To Whom it May Concern,
Re: National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future
Generations) Bill 2026
Why are people with disabilities regularly targeted for savings in the Federal budget?
People with disabilities should not be fair game and nor should the NDIS. That’s what the proposed amendment does – it will target those whom the Government (and public) don’t consider disabled enough! An objective opinion of disability and it’s impacts.
People with disabilities and their families fight hard to be able to participate and be accepted as a ‘normal’ and accepted part of society. To achieve that it takes disability supports and services. If these are cut in the way this amendment will allow, like many others we will likely be abandoned.
It’s cruel … there is no other way to state it.
People with disabilities have the right to live full and equitable lives, participate in society on an equitable basis and be given opportunities that would otherwise be impossible if not for the NDIS. That will not happen with the proposed changes to the NDIS.
We have multiple people with multiple disabilities in our family, some on the NDIS, some not.
Those in the Government supporting proposed changes and cuts obviously haven’t experienced disability or generational disability, or they would be aiming to achieve savings and cuts another way. We need the Government to commit to protecting the NDIS, not slashing it and abandoning those who will ultimately be lost, as they were before its existence.
We need the Government to commit to protecting the approximately 160,000 people with disabilities and their families (most of them Autistics by the sounds of it), not abandon them and future generations of children and adults with disabilities – including invisible disabilities.
Non-NDIS services in the community do not exist to support us. We’ve experienced it firsthand. Government services were ‘protected’ as if costs were coming out of personal decision makers pockets. It was only when we took our matter to the Human Rights Commission that they provided what we needed. An unnecessary waste of Government money.
Families can’t take on this burden; we’ve seen what happens when parents, families and those with disabilities don’t get the help they need. Families and children get lost. It’s a tragedy that the Government are clearly ignoring.
Two Australian disabled families lost and destroyed in 2026 (that we know of), because they didn’t get what they needed. These tragedies are real and they happen because the Government keeps using people with disabilities as a way of saving money. It’s our lives the
Government are treating as a saving. Why have the Government not learned lessons from these tragedies and those in the past?
The NDIS funds the reasonable and necessary supports people with disability rely on to live ordinary lives or at least try to. Supports and services don’t just get handed to us either, we must fight for them. This includes placing already overworked allied health professionals and specialists under significant pressure in supporting us.
In its efforts to cut costs, the agency running the NDIS has taken an adversarial approach that has left participants and families exhausted.
Tens of millions of dollars gets spent every year by the Government fighting people in getting necessary NDIS supports already, perhaps this significant monetary cost could instead be a way to achieve savings.
The NDIA spent approximately $60 million on external legal advice in the 2023–24 financial year, with $53 million specifically allocated to legal counsel and lawyers for tribunal appeals.
For the 2025–26 period, specific total spending on fighting claims is not explicitly stated in available data, but the following relevant financial figures apply:
Legal Fees for Specific Cases: In one recent appeal involving a six-year-old participant, the NDIA billed more than $339,000 in external legal fees and expenses by November 2025.
Annual Legal Budget: Reports indicate the NDIA is currently spending approximately $90 million per year on external lawyers.
Integrity Investment: The government committed an additional $151 million over four years from 2025–26 to the “Crack Down on Fraud” program, which includes $17.1 million in 2025–26 to maintain the NDIA’s payment integrity workforce.
Is spending at this level necessary or could some of it be put to better use by not cutting supports and services to those who need it.
Life is already challenging enough for those with disabilities - getting out of bed and out of the house can be impossible for some without supports. Parents and families can’t be everything; we do not have the capacity.
Going to school has been impossible for our teens with multiple disabilities, so some of their current supports help to improve their lives and make other things possible. With the proposed changes and cuts that most likely won’t happen and their lives will be even more restricted. They will be further isolated and unable to access society. We know what happens to isolated children and families.
Eventually getting into appropriate work looks even more impossible with the proposed cuts and changes. Somewhere to live, learning to drive, eating, breathing, participating - sounds dramatic - well it’s not! It’s real life that most disabled people live. If we don’t give
significant support to one of our teens they just don’t eat, they don’t have the functional capacity with everyday demands on them.
With the proposed NDIS changes and cuts, undertaking and experiencing everyday activities will be impossible. These are some of the things the NDIS makes possible now. Taking the pressure off families that are already struggling to survive and manage.
We can’t afford to fund the reasonable and necessary supports and services that our teens need to support their daily capacity and functioning. They have multiple disabilities, including Autism, but they are over 9, what do they do - they barely function now.
They can’t look after themselves properly without appropriate supports and services, they are failing school through no fault of their own, they can’t see prospects for future work, they can’t access society without the supports and services for their disabilities.
They are isolated and have been abandoned enough by Government representatives and services. Prior to the NDIS, we were paying for as much as we could afford for their disability and medical needs. To date we still haven’t got out of the financial hole that put us in.
The Government has announced it will further reduce the growth of the NDIS. Is the Government going to magically disappear those with disabilities and or the impacts disability has on participants and families? Is it going to magically appear other services that don’t exist and will not any time soon? These services weren’t there before or if they were, they failed people with disability. The Government has not considered the reality of these proposed amendments, cuts and changes.
Reducing growth means cutting the supports and services people rely on to live and function.
Improve efficiency in investigating businesses and providers that charge too much for services and do the wrong thing by those with disabilities. As soon as someone says NDIS, up goes the price of services. Stopping these practices should be ways of achieving savings.
On weekdays, for support workers, we pay $70+ per hour whilst our support workers get up to approximately $40+ - that’s $25-$30 that the business gets per hour per person and they ARE registered with the NDIS. Overheads cannot be that expensive and that should be reduced to save participants/NDIS money. Participants should be charged less, and support workers should get more.
If reducing growth is done by tightening eligibility and capping or restricting supports, people with disabilities lose access to what they need to live safely and participate in the community. What may look like someone who is mostly functioning to an outsider, is very much a different matter at home. Getting out of bed and functioning is not just a physical issue, it is a capacity issue and with the cuts and changes this is less likely to be taken into consideration.
Eligibility will look like ‘visibility’. What about invisibility - invisible disabilities can be just as disabling, if not more for some people. Many of the approximately 160,000 it seems the
Government will be cutting and blocking those from future access, will be those with invisible disabilities.
Let’s not go backwards with disability - people with disability deserve to live just like non disabled people do. Tightening eligibility and capping or restricting supports and services will not enable those with disabilities to participate in and be an equitable part of society let alone get out of the house.
The Government decisions and amendments will have real consequences for disabled people. Participants and families’ lives ARE at stake - make no mistake about that.
As well as that already stated we are asking the Government to:
Protect access to reasonable and necessary supports and genuinely consider the specific disabilities involved. Invisible disabilities included.
Not abandon those with Autism over 9 that are unable to function without significant supports and services (and with limited family support or generational disabilities).
Rule out cuts to eligibility and plan funding. Reassess where the funds to continue with supports will come from. Parents and families do not have the funds to continue themselves and the so-called community services that will take over DO NOT exist. We have experienced that.
Reject blanket caps that ignore individual and specific needs. How are disabled people at the centre of that - it certainly isn’t a person centred, needs based, trauma informed approach. Something that the NDIS should be prioritising.
Commit to genuine co-design with people with disability. ‘Nothing about us without us’ shouldn’t be just a catchphrase. Include those with disabilities in the design and decision making.
Focus reform on identifying and fixing system inefficiencies and capping NDIS/NDIA legal costs - not cutting supports and services.
Please do not make changes and cuts that will see participants and families abandoned. Participants and families that need ongoing supports and services to live and survive. Do not make it even harder for us to survive.
People with disabilities – invisible disabilities included - deserve to thrive and live fulfilling lives that would not otherwise be possible. We experienced what life was like prior to the NDIS. It was a time of significant desperation, isolation, sadness and significant financial impact. Our children and ourselves do not want to experience that ever again.