The Bridge
Second Submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation
Committee
Inquiry into the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment
(Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Date: 10/07/2026
Dear Senators,
My name is Timothy Lachlan. Some of you may remember my evidence on the 10th of June.
When I last sat before you, I asked you to consider what these proposed changes to the NDIS would mean for disabled Australians. Today, you don’t have to imagine anymore. I’m here to tell you what has happened.
Only a few weeks have passed since I last spoke to you. In that time, I have become permanently more disabled.
You may notice my left footplate is broken. I was already under enormous stress. Like thousands of disabled Australians, I was trying to understand what these reforms would mean for my future, for my partner, for my family and friends, and for my community. The uncertainty became overwhelming. I experienced a severe dissociative episode, and during that episode, I drove my power wheelchair into a concrete pole that I did not see.
I shattered my foot. It required major reconstructive surgery involving plates and screws. My surgeons have told me I will never regain the function I had before.
I sat before this Committee in June as a disabled person. Today, I sit before you more disabled than I was then. The uncertainty surrounding these proposed changes contributed to one of the most psychologically difficult periods of my life, and I now live with the consequences of that every day.
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Essential Infrastructure vs. Charity
People often speak about disability support as though it is a cost. I would like to suggest something different. The National Disability Insurance Scheme is not charity; it is essential infrastructure. It is essential infrastructure to support all Australians living with disability, because anyone can become disabled at any time.
We don’t ask whether maintenance was worth funding after a bridge collapses. We don’t ask whether hospitals are worth funding after someone dies waiting for treatment. So why do we question disability support only after a disabled person’s life has already fallen apart? The purpose of a disability insurance scheme is to stop people from falling off the health cliff.
The NDIS will not allocate funding for a support worker to help me with shopping. I only need one hour of support work for this task—about sixty dollars. A support worker would have allowed me to safely do a full shop instead of stacking a limited number of groceries on my lap.
Instead, the taxpayer is now paying thousands in hospital bills: emergency surgeries, hospital admissions, rehabilitation, increased support needs, and permanent disability. Apparently, funding the consequences is considered “reasonable and necessary,” but funding prevention is not.
The NDIS also refuses to fund a bed for an overnight support worker because it is considered an “ordinary household expense.” Without somewhere for a support worker to sleep, overnight support becomes almost impossible. The alternative is a hospital admission. That is not saving money; that is simply moving the cost somewhere else.
When support disappears, the need doesn’t disappear. The cost doesn’t disappear. It simply moves. It moves to families. It moves to carers. It moves to hospitals. And eventually, it costs far more than prevention ever would have.
A System at Breaking Point
While I was in hospital, I waited more than six hours in the Emergency Department. I was eventually put on a ward. The woman beside me was seventy-eight years old. She had suffered a head injury, had just undergone a hip replacement, and was vomiting blood. She repeatedly pressed the emergency buzzer, but nobody came for several minutes. This was not because the nurses didn’t care; it was because they couldn’t. I eventually climbed into my wheelchair and went looking for a nurse myself.
Healthcare workers are doing everything they can. They are holding together a system that is already at breaking point. Disabled Australians should not be occupying hospital beds because community supports have failed.
Since I last appeared before you, my best friend’s wheelchair headrest broke. It has now been over a month. There is not enough funding available in his plan to replace an essential piece of his wheelchair. A headrest is not a luxury; it is an essential seating component. It helps keep him safe and manage fatigue.
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Before I was injured, I had already decided that I would drive to Queensland and remove the headrest from my own wheelchair so he could use it until his replacement arrived. Think about that. Two disabled Australians, two NDIS participants, planning to dismantle one wheelchair just to keep another wheelchair safe.
That isn’t resilience. That isn’t choice and control. That is a failure of our disability support system. Then I shattered my foot, and now I need my own headrest. Neither of us should ever have been placed in that position. Disabled Australians should not have to cannibalise our own equipment to keep each other safe. That is the responsibility of the disability system, not ours.
Fixing the Market, Not Blaming the Participant
I also sit before you today as a former Occupational Therapist. I have worked inside the disability sector. Disabled Australians are often blamed for rising NDIS costs, but that is not where I saw the problem. I worked for a provider that charged participants the maximum NDIS rate while paying clinicians less than forty dollars an hour. That business was eventually liquidated, owing over $400,000 to the Australian Taxation Office.
I saw participants pressured into unnecessary services. I saw clinicians burn out. I saw businesses profit. Please stop blaming disabled Australians for problems we did not create. Fix the market that profits from disability instead. You set the price limit, not us.
The Protection of Disabled Children
I also want to speak about disabled children. The proposal to force families to use chemical restraints on their disabled children just to gain access to the scheme is inhumane and deeply unethical.
As a child, I experienced the harms of restrictive practices. I was physically restrained. I was chemically restrained with 30mg of Concerta—the adult dosage of which is only 10mg. I have medical documentation supporting my treatment history. Today, my liver, kidneys, and heart are impacted by the long-term effects of my body being filled with stimulants against my will for over a decade.
I remember very little of my childhood because of the forced drugging. What I do remember is trauma: locked gates, walkie-talkies, lockdowns, being buzzed through doors like an inmate, and being pinned to the ground by four adults. I was treated as a behavior to be managed instead of a child to be understood.
Now I hear proposals that would make it easier to chemically restrain autistic and intellectually disabled children. I ask you: where is their choice? Where is their control?
Children deserve support before families reach crisis. They deserve therapy, communication, neuro-affirming respite, and understanding. The answer is not to make restraint easier; the answer is to provide the supports that prevent crisis in the first place.
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A Budget is a Moral Document
The Disability Royal Commission documented what happens when disabled Australians are denied dignity, autonomy, and protection. Yet, only thirteen of its recommendations have been accepted in full. Why ask disabled Australians to tell their stories if we are not prepared to learn from them?
Every budget is a moral document. It tells Australians what we value. Every line in this legislation represents a human being. Every dollar removed transfers risk somewhere else—onto a family, onto a carer, onto a nurse, onto another disabled person, or sometimes, onto a funeral.
These are not unforeseeable tragedies. Experts have warned you. Families have warned you. Disabled people have warned you. We are warning you again today. Disabled blood is already on this Government’s hands. People are already dying while waiting for reviews, appeals, and essential supports; eighteen-year-old Noah Johnston was one of them. If these warnings continue to be ignored, the deaths will increase. Governments have a moral responsibility to prevent foreseeable harm when they have the power to do so.
One day, every person in this room will know someone who becomes disabled. It might be your child, your partner, your parent, your friend, or it might be you. Disability is part of the human condition. The irony is that these cuts will take funding from disabled people only to create more disabled people. If we fail to invest in preventing disability today, we simply create more disability tomorrow—more suffering, and more cost. That is not financial responsibility; that is the most expensive choice a government can make.
We must learn from history or we are cursed to repeat it. Occupational therapy was born from helping soldiers wounded by war. By taking money from disabled Australians to invest in weapons of mass destruction, you are investing in the development of even more disabilities—not just physical and psychological, but genetic disabilities especially.
Every one of us is only one illness, one accident, or one diagnosis away from needing the very supports we are debating today.
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Conclusion
Senators, I don’t expect every person in this room to remember every statistic shared today. But I hope you remember these images:
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A broken wheelchair waiting more than a month for an essential repair.
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Two disabled Australians planning to dismantle one wheelchair to keep another one safe.
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A grandmother vomiting blood while an overwhelmed hospital struggled to respond.
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Support for shopping that wasn’t funded, followed by thousands of dollars in hospital care.
None of those stories are inevitable. They are the result of choices. This government has the opportunity to make the right choice. The right choice is to reject this inhumane bill.
When I first sat before you, I asked you to protect the NDIS. Today, I am asking you to protect the people it was created for. Because disability support is not charity. It is essential infrastructure, much like hospitals and other public services.
The NDIS is the bridge between surviving and thriving, between crisis and prevention, between isolation and participation, and between dependence and independence. Australia built that bridge when it created the NDIS. Please don’t be the Parliament that lets it crumble beneath the people it was built to protect.
Tax resources, tax the rich, but do not punch down on society’s most vulnerable.
Thank you.
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