. This Bill proposes to close the door on the only mechanism available to correct that. That is not a sustainability measure. That is impunity.

Recommendation: Plan review and consultation is the very mechanism by which a participant and their supports and stakeholders can communicate with the NDIS about their needs. Plan reviews that are transparent, appropriately communicated, and trauma-informed are a minimum entitlement for the disability community. Preserve independent review rights before any plan renewal decision. Require that unspent funds carry over at plan renewal where the participant has made financial commitments to providers on the basis of those funds being available.

Parliamentary Scrutiny and Transparency

This submission was prepared in less than 48 hours, on the same day that the events described above occurred. The consultation period for this Bill is two weeks. The Australian Government Guide to Policy Impact Analysis requires a minimum 30-day consultation period. The disability community includes people with communication support needs, processing differences, and caring responsibilities that make rapid response to complex legislation functionally impossible for many of those most affected.

The two-week timeline is not a neutral administrative choice. It selects for submissions from people who already have the language, the time, and the capacity to respond quickly to dense legislative material. It selects against the families this Bill most effects. The Committee should weigh that when considering the volume and profile of submissions received.

Recommendation: Extend the consultation period to a minimum of 30 days, consistent with government policy, and require that all consultation materials be available in accessible formats before the period commences.

Key Decisions Left to Ministerial Instruments, Not Law

Schedule 1 Parts 8 and 9 allow Ministers to change who qualifies for NDIS support by signing an instrument, without returning to Parliament. Schedule 1 Part 4 allows Ministers to reduce funding across entire support categories by a specified percentage through an instrument that cannot be challenged. The rules that will determine critical eligibility thresholds have not yet been written.

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On 1 October 2026, community participation supports will be cut by 50 per cent and capacity building daily activities by 10 per cent for all participants. This will be implemented through exactly this instrument power. The Foundational Supports system intended to fill that gap has no confirmed implementation date and is not operational. This is not reform with a transition. This is removal with a promise.

For a family already at severe carer burden, a 50 per cent cut to community participation supports is not a line item. It is the removal of the hours in which a child is somewhere else, supported and building skills. Those are also the hours in which a parent can work, recover, or simply exist without being someone’s entire world. The government is not modelling what happens when those hours disappear. It has not asked.

Recommendation: Require all decisions affecting NDIS eligibility and funding levels to be made through primary legislation subject to full parliamentary scrutiny. Require that no reductions to community participation or capacity building supports take effect until Foundational Supports are fully operational and demonstrably able to meet the needs of those who will lose NDIS supports.

The Parental Responsibility Provisions: Legislating Burden onto Families

Already Breaking

Part 6 of the Bill codifies parental responsibility as a factor the CEO must consider before approving funded supports. It defines what parents are legally expected to provide: supervision, personal care, transport, emotional support, behavioural support, and assistance with activities of daily living. The CEO must not approve a support if its primary purpose is to reduce parental burden below what is considered reasonable.

The government has not published an independent evidence base for this provision. It has not defined a ceiling on what constitutes reasonable. It has not modelled what happens to parental workforce participation, mental health, or family stability when funded supports are reclassified as parental obligation. It has not included a single-parent carve-out. It has not asked these families how they are doing before deciding they can do more.

The Zarit Burden Scale (Zarit et al., 1980, Gerontologist, 20(6), 649-55) is the most widely used validated psychometric instrument for measuring caregiver burden in clinical and research settings. It is peer-reviewed, clinically validated, and used in legal proceedings. I completed it today. The table below maps my scores against the specific provisions of Part 6.

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Overall self-rated burden: No independent evidence A Registered Psychologist who

SEVERE (3/4)                  base published for parental      specialised in her child's exact

responsibility provisions diagnostic profile, with every possible clinical advantage, rates her burden as severe. This is the floor, not the ceiling. Most carers are already at their ceiling. This legislation will push them through it.

This table is not rhetorical. It is a clinical mapping of a validated burden instrument onto the specific legislative provisions of this Bill. Every domain that places a carer in the severe range has a direct correlate in Part 6. The Bill does not reduce burden on carers. It mandates it, codifies it in law, and removes the funded supports that are currently the only thing standing between these families and complete collapse. I have clinical expertise in the precise neurodevelopmental field applicable to my child. I pursued that expertise deliberately, to be a better parent and a better clinician. I have professional vocabulary, legal literacy, and the capacity to document, argue, and appeal. I scored severe burden today.

If I am at severe carer burden with every possible advantage a parent in this situation can have, the question the Committee must answer is: what does the rest of this population look like? The government has not measured it. It has not asked. It has introduced legislation expanding their obligations without a single published piece of independent evidence that there is anything left to take.

The peer-reviewed research answers the question the government did not ask. Research published in Autism Research (2024) confirmed that caregivers of children with neurodevelopmental conditions consistently report elevated stress, depression, and burnout, with no carer-focused supports available through the NDIS. Australian longitudinal research published in 2026 found elevated rates of self-harm and suicidal ideation among carers compared to non-carers. Suicide Prevention Australia has documented that prior to the NDIS, carers could access respite through national programs, and that most of that funding has since been absorbed into the scheme and is no longer available to families who are already inside it.

These are not abstract risks. They are documented outcomes of a system that has already pushed carers past what the research says human beings can sustain. This Bill pushes further. It does so with no evidence base, no ceiling, no carve-out for the

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parent doing it alone, and no acknowledgement that the people it is targeting are already bleeding.

Recommendation: Do not proceed with Part 6 in its current form. Commission independent research measuring carer burden in the NDIS participant family population before any legislation expanding parental obligations is reintroduced. If parental responsibility provisions are retained in any form, require an explicit carve-out for single-parent households, a defined and evidence-anchored ceiling on reasonable parental obligation, and a requirement that supports necessary for parental workforce participation cannot be denied on parental responsibility grounds.

Existing Participants Face Narrower Criteria and Fewer Rights to Challenge

Decisions

Schedule 1 Parts 1 and 8 apply narrower eligibility criteria to existing participants. Part 5 removes review rights for automatic plan renewals. Part 4 makes funding reductions unreviewable.

I have described in detail what the removal of review rights for automatic plan renewals already looks like without the Bill, because it happened to my family on 28 May 2026. The NDIA told both parents the plan would be rolled over. It was not. $23,296.80 disappeared. I called three times and received three different answers. NDIA funding decisions are overturned in approximately 75 to 77 per cent of cases that reach external review, the highest reversal rate of any Commonwealth agency. By comparison, Centrelink decisions are overturned 28 per cent of the time. The CEO has publicly acknowledged that clinical reports submitted by participants are often not read before decisions are made. Plans are therefore underfunded. Participants go to the tribunal. The tribunal reads the evidence and changes the decision. The NDIA pays legal fees to defend a position it cannot sustain. And the government calls the scheme unaffordable.

This Bill does not fix the reading problem. It does not fund better decisions. It removes the right to challenge the decisions that result from not reading. The answer to a 75 per cent error rate is not to close the door on the families trapped inside those errors. The answer is to stop making them.

Recommendation: Preserve independent review rights before any plan renewal, funding reduction, or exit decision. Require a no-harm safeguard ensuring no current participant loses access to supports unless equivalent supports are demonstrably in place. Require that unspent funds carry over at plan renewal,

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where the participant has made financial commitments to providers on the basis of those funds being available.

The Treatment Exhaustion Test and the I-CAN Assessment Tool

Schedule 1 Part 8 requires that a person exhaust appropriate treatment options before being found eligible for the NDIS. The legislation explicitly states that geographic location and financial circumstances cannot exempt a person from this requirement.

My daughter has an AuDHD profile with PDA features. PDA is characterised by a pervasive need to avoid demands that is driven by anxiety and is context dependent and highly variable. Presentation is specifically affected by the assessment environment itself. A point-in-time functional capacity assessment conducted by an unfamiliar assessor in an unfamiliar setting will systematically undercount need for a child with this profile, not because the need is not present, but because the assessment conditions are themselves a demand that will elicit a more regulated presentation than daily life. The result is a structurally inaccurate picture of functional capacity, produced not by examiner error but by the design of the tool itself.

The I-CAN assessment tool named in this Bill has not been validated for fluctuating or episodic disability. It has not been validated for PDA profiles. It has not been demonstrated to be culturally appropriate for First Peoples with disability. It is being proposed as the gatekeeping mechanism for scheme eligibility for children whose needs are most likely to be invisible at the precise moment the tool is applied.

For neurodevelopmental conditions including autism and ADHD, evidence-based interventions cost thousands of dollars, require years of sustained engagement, and depend on access to trained clinicians who are in short supply across much of Australia, including outer suburban Perth. A child whose family cannot afford private treatment and whose public waitlist extends for years has not failed to exhaust treatment options. They have encountered a system without the capacity to treat them. The legislation treats these as equivalent circumstances. They are not equivalent, and treating them as such will exclude children with genuine need from a scheme they have a right to access.

Recommendation: Do not proceed with the treatment exhaustion requirement in its current form. Do not proceed with I-CAN as the functional capacity assessment tool unless it has been validated for all disability profiles, including AuDHD, PDA,

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and episodic presentations, and demonstrated to be culturally appropriate for First Peoples with disability.

The Government Has Misidentified the Problem

The Administrative Review Tribunal

NDIA funding decisions are overturned in approximately 75 to 77 per cent of cases that reach external review. The highest reversal rate of any Commonwealth agency. Each hearing costs close to $30,000 before legal fees. The CEO has confirmed that clinical reports are often not read before decisions are made. This Bill does not fix the reading problem. It removes the right to challenge the decisions that result from it. The correct response to a 75 per cent error rate is to fix the errors.

Government Agencies Billing the Scheme

Freedom of Information document FOI-25/26-0656 shows government agencies and local councils drew approximately $462 million from the NDIS in 2024 to 2025. The Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, which administers this Bill, billed nearly $191 million from the scheme it oversees. This has not appeared once in ministerial statements about unsustainable scheme growth. The government has identified families as the problem. It has not identified itself.

Executive Remuneration

NDIA CEO remuneration has historically exceeded the Prime Minister’s salary, with total packages above $720,000 under previous CEOs. The NDIA supports eight Deputy CEOs. The cost of this executive structure has not been included in any published sustainability analysis. A government that proposes to remove therapeutic supports from disabled children and expand legal obligations on single mothers below the poverty line, while its agency leadership is remunerated at these levels, has not made a credible fiscal argument. It has made a political one.

The Unpaid Care Economy

Deloitte Access Economics estimated the annual replacement value of unpaid care in Australia at $77.9 billion in 2020. The Workplace Gender Equality Agency has estimated the total monetary value of unpaid care work at $650 billion, more than half of GDP. None of this appears in the government’s fiscal framing. Every funded support reclassified as parental responsibility under Part 6 is a cost transferred to a carer who is uncompensated, unacknowledged, below the poverty line, and already at severe burden. The government is not counting that transfer. It is pretending the cost disappears.

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The Intersecting Systems Driving Single-Parent Disability Families into

Poverty

This Bill cannot be understood in isolation. It sits inside an intersecting set of systems that together are actively pushing single-parent families raising children with disability into structural poverty, and then proposing to remove the supports that are keeping those families functional.

One in three children with disability already lives in a single-parent household, at nearly double the rate of non-disabled children, by the government’s own ABS data. Parents of autistic children divorce at nearly double the rate of the general population, and unlike other families, that risk does not decrease as the child ages. The care burden that drives separation then falls entirely on one parent, overwhelmingly a woman, for the entire duration of the child’s life. That woman is then placed below the poverty line by Parenting Payment, potentially pursued for FTB debt created by her former partner’s non-payment of child support, and now proposed to have her legal parental obligations expanded in legislation, without the government having measured her burden, without a single-parent carve-out, and without any modelling of what happens when she breaks.

And the government does not know the current figure, because it has not updated that specific data point since 2012. That is fourteen years of policy blindness about the people this Bill most affects.

ACOSS Poverty in Australia 2025 found that 34 per cent of people in sole parent households live below the poverty line, rising to 39 per cent among children in those households. People receiving Parenting Payment Single are on average $246 a week below the poverty line. ACOSS and UNSW research published in 2023 found children in single-parent families have a poverty rate of 39 per cent, more than three times that of couple families at 12 per cent.

The child support system compounds this directly. The Commonwealth Ombudsman’s 2026 report found $1.9 billion in unpaid child support currently outstanding, owed to 153,000 receiving parents, 84 per cent of whom are women. Services Australia was found to be acting in an unfair and unreasonable manner by failing to use available enforcement powers. Paying parents can self-report reduced income without evidence. They can weaponise the system at critical times, withholding support at school terms, birthdays, and Christmas, with no meaningful consequence.

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A 2026 Swinburne University report found that one in four single mothers surveyed owed money to the government as a direct result of the intersection between unpaid child support and Family Tax Benefit, described by researchers as Fembot Debt. The mechanism is this: a mother receives Family Tax Benefit calculated on the assumption that child support is being paid. The paying parent does not pay, or underreports their income. Years later, she is found to have been overpaid Family Tax Benefit and incurs a debt to Centrelink for money she never received. Most of the women in that study had cut food spending. More than half were going without medication.

Research confirms that when child support is received in full and on time, single mothers are 21 per cent less likely to be in poverty. The inverse is equally true, and the government knows it.

The parental responsibility provisions in Part 6 of this Bill are being written for these women. Families already below the poverty line. Already absorbing unpaid child support. Already managing government debt they did not create. Already fighting for their child in every system that child touches, every day, alone. The government has not modelled what happens when they finally break. The Zarit, the carer research, the poverty data, and the experience of every parent I see in my clinical practice all point to the same answer: breaking point is not a distant risk. For many of these families, it is now.

Recommendation: Commission an independent economic analysis modelling the downstream health, welfare, and productivity costs of the parental responsibility provisions before this legislation proceeds. Require the child support system audit recommended by the Ombudsman to be completed and tabled before any legislation expanding parental obligations onto NDIS carers is considered.

Australia’s International and Domestic Legal Obligations: A Significant

Oversight

The Bill has been introduced and the Statement of Compatibility signed by Minister Butler without adequate engagement with Australia’s binding international human rights obligations and domestic anti-discrimination law. This is a significant oversight that the Committee must address before this legislation proceeds.

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) Australia ratified the CRPD in 2008. It is binding in international law. The following articles are directly engaged by provisions of this Bill.

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Article 19 requires Australia to ensure people with disability have access to in home, residential, and other community support services to enable inclusion in the community and prevent isolation. The 50 per cent cut to community participation supports from 1 October 2026, implemented before Foundational Supports are operational, sits in direct tension with this obligation.

Article 26 requires Australia to organise and strengthen habilitation and rehabilitation programs whose purpose is to enable people with disability to maintain maximum independence and full social and vocational ability. Reclassifying therapeutic capacity-building supports as parental responsibility undermines this obligation at the level of individual planning decisions.

Article 28 recognises the right of persons with disability and their families to an adequate standard of living and to the continuous improvement of living conditions. The poverty data, the FTB debt mechanism, and the removal of funded supports from families already below the poverty line raise a direct Article 28 concern.

Article 7 requires that the best interests of the child with disability be a primary consideration in all actions concerning them. The treatment exhaustion test, the I CAN tool’s lack of validation for relevant profiles, and the removal of review rights all engage this obligation.

Article 31 requires Australia to collect appropriate data to formulate evidence based policy on persons with disability. The government has not updated ABS data on the proportion of children with disability living in single-parent households since

Fourteen years of policy blindness about the primary affected population is itself a potential Article 31 breach.

The CRPD also contains a non-retrogression principle. States parties cannot take backward steps in the enjoyment of rights by persons with disability without strong justification and evidence. Removing existing supports, cutting community participation by 50 per cent, and expanding parental obligations without evidence of capacity are all potentially retrogressive measures. The government has not published justification that meets the non-retrogression standard.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) Australia is a party to the CRC. Article 3 requires the best interests of the child to be a primary consideration in all actions concerning children. Article 23 specifically requires that children with disability receive appropriate support enabling effective

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access to services and full social inclusion. The treatment exhaustion test and the removal of review rights engage both provisions.

The ICESCR protects the right to social security (Article 9) and the right to an adequate standard of living (Article 11). It also contains a non-retrogression principle under Article 2: governments cannot take backward steps in the realisation of economic and social rights without strong justification. Removing funded supports that currently exist, cutting community participation by half, and legislating additional unpaid obligations onto families already in poverty are all potentially retrogressive measures under the ICESCR.

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) 84 per cent of receiving parents in the child support system are women. Primary carers of children with disabilities are overwhelmingly women. The parental responsibility provisions in Part 6 will fall disproportionately on women. CEDAW Article 11 protects the right to employment and Article 13 protects economic and social benefits. The combined impact of poverty, child support non-compliance, FTB debt, and the parental responsibility provisions has a clearly and disproportionately gendered impact that engages Australia’s CEDAW obligations.

The Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (Cth)

Section 6 of the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 defines indirect discrimination as a condition imposed on a person that they cannot comply with because of their disability, where the failure to make reasonable adjustment has the effect of disadvantaging people with that disability. Section 7 extends these protections to associates of people with disability, including carers and parents. Where the parental responsibility provisions impose obligations that carers cannot meet without the funded supports being removed, and those supports are being removed, sections 6 and 7 are directly engaged.

The Human Rights (Parliamentary Scrutiny) Act 2011 (Cth) and the Statement of Compatibility Every Bill introduced into the Australian Parliament must be accompanied by a Statement of Compatibility expressing the minister’s opinion on its compatibility with the seven core international human rights treaties to which Australia is a party, including the CRPD, ICCPR, ICESCR, CEDAW, CRC, CERD, and CAT. The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights examines all Bills against these obligations and reports to both Houses.

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The Committee should scrutinise the Statement of Compatibility accompanying this Bill and require the government to answer the following questions before the Bill proceeds:

Does the Statement address the CRPD non-retrogression principle in relation to the community participation cuts and the parental responsibility provisions?
Does it address the CEDAW gendered impact of Part 6?
Does it address the CRC best interests obligation in relation to the treatment exhaustion test and the I-CAN tool?
Does it address Article 31 of the CRPD and the fourteen-year data gap on single-parent disability households?

If the Statement of Compatibility does not address these questions, the Committee should require a supplementary statement before the Bill proceeds. A Bill that is incompatible with Australia’s binding international obligations should not pass Parliament without that incompatibility being named, justified, and placed on the public record.

Recommendation: Require the government to provide a supplementary Statement of Compatibility addressing the CRPD non-retrogression principle, CEDAW gendered impact, CRC best interests obligations, and the Article 31 data gap before this Bill proceeds. Require the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights to report on compatibility before any vote is taken.

Where the Real Savings Are

I support a financially sound NDIS. I do not support fiscal responsibility achieved by transferring the cost of a broken system onto the people who are already carrying the most weight. The following measures would reduce costs without that transfer:

Require the NDIA to read submitted clinical evidence before making planning decisions, and fund the staffing required to do so. Correct decisions the first time eliminates ART expenditure and participant harm simultaneously.
Publish full ART expenditure and outcomes data, including win and loss rates, and require the NDIA to account for the 75 per cent decision reversal rate before any legislation restricting review rights is considered.
Audit and publicly account for the $462 million in NDIS payments to government agencies and local councils in 2024 to 2025, and explain why this has not appeared in any public sustainability discussion.
Review the senior executive remuneration structure of the NDIA, benchmark against the Prime Minister’s salary, and redirect any excess to front-line participant supports.

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Fund evidence-based group programs for families of children with neurodevelopmental disabilities. Research confirms these are cost-effective, improve child outcomes, and increase caregiver workforce participation. The current price structure actively disincentivises them.
Fix the child support and Family Tax Benefit intersection. Delink FTB from child support. Make enforcement proactive. Stop generating government debt for women whose former partners are not paying while they care for their disabled children.
Formally recognise the $77.9 billion annual replacement value of unpaid care in the scheme’s sustainability framework, and protect the conditions that enable carers to keep providing it, rather than legislating additional obligations onto people who are already at the limit.

Conclusion

The NDIS was created because informal support networks were collapsing under the weight of needs they were never designed to carry. It was created because parents were leaving the workforce, losing their health, and burning out completely trying to fill gaps the state refused to fund. The peer-reviewed literature, the Tune Review, and the lived experience of hundreds of thousands of Australian families confirm this.

This Bill moves in precisely the opposite direction. It codifies, in legislation, the expectation that parents will fill those gaps again. It does so without any independent evidence that they have the capacity to absorb more, without a ceiling on what it can ask of them, without a carve-out for the parent doing it alone, and without ever having asked how they are doing.

I completed the Zarit today. Severe burden. I scored zero on wanting to leave the care of my child to someone else. Not because this is easy. Because she is my child and I am not going anywhere. But I am asking the Committee to understand what zero on that item costs. It costs everything else. It costs the social life I no longer have. It costs the financial security I cannot build. It costs nights like this one, writing a submission after my kids are in bed, because the deadline is tomorrow and someone has to say this clearly.

I am that someone tonight. For my child. For my clients. For every parent in my waiting room who is all but bleeding for their child and who does not have the words, the training, or the hours to write this themselves.

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The government is saying to those parents: “ You are not doing enough.” The evidence says they are doing everything. I am asking the Committee to put that on the public record, to require the government to produce the evidence base and economic modelling that should have preceded this legislation, and to recommend that this Bill not proceed in its current form.

If this Bill proceeds in its current form, lives will be lost. That is a devastating sentence to write in 2026. Australia signed the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2007. Nearly twenty years on, disabled Australians and the families caring for them deserve a government whose actions demonstrate that equity matters, that human rights are not optional, and that the obligations signed at the United Nations are honoured in this Parliament. This Bill does not honour those obligations. The Committee has the power to say so.

Future generations of disabled Australians deserve a scheme that works. The families holding this system together right now deserve to be seen. This Bill sees neither.

Submitted by:

Teneille Williams

Registered Psychologist

Specialist in Neurodiversity and the intersections of Autism, ADHD and Pathological

Demand Avoidance

Perth, Western Australia