Submission to the Senate Community Affairs Committee
Inquiry into NDIS Supports and Proposed Funding Reductions
Submitted by: Name withheld
Date: May 2026
PUBLICATION REQUEST: The author consents to this submission being published on the public record. However, the author requests that their name and contact details be redacted prior to publication to protect their privacy.
Introduction
I write as both the sibling and primary carer of a 31 year old person with a severe intellectual disability to provide evidence to the Committee regarding the proposed reductions to NDIS funding, specifically in the areas of Community Access supports. I ask the Committee to consider not only the impact on people with disability directly, but on the family members who, in the absence of adequate formal support, bear the full weight of that care alone.
- The Current Situation My sibling is thirty-three years old and has a severe intellectual disability. They were not born with this disability, they developed typically until a series of severe seizures during infancy caused permanent and profound neurological damage. This is a reality that can befall any family without warning. It is also a permanent, lifelong reality, the support need will not diminish over time.
My sibling requires significant assistance with activities of daily living and is completely unable to access the community without support. Without formal supports in place, that responsibility falls entirely to me.
I want to be clear: the supports currently in place are not sufficient. We are already operating below what is needed. Despite this, any further reduction would have immediate and serious consequences, not only for my sibling’s quality of life, but for my own ability to remain in paid employment and sustain any semblance of an independent life.
- The Impact on Carer Employment Maintaining employment alongside meeting my sibling’s care needs is already an enormous and daily struggle. The existing formal supports provide only a partial buffer, enough at present, to allow me to work part time, but with very little margin.
If Community Access supports were reduced or removed, I would become the sole person responsible for my sibling’s community participation. This is not a theoretical risk, it is the direct and predictable consequence. The likely outcomes are one of two: I leave paid employment
entirely in order to meet my sibling’s needs, or my sibling is simply unable to participate in the community at all. Neither outcome is acceptable. Both represent a profound failure of policy.
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The Fiscal Cost of Forcing Carers Out of Employment The economic consequences of this scenario extend beyond our family. If I am compelled to leave paid employment to meet my sibling’s care needs, the result is a loss of tax revenue, potential reliance on income support, and the transfer of care costs from a targeted NDIS investment to broader welfare and health systems. The savings projected from reducing Community Access supports would, in all likelihood, be offset, and quite possibly exceeded, by these downstream costs. This is not a fiscally responsible policy position. It shifts costs rather than reducing them, while causing significant harm in the process.
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The Human Cost Placing the entire burden of a person’s community access on a single family member is inhumane. It is not a reasonable expectation. Every person, including carers, has the right to their own life, their own work, their own participation in society. A system that strips that away by withdrawing formal supports is not a system that is meeting its obligations.
My sibling equally deserves access to the benefits of community life that other Australians can access independently. The NDIS exists precisely because disability can prevent that access, and because a just society does not leave people without the assistance they need to participate in it. For a person with a severe intellectual disability, Community Access supports are not a luxury. They are the mechanism through which my sibling is able to experience what most Australians take for granted.
- The Purpose of the NDIS The NDIS was founded on a clear principle: that Australians with disability deserve support to live full lives and to access the same opportunities available to others. Community Access supports are a direct expression of that principle. Reducing them does not represent a minor adjustment, it represents a fundamental retreat from that commitment.
The question of whether to reduce these supports should not even be open for debate. For people with high support needs and their carers, these supports are not supplementary, they are the difference between participation and isolation, between a carer remaining in the workforce and being forced out of it, between a humane system and one that abandons the people it was designed to serve.
- Summary of Concerns • My sibling is 31 years old with a severe intellectual disability acquired through
seizures in infancy, a reminder that disability can affect any family without warning
• This is a permanent, lifelong support need that will not diminish over time
• Current supports are already insufficient, any reduction compounds an existingdeficit
• Removal of Community Access supports would leave me as the sole responsibleperson, which is not sustainable
• The likely outcome is either my exit from paid employment or my sibling’scomplete inability to access the community
• Forcing a carer out of employment carries direct fiscal costs that offset anyprojected savings
• This places an unreasonable and inhumane burden on a single family member
• It is contrary to the founding purpose and principles of the NDISConclusion
I urge the Committee to recommend that Community Access supports be protected from any reduction. I ask that the voices of carers, who are often invisible in this debate, be given genuine weight. The consequences of these cuts extend well beyond the individual with disability. They fall on families, on carers, and ultimately on the broader community when those carers are no longer able to sustain employment or their own wellbeing.
The NDIS exists to provide humane, basic assistance and to give people with disability access to the benefits of society that others can access themselves. I ask the Committee to protect that commitment.
Name withheld [Contact details provided separately and not for publication]
The author consents to publication of this submission with name and contact details withheld.