Submission 3285 — Mums4Refugees — NDIS Future Generations Bill | External submission

Submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee

Inquiry into the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the

NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

Submitted by: Mums4Refugees- Dulce Munoz National Convener

Date: 1 June 2026

About Mums4Refugees

Mums4Refugees is a national grassroots network of mothers, carers, advocates, community workers and allies who support people seeking asylum, refugees and migrant families across Australia. Our work is grounded in human rights, feminist care, racial justice, disability justice and the belief that every person deserves safety, dignity, belonging and the practical support required to live a full life.

For many years, Mums4Refugees has worked alongside families living under extreme pressure: mothers raising children while navigating temporary visas, poverty, housing insecurity, family violence, racism, language barriers, trauma, disability, mental health distress and exclusion from mainstream systems of support.

We make this submission because we are deeply concerned that the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 will have serious and unequal consequences for mothers, carers and children, particularly in multicultural communities and refugee-background families.

We acknowledge that the NDIS must be protected, strengthened and made safe from exploitation. We also acknowledge the importance of quality safeguards, responsible use of public money and accessible supports for future generations. However, a sustainable NDIS cannot be built by shifting care back into the private, unpaid and invisible labour of mothers.

A nation does not protect the future by abandoning the people already carrying it.

Summary of our concerns

Mums4Refugees is concerned that the Bill, in its current form, risks:

Increasing unpaid care demands on mothers and female carers.
Deepening inequality for multicultural and refugee-background families.
Creating more barriers for children with disability and developmental delay.
Reinforcing moral judgement against mothers whose children need support.
Increasing family stress, poverty, isolation and risk of family violence.
Reducing access to community participation, capacity building and support coordination that are often essential for safety, inclusion and parental participation in work and community life.

Punishing families who already struggle with language barriers, trauma, administrative complexity and lack of culturally safe services.
Treating disability support as a cost to be contained rather than an investment in dignity, participation, prevention and social inclusion.

Our submission focuses particularly on the likely gendered and racialised impact of proposed changes to functional capacity, eligibility, unscheduled reassessments, support determinations, reasonable and necessary supports, plan suspensions, new framework planning, and reductions to social and community participation and capacity-building supports.

Our experience with families already falling through the cracks

Mums4Refugees works with many families who already sit outside the protection of the NDIS or struggle to access it in meaningful ways.

Many people seeking asylum and families on temporary visas are not eligible for the NDIS, even when their disability is significant, permanent and life-altering. In some families, children only become eligible when they become Australian citizens or permanent residents. In other cases, disability itself becomes part of the migration barrier, with families experiencing the cruelty of a system that treats disabled children as less welcome, less valuable or too expensive.

We want to be clear: that exclusion is a moral failure. Australia has children with disability who are citizens, future citizens, community members, classmates, neighbours, friends and loved ones. They are as valuable as any other child. Their lives are not a burden. Their care is not a mistake. Their presence makes this country more human.

However, this submission is not only about NDIS eligibility for temporary visa holders. It is about what happens when disability support is narrowed, delayed, reduced or made harder to access for families already carrying impossible loads.

When formal support disappears, the need does not disappear. The child still needs care. The adult still needs support. The mother still wakes up through the night. The family still has to attend appointments, translate systems, fight decisions, organise therapy, manage meltdowns, transport children, advocate at school, manage medication, hold grief, hold fear, hold the household together.

The labour does not vanish. It is simply moved from the public system into the unpaid body of the mother.

The Bill must be assessed through a gendered lens

The Bill speaks the language of sustainability, consistency, integrity and future generations. These are important words. But if they are not tested against the lived realities of women and carers, they become dangerous words.

Mothers already perform the majority of unpaid care in families. This is even more intense when a child has disability, developmental delay, chronic illness, trauma, psychosocial disability or complex behaviour. In multicultural and refugee-background families, this unpaid care is often compounded by language barriers, migration stress, racism, lack of family support, poverty, isolation, insecure work and fear of government systems.

The proposed changes may appear administratively neutral, but their impacts will not be neutral.

When a child loses access to support, it is usually the mother who reduces her working hours.

When transport or community participation is cut, it is usually the mother who becomes the taxi, the therapist, the social worker and the emotional container.

When capacity-building supports are reduced, it is usually the mother who must become the unpaid behaviour specialist, interpreter, advocate and case manager.

When reassessments become harder to request, it is usually the mother who must gather evidence, chase reports, sit on hold, retell trauma and explain again why the child’s needs are real.

When the system asks what is “reasonable” for parents to provide, it must be honest about who the parent is expected to be. In practice, that parent is most often a mother.

This Bill risks turning “parental responsibility” into a policy mechanism for transferring disability support from the NDIS to women’s unpaid labour.

Multicultural mothers will be disproportionately affected

For multicultural mothers, especially refugee-background mothers and mothers seeking asylum, the impact is likely to be sharper.

Many mothers we support are trying to rebuild their lives in Australia after war, persecution, detention, family violence, displacement or long periods of poverty and insecurity. Many are highly skilled but are locked out of employment that matches their qualifications. Many are trying to learn English, care for children, manage trauma, support relatives overseas, navigate Centrelink, schools, housing, health systems, immigration processes and racism, all at once.

For these mothers, NDIS supports can be the difference between isolation and connection, between crisis and stability, between a mother being able to work or study and a mother being trapped permanently in unpaid care.

Cuts to social and community participation, capacity building and flexible supports must not be dismissed as “non-critical.” For many families, these supports are what make school attendance possible, what allow a child to build confidence, what allow a young person to participate in community, what allow a mother to attend work, study, appointments or simply breathe.

In multicultural communities, disability is also shaped by cultural stigma, fear and limited access to diagnosis. Families may not have the language to describe disability in the way government systems demand. Some families come from countries where disability has been hidden, punished, medicalised or treated with shame. Others have had experiences of state violence or detention that make them afraid of government assessment.

A more restrictive, compliance-heavy and assessment-heavy NDIS will not land equally. It will favour families who are confident in English, literate in bureaucracy, able to pay for private reports, able to take time off work, and able to argue with systems.

That is not equity. That is privilege dressed up as administrative fairness.

Functional capacity assessments must not erase culture, trauma and context

The Bill proposes to place greater emphasis on functional capacity. Mums4Refugees is concerned that functional capacity assessments, if not designed with deep cultural safety and trauma-informed safeguards, will fail multicultural families.

Functional capacity cannot be understood outside context. A child may appear more “functional” in a short assessment than they are at home, at school, in public, during transitions, during sensory overload, after trauma, or when language and cultural context are not understood. A mother may understate needs because she fears judgement, immigration consequences, child protection involvement, shame or being seen as a “bad mother.” A family may not know what evidence matters or how to describe the daily reality of disability.

We urge the Committee to recommend that any functional capacity framework must include:

culturally safe assessment practices;
qualified interpreters, not family members;
trauma-informed approaches;
recognition of family violence and migration-related trauma;
safeguards against racial and gender bias;
clear appeal rights;

funding for independent advocacy;
assessment of the whole family context, not just the individual impairment;
recognition that children’s needs fluctuate across environments. Without these safeguards, functional capacity assessments risk becoming another doorway through which multicultural families are excluded.

Concerns about limiting unscheduled plan reassessments

We are particularly concerned about the proposed tightening of criteria for unscheduled plan reassessments.

Children and families do not experience disability in neat annual cycles. Needs can change suddenly. A child can regress. A mother can leave family violence. A parent can become unwell. Housing can collapse. A school placement can break down. A family can lose informal support. A young person can experience mental health crisis. A support worker can leave. A therapy provider can close. A family can move because of safety, rent increases or domestic violence.

For refugee-background and multicultural families, instability is often already part of the landscape. Limiting access to reassessment risks leaving families trapped in plans that no longer meet their needs.

We recommend that the Bill preserve accessible rights to request reassessment when a participant’s support needs, family circumstances, safety, housing, schooling, informal supports or caring arrangements change. The test must be flexible enough to respond to real life.

A system that only responds after crisis is not sustainable. It is simply more expensive later.

Concerns about reductions to social and community participation and capacity building

Mums4Refugees is deeply concerned about the proposed reduction of social, civic and community participation support allocations and capacity-building daily activity allocations.

These supports are not luxuries.

For children and young people with disability, participation is development. It is confidence, friendship, communication, routine, emotional regulation and belonging.

For adults with disability, participation is protection against isolation, depression, exploitation and institutionalisation.

For mothers and carers, participation supports may be the reason they can work, attend English class, go to appointments, support other children, leave unsafe relationships or stay connected to community.

For multicultural communities, social participation is also a bridge into Australian life. It helps families build trust, learn systems, reduce isolation and find culturally safe networks. It can be particularly important for women who are isolated by language, gender roles, caring responsibilities or family violence.

Calling these supports “non-critical” misunderstands disability, family life and prevention. Social connection is not decorative. Capacity building is not optional. Inclusion is not a treat that can be cut when budgets are tight.

We urge the Committee to recommend that reductions to these supports not proceed without a full gender impact assessment, multicultural impact assessment, disability rights assessment and independent review of how these reductions will affect family violence risk, carer workforce participation, child development, mental health and social isolation.

Reasonable and necessary supports must not become a moral judgement on mothers

The Bill proposes changes to how reasonable and necessary supports are assessed, including consideration of sustainability and equity across participants.

Mums4Refugees supports fairness and consistency. But we are concerned that “equity” and “sustainability” may be used to reduce supports without properly considering gender, culture, poverty, trauma and family circumstances.

We are especially concerned about how “parental responsibility” may be interpreted.

There is a dangerous moral story in Australia that says good mothers should cope, good mothers should sacrifice, good mothers should not ask for too much, good migrant mothers should be grateful, and good refugee mothers should endure.

This is not policy. This is gendered punishment.

The question should not be, “What can we expect mothers to absorb?” The question should be, “What support does this child, person and family need to live with dignity, safety and participation?”

A mother’s love cannot be used as an excuse to remove public responsibility.

Plan suspensions and contact requirements will punish the families least able to navigate the system

The Bill includes provisions allowing plan suspension where the NDIA has made reasonable attempts to contact a participant and received no response or inadequate response.

This may sound administratively reasonable, but for the families we support it raises serious concerns.

A person may not respond because they did not understand the letter. They may have moved because of housing insecurity. They may be in family violence crisis. They may have limited English. They may fear government contact. They may be in hospital. They may not have stable internet or phone access. They may be overwhelmed by trauma, disability or caring responsibilities.

For families seeking asylum and refugee-background families, communication failure is often not refusal. It is a sign that the system has not reached them in an accessible, culturally safe way.

We recommend strong safeguards before any plan is suspended, including:

mandatory use of interpreters;
contact through multiple channels;
contact with trusted nominees or advocates;
trauma-informed checks;
family violence safety screening;
no suspension where lack of response may be linked to disability, language barriers, homelessness, family violence, migration status or crisis;
a clear, fast and accessible process to restore supports. Suspending a plan can destabilise an entire household. The consequences will again fall heavily on mothers.

The NDIS must not be separated from women’s economic participation

Successive governments have said they want women to return to the workforce, increase economic security, escape poverty, leave violence and use their skills.

But mothers cannot participate in paid work if public systems withdraw support and expect them to privately absorb disability care.

Many multicultural mothers already face significant barriers to employment: overseas qualifications not recognised, racism in hiring, limited childcare, English-language barriers, insecure work, transport barriers and caring responsibilities. Disability support can be the difference between a mother being able to take a job and a mother being permanently pushed out of the labour market.

Reducing supports may produce apparent savings inside the NDIS budget, but those costs will reappear elsewhere: in poverty, family violence services, crisis housing, mental health systems, school exclusion, hospital presentations, carer burnout and lost tax revenue.

A feminist budget lens would ask: who pays when the state withdraws?

The answer is often women.

Disability support is not charity. It is infrastructure.

Mums4Refugees urges the Committee to understand the NDIS as social infrastructure.

Just as roads allow people to move, disability supports allow people to live, learn, work, communicate, participate and belong. When disability support is cut, families do not become more resilient. They become more exhausted. Children do not become less disabled. Mothers simply become more invisible.

Australia is living through a cost-of-living crisis, a housing crisis, a care crisis and a crisis of trust in public systems. In such a moment, the way a nation treats disabled people, children and mothers tells us what kind of future it is building.

The NDIS should be repaired, not narrowed. It should be made safer, not smaller. It should be made more culturally competent, not more bureaucratic. It should protect people from exploitation without treating participants and families as suspect. It should recognise that disability justice, gender justice and racial justice are not separate issues.

They live in the same households.

Recommendations

Mums4Refugees recommends that the Committee:

Recommend that the Bill not proceed in its current form until a full gender, multicultural, child rights and disability rights impact assessment has been completed.
Require specific analysis of the impact of the Bill on mothers, unpaid carers, multicultural families, refugee-background communities, people seeking asylum, children with disability and families experiencing family violence.
Ensure that any changes to functional capacity assessment include culturally safe, trauma-informed, interpreter-supported and bias-aware safeguards.
Preserve broad and accessible rights to request unscheduled plan reassessments when needs, safety, housing, schooling, family violence, informal supports or caring arrangements change.

Remove or amend provisions that would reduce social, civic and community participation supports and capacity-building supports without individual assessment of need.
Ensure that “reasonable and necessary” decision-making does not use parental responsibility to shift disability support obligations onto unpaid mothers and carers.
Require the NDIA to consider the wellbeing, workforce participation, safety and economic security of parents and carers when assessing supports for children.
Ensure that plan suspension provisions cannot be used against participants or families who face language barriers, homelessness, family violence, trauma, disability-related communication barriers or migration-related vulnerability.
Fund independent disability advocacy, including specialist multicultural and refugee-background advocacy, so that families can understand and exercise their rights.
Guarantee that no child or family is moved out of the NDIS into alternative systems unless those systems are already fully funded, culturally safe, locally available, accessible, accountable and subject to review rights.
Ensure that all future NDIS reforms are co-designed with people with disability, mothers and carers, First Nations communities, multicultural communities and families with lived experience of temporary migration and forced displacement.

Conclusion

Mums4Refugees asks the Committee to pause and consider the human consequences of this Bill.

Behind every word like “sustainability,” “efficiency,” “functional capacity” and “reasonable and necessary,” there is a family. There is a mother filling forms at midnight. There is a child who needs support to communicate, regulate, move, learn or belong. There is a woman trying to return to work. There is a family trying to survive rent, racism, trauma and fear. There is a community doing the work that systems keep failing to do.

We cannot build the future of the NDIS by making mothers carry more invisible labour.

We cannot protect future generations by removing support from the children and families living now.

We cannot speak of fairness while designing systems that only the most privileged families can navigate.

The NDIS is not only a disability scheme. It is a statement about what Australia believes disabled people are worth, what mothers are expected to carry, and whether multicultural families are seen as fully part of this country’s future.

Mums4Refugees urges the Committee to recommend changes that protect the NDIS without sacrificing disabled people, children, mothers and multicultural families.

Care is not a private burden.

Care is public infrastructure.

Care is justice.

And justice must be designed with the people who carry its consequences.

Dulce Muñoz National Convener

In solidarity and friendship

Mums4Refugees National Team

“There can be no love without justice.” — bell hooks