National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

Submission 3643

The new bill explicitly overrides that protection. It forces people to undertake all “appropriate treatment” commonly available in Australia before an impairment can be considered permanent. “Availability” no longer considers your personal finances or where you live. The Minister has stated this applies even if cost or distance are barriers.

So, fuck those in or near poverty, rural areas, or both. This bill is sociopathic cruelty, and ableist garbage. Or does the Minister think disabilities can magically be turned off, money just grows on trees, and people can teleport?

Before this bill, the law in Australia specifically protected people who couldn’t afford treatment. A landmark Federal Court case (National Disability Insurance Agency v Davis [2022]) confirmed that “available” treatment meant practically accessible, including whether the person could afford it. The tribunal in that case ruled a woman could not be denied NDIS access simply because she couldn’t pay for expensive weight-loss programs.

The new bill explicitly overrides that protection. It forces people to undertake all “appropriate treatment” commonly available in Australia before an impairment can be considered permanent. “Availability” no longer considers your personal finances or where you live. The Minister has stated this applies even if cost or distance are barriers.

I have ADHD. No exercise, diet change, supplement or OTC thing can change that. Stimulants have anywhere between a 20-30% failure rate. Even once I pay the $500+ OOP for psychiatry, there is zero guarantee they’ll even work. So what would this government have me do? Try every medication under the sun, pay thousands I don’t have for psychiatry, to end up broke, desolate, and suicidal? This is a policy of cruelty, ONLY.

To quote the PWDA, “This is a Bill that cuts supports, cuts access and cuts people with disability off from their communities. The Government’s own analysis admits these changes will reduce community access. If passed without amendment, people will be harmed through deterioration, injury and even death…The current NDIS already requires people to provide extensive evidence of permanent and significant disability. This Bill goes further. It risks locking people out of support because they cannot afford treatment, cannot access specialists, or live in parts of Australia where those services simply do not exist.”

The bill does not distinguish between treatable and curable. For ADHD, treatment is possible. Cure is not. Yet the bill’s language (“remedy or alleviate”) creates a trap: any positive response to any treatment, however partial, can be used to argue against permanence, which is absolute crap considering ADHD is neurological and neurostructural.