National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 3449
Hi, I’m Aidan, A Support worker based out of Sydney. Every single day I go into work I see how the NDIS has an extraordinary ability to change peoples lives for the better, allowing the criminally underserved to live independently, access the community & live their life with the dignity that all Australians deserve. This all being said, I am shocked at the labor government’s NDIS amendment bill. First & foremost is the attack on community participation, for years now the media has been grossly misrepresenting how community participation funds are used, “millions of your dollars spent on hair cuts & lattes” and so on, It is an affront to see the same party that brought in such a life changing scheme for so many give into this rhetoric, do people with disabilities not deserve haircuts? Or a coffee in the morning, or to go out and live their lives? Because as we all know the cheapest thing would be to pack as many people into as small a property as you can, hire as few staff as you can, cook the bare minimum amount of food that you can, bought as cheaply as possible, and let this group stare at the wall all day. Is that the right thing to do? It’s certainly the cheapest.
On the changes to the definition of permanence, is the NDIS going to provide access to the “appropriate treatments” they are using to bar access to its services. “can reliably be expected to materially improve, reverse, or alleviate the impact of, the impairment or impairments” is the vaguest possible terms for participants to work with, If i’m missing my leg from the knee down & i get a prosthetic, pain killers & obtain mental health support, does my leg grow back? Many “appropriate treatments” are lifelong, medications, therapies & so on, that a participant may need support to simply get to & fro, along side the fact that even if someone cannot physically or fiscally obtain these treatments, they are still considered appropriate treatments and can automatically bar you from NDIS support if this bill passes, these words change peoples lives, will deny people who desperately need support, you cannot be so vague when peoples lives hang in the balance of these words, especially in a section labeled as “Tightening meaning of permanence to reduce access where an impairment can be treated.” and to be clear, unless combatting genuine fraud and scams, “reduce access” should never appear anywhere near the NDIS, lets be clear. When the NDIS was brought into the world in 2013, many lower level state programs began to shutdown as the NDIS took over many of these responsibilites, Mark Butler wants people to go back into programs that don’t exist anymore, and even if they did, these wouldn’t be savings, the money is simply being spent somewhere else, it is entirely non-sensical.