Submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation
Committee
Inquiry into the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment
(Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
To the Committee Secretary,
I am writing this quickly because the timeframe for submissions has been extremely short, and because, like many people connected to the NDIS, I am tired.
I am an NDIS provider, a parent/carer, and a disabled person. I live this system from more than one angle. I see the good it can do. I also see the mess, the waste, the poor providers, the inconsistent decisions, the fear families carry, and the way people are left fighting systems when they should be able to get on with their lives.
I am not against reform.
The NDIS does need reform. It needs better regulation. It needs stronger action against fraud. It needs poor providers dealt with properly. It needs less duplication, better technology, better decisions and a lot more common sense.
But this Bill, in its current form, scares me.
It does not feel like careful reform. It feels like a shift away from the original promise of the NDIS: choice, control, individualised support, and disabled people being able to live ordinary lives in the community.
I ask the Committee to recommend that this Bill not be passed in its current form.
The problem is not disabled people living ordinary lives
A lot of the public conversation around the NDIS has become cruel and misleading.
Supports are being talked about as if disabled people are wasting taxpayer money by going for walks, seeing movies, getting haircuts, accessing the community, or needing support with ordinary daily life.
But ordinary life is exactly the point.
A walk is not “just a walk” if the person cannot safely leave the house without support.
A movie is not “just a movie” if it is social participation, emotional regulation, community access, communication practice, or the only normal outing someone has had all week.
A haircut is not “just a haircut” if it requires support with sensory issues, anxiety, transport, communication, personal care, dignity or hygiene.
Most Australians do not have to justify why they go outside, see people, get their hair cut, or participate in their community.
Disabled people should not have to justify ordinary life as though it is a luxury.
The word “crackdown” matters
I am also concerned about the language being used around NDIS participants.
When people talk about an “eligibility crackdown”, it implies that people on the Scheme have done something wrong.
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Most participants did not sneak onto the NDIS. They applied. They provided evidence. The NDIA assessed them under the rules that existed at the time. The NDIA accepted them.
If the government now wants to narrow the rules, that is a policy decision. It is not proof that those people were dishonest, undeserving or wrongly there.
Language matters because it shapes public attitudes. Right now, disabled people, especially autistic people and people with complex or less visible disabilities, are being spoken about as though they are the problem.
That is harmful. It is also unfair.
Choice and control are not the problem
The NDIS was built around choice and control. That is not a side feature. It is the heart of the Scheme.
I am very worried by the push toward fewer, larger providers and more centralised control.
The NDIS does not need fewer providers just for the sake of fewer providers. It needs better providers.
Small providers are not automatically good. Large providers are not automatically bad. But many of the best supports in the NDIS happen in small, flexible, relationship-based services where the provider actually knows the participant.
That matters.
Disability support is not a factory line. It is not childcare. It is not a standardised product.
A participant’s life does not fit neatly into a corporate model or a spreadsheet. People need support that adapts to their actual life, their communication, their family situation, their home, their risks, their strengths, their goals and their trust relationships.
If the answer to NDIS sustainability becomes consolidation into a handful of large organisations, then choice and control quietly disappear. Participants may technically still have “choice”, but in practice their real options will shrink.
That is not reform. That is a structural transfer of power away from participants.
Families and carers are not an endless backup system
I am deeply concerned about any change that pushes more responsibility back onto families and carers.
Families are already carrying more than most people understand. Many carers are disabled themselves. Many are exhausted. Many are trying to work, parent other children, manage their own health, and keep everyone just functional enough to avoid crisis.
This is not just my opinion.
National carer data repeatedly shows that unpaid carers are under serious pressure. Carers report lower wellbeing, poorer health, higher loneliness, psychological distress, financial strain and difficulty accessing supports. These are not small problems at the edges. They are warning lights.
When a funded support is cut, the need does not disappear.
Someone still has to do the work.
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Usually that someone is a mother, a parent, a sibling, a partner, or another unpaid carer who is already stretched thin.
That cost does not show neatly in an NDIS budget line, but it is real. It shows up in carer burnout, lost income, mental health decline, family breakdown, hospital presentations, school refusal, crisis services, and people becoming isolated or unsafe.
The recent deaths of autistic teenagers Otis and Leon and their parents in Western Australia, which police are investigating as a suspected murder-suicide, should not be used to excuse violence. There is never a justification for murder or family violence. But it should force governments to look honestly at what happens when disability support systems fail families under extreme and prolonged pressure.
The government cannot keep treating unpaid family care as if it is an unlimited resource. It is not.
Review rights are not red tape. They are protection.
I am very concerned about any reduction in review rights or practical appeal options.
The NDIA already makes poor decisions. Families and participants already have to fight decisions that should have been made properly the first time.
Recent reporting based on ART data found that in the eight months to June 2025, NDIA decisions were overturned in nearly three-quarters of NDIS cases before the ART. That is not a tiny error rate. That is a flashing red warning sign.
If a system is getting decisions wrong that often, the answer is not to reduce review rights.
The answer is to make better decisions.
If a participant loses funding, has support reduced, is exited from the Scheme, or is assessed by a tool that does not capture their real life, they must have a meaningful way to challenge that decision.
This is especially important for people with complex, fluctuating, developmental, neurological, psychosocial and communication-related disabilities.
A form, a checklist, or a one-off assessment does not always show what daily life is actually like.
Some people mask. Some shut down. Some cannot explain their support needs. Some look more capable in an assessment than they are across a real week. Some families have been fighting so long they no longer know how to explain the level of support they are providing because it has become their normal.
Removing review rights does not make the system fairer or more sustainable.
It just makes bad decisions harder to fix.
The data problem is part of the problem
I am also concerned about poor reporting, inconsistent data and the way statistics are being used in public discussion.
When the government and agencies use big numbers to justify reform, the public deserves full context.
If NDIS spending is increasing, we need to know why. Is it participant growth? More complex participants entering the Scheme? Inflation? Workforce shortages?
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Administrative overhead? Provider behaviour? Fraud? Changes in market pricing? Increased use of government agencies billing the Scheme?
Those causes matter.
A cost number without context becomes a political weapon.
There are also inconsistencies and gaps in the public data more broadly. This is not just about ART appeal numbers. It includes how fraud is measured and reported, how participant growth is described, how access decisions are counted, how plan approvals compare with actual plan utilisation, and how different agencies present information about Scheme costs and outcomes. For example, recent reporting found that ART data recorded 7,935 new NDIS cases in the year to June 2025, while the NDIS reported 7,132 new cases. Both agencies reportedly said their figures were accurate. That may sound like an administrative detail, but it matters. If governments are relying on data to justify major reforms, then Parliament and the public need confidence that the underlying figures are clear, consistent and comparable. Without that transparency, it becomes much harder to assess claims about sustainability, fraud, participant access, review rights, or where the real pressures on the Scheme actually sit.
Before removing participant rights, cutting supports, changing eligibility or reshaping the Scheme, the government should be required to publish clear, consistent and transparent data.
The Committee should not accept broad claims about sustainability without clear evidence showing where the costs are coming from, what alternatives have been considered, and what harm the proposed cuts may cause.
Fraud should be dealt with properly, not used to punish everyone
I support strong action on fraud. Absolutely.
Fraud, exploitation and unsafe providers should be dealt with quickly and seriously.
But the solution should be targeted at the people and organisations doing the wrong thing.
It should not mean making life harder for honest participants, families and ethical providers. It should not mean treating everyone as suspicious. It should not mean burying good providers in administration while bad actors find new loopholes.
Fix the regulator. Enforce standards. Use data properly. Act on complaints. Deal with overcharging. Stop unsafe providers. Make registration and compliance meaningful without making it impossible for good small providers to survive.
That is very different from cutting flexibility and calling it integrity.
The process itself has not been good enough
This Bill is complex and significant. It affects disabled people, families, carers, providers, workers and entire communities.
The consultation period has been far too short.
Many of the people most affected by this Bill are the least able to respond quickly to dense legal documents. People with disability, exhausted carers, families in crisis, people with communication support needs and small providers do not always have the time, capacity or support to produce formal submissions in a rushed timeframe.
That matters.
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If the government genuinely wants to hear from disabled people, it needs to create a process that disabled people can actually participate in.
What I ask the Committee to recommend
I ask the Committee to recommend that this Bill not be passed in its current form.
If the Bill proceeds, I ask that it be amended to:
1 Protect choice and control as a core part of the NDIS.
2 Protect meaningful review and appeal rights.
3 Prevent broad funding cuts that are not based on individual need.
4 Stop unpaid family care being treated as an unlimited substitute for funded supports.
5 Protect people with complex, fluctuating, developmental, neurological, psychosocial and communication-related disabilities.
6 Ensure existing participants are not destabilised, removed or cut off without strong safeguards.
7 Target fraud and poor provider conduct directly, instead of reducing flexibility for everyone.
8 Protect ethical small providers and relationship-based supports from being pushed out by excessive bureaucracy or market consolidation.
9 Require genuine co-design with disabled people, families, carers, advocates and frontline providers.
10 Allow proper consultation time and accessible information before major NDIS changes are made.
11 Require clear, consistent public reporting on ART outcomes, internal review outcomes, appeal rates, decision error rates, NDIA legal costs and the reasons decisions are overturned.
12 Require the government to publish evidence on carer burden and downstream costs before shifting more responsibility onto families.
The NDIS should be sustainable. But it also has to remain worth sustaining.
A cheaper scheme that leaves disabled people isolated, families broken, carers burnt out, and participants with fewer real choices is not success.
Please do not secure the future of the NDIS by removing the parts of it that make ordinary life possible.
Kind regards,
NDIS provider, parent/carer and person with lived experience
Queensland
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