National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 3314
Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs
Re: NDIS Amendment (Securing the NDIS) Bill 2026
I am writing as the parent of an autistic child living in Queensland. I am submitting this to the Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs in response to the NDIS Amendment (Securing the NDIS) Bill 2026.
I am writing about the cumulative effect of the proposed changes in this Bill on primary carers — and specifically on women.
The NDIA’s own quarterly data (March 2025) shows that carer employment rose 6 percentage points — from 46% to 52% — with access to the NDIS. This is not a coincidence. Formal support enables primary carers to participate in paid work.
When support is cut, that participation is reversed. This is the direct, documented relationship between NDIS funding and workforce participation for carers.
Primary carers of autistic children and adults are disproportionately women. In 2018, there were an estimated 860,000 primary carers of people with disability in Australia. The majority are women. These carers consistently report reduced or ceased paid work, reduced superannuation, physical and mental health decline, and long-term financial disadvantage they do not recover from.
My daughter is a new NDIS participant as we only received her first plan in December
- I was forced to give up my job in February due to her needs (we had not yet begun to see improvement from funded supports due to the time taken to put these in place). We have been very lucky to be able to find appropriate supports for her with short waiting lists and she is already making great progress. I was hoping to be able to look for work again in the next couple of months as her capacity increases. However if our funding is cut then there is a real risk that I will not be able to re enter the workforce due to the increased support I will need to provide for my daughter on top of caring for my younger child. This will leave me with lost income and superannuation and have a knock on impact on my future and my family’s wellbeing.
The proposed changes in this Bill — including pre-set funding tiers for autistic children, the requirement to demonstrate ‘appropriate treatment,’ and the diversion of children under 9 off the NDIS — will each individually increase the care burden on families. Together, they will push more primary carers — predominantly women — out of the workforce entirely.
The Bill makes this worse still through new provisions in subsections 34(1G) and 34(1H), which create a legal presumption that parents are responsible for providing supervision, personal care, transport, emotional support, behavioural support, and other day-to-day assistance to their children with disability. Under subsection 34(1J), the NDIS would be
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 3314
directed to ignore the pressure this places on families when deciding whether to fund a support.
Families are already experiencing the consequences of this approach. During a Senate hearing on eligibility reassessments, CYDA CEO Skye Kakoschke-Moore shared this account from a family: “We were told that because my son was under 18 that everything was deemed parental responsibility. I was told that if I couldn’t fulfill my parental responsibility that I’d be reported to the department of Children’s Services.”
These provisions do not reflect the reality of raising a child with complex disability needs. They reflect a policy decision to transfer costs from the NDIS onto families — and onto women in particular.
This is a gendered economic harm. I ask the Committee to remove subsections 34(1G), 34(1H) and 34(1J) from the Bill, to require a gender impact assessment of all proposed changes before this Bill proceeds, and to commission modelling of the effect on carer workforce participation if the proposed funding reductions are implemented.