Senate Standing Committees on Community Affairs
PO Box 6100
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600
Via community.affairs.sen@aph.gov.au
Submission to the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for
Future Generations) Bill 2026
To the committee,
My name is , and I am an information technology worker, and concerned member of the public. I am writing to express my deep concern about the proposed changes to the NDIS. I have many colleagues and friends who rely on the NDIS to get through their day to day life. I also have several disabilities myself, however, they are currently in a state where they are being managed, and through accessibility supports, I am even able to work full time.
I strongly oppose this Bill and the proposed changes that will make it harder for NDIS participants to simply live. There is much talk of cutting costs and the cost of NDIS “spiralling” out of control. For one, I would much rather have my tax dollars go to something like the NDIS or our public health system. “Cutting the waste” as some have put it, is ultimately a dollar figure to the NDIS. To disabled people, it is their lives.
My main concerns are as follows:
- More stringent requirements around communication resulting in/and increasing unnecessary administrative burden.
This Bill will introduce more stringent requirements around communication to NDIS participants. While at the surface level, this seems like a fair requirement, I strongly believe that it will actually make the lives of NDIS participants harder.
The administrative burden placed on NDIS participants and disabled people trying to get access to the NDIS is already massive. Furthermore, it is already extremely difficult for people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds to get the right documentation from ever more expensive specialists to even apply in the first place. These proposed requirements will actually end up increasing the administrative burden, causing worsened inequality in the scheme, and adding additional stress to a healthcare system by having specialists and health care professionals write out reports. It doesn’t give people time or space or nuance. Just an a personal example, being in
frequent pain and unable to be in bright places without throwing up makes the administrative minutiae of ordinary life more difficult than it used to be for me.
Things like “Not contactable” rules fail to consider situations like someone being in the hospital, having a psychotic episode, or simply having had their communication devices stolen by a petty thief/smashed by a stalker. These examples I give are not arbitrary, they are real things that have happened to people I know – both family and friends. Basically, I think these rules around communication will only serve to take nuance, fairness, empathy out of the decision making context for the supports for the most vulnerable in our society.
- Increased use of administrative or automated systems and limited chances for appeals As I mentioned before, I’m an information technology worker. My work often involves computer/automated driven decision making. Standardised and system driven decision making processes have no innate understanding of nuance, they are rigid by default, and must have room for human nuance built into them. Disabilities are often complex and interact with each other in ways that the people designing those systems have often never even conceived of, nevermind thought about how it might negatively impact people. Having the ability to provide flexibility in an unusual and often crisis situation is a necessary part of many system, yet this Bill proposes to reduce the human decision making component here. As am example, I am worried that the increased reliance on rigid automated systems will lead to situations where for example (a real world story I saw on the news), a machine tells a double amputee that he should get a warehouse stacking and lifting job. When the man cannot do that, the machine cuts off his financial support, with no room for human remediation of the issue. By increasing reliance on these system driven decision making, I am concerned that people with disabilities who by all means should be on the NDIS, are instead rejected with no room for appeal. Ultimately, the pushing of decision making onto a rigid automated system serves to obfuscate and mask who is accountable for a decision. For disabled people, it is often the difference between being able to participate in society or not. For some, it is the difference between life and death.
As a side note, I wanted to also point out that the changes proposed in the Bill will have ripple on effects in the wider community. While I believe that the focus should be on disabled people and their lives and ability to participate in public life, it’s also important to note these other impacts. Firstly, it will reduce the number of jobs that skilled care workers are able to take. This will cause an economic impact to them of course, but it will also force the burden of care work onto partners/spouses, family members and friends, potentially leading them to retreat from the work force in order to focus on caring for a disabled loved one. Women are likely to be the most economically impacted in this sense, as the burden of care work more generally falls onto female partners/spouses/relatives.
I urge the committee to consider the following: Stripping the NDIS process of the human element and making requirements more stringent and more automated only serves to push the cost that might be “saved” onto disabled people, whether they are existing participants on the NDIS or someone hoping to get onto the NDIS due to disability.
Ultimately I think the changes being proposed in this Bill are unjust, unfair, and un-Australian. Disabilities are often complex and nuanced situations, where interacting problems can cause cascading effects on a person’s life, making it harder to comply with strict requirements. The NDIS should be protected, not gutted, especially during a cost of living crisis. People with disabilities deserve dignity, support, and understanding, not shaming, assumptions, or suspicion as the default. The proposed changes in the Bill will cause massive amounts of harm to our disabled colleagues, friends, family members, and members of the community. It will cause ripple on effects in Australian society that leaves it a worse off place.
Yours sincerely,