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

Submission 3645

Submission by:

I am writing as a public library worker in regional Western Australia to strongly oppose any changes to the current NDIS social inclusion and psychology supports.

My role places me in a unique position to observe many aspects of the impact of NDIS supports (or lack of supports), as I witness on a daily basis what these supports mean, not only to the individuals who receive them, but to our entire community. The proposed changes to social inclusion psychological therapy funding will cause dramatic changes in my community.

I request that the Government carefully consider the points I make below before proceeding.

Direct observations of the current model in practice:

• Every day, I observe NDIS participants visiting our library accompanied by support workers funded through social inclusion provisions. These visits represent meaningful engagement with community life: borrowing books/DVDs/games, using computers, having meet-ups and simply being present in a shared public space alongside their fellow citizens.
• For many of these individuals, our library may be one of the few places outside their immediate home environment where they interact with the broader public. Their presence enriches our community: they are regulars, staff know them by name, other patrons greet them warmly. This is social inclusion working exactly as it is meant to.
• Removing the funding that makes these visits possible would not be a quiet administrative change. It would be the removal of a lifeline that is holding parts of our community together.

The negative impact of the proposed changes will be greater in regional communities:

• Our community is located in a regional area of Western Australia, where the gap between what exists on paper and what is accessible in practice is wide. We do not have the density of services, transport networks or informal support structures that metropolitan communities take for granted.
• In our community, NDIS-funded support workers are not supplementing an already-adequate system - they ARE the system. When a support worker accompanies a participant to the library, the shops or a local event, they are providing access to community life that would otherwise simply not occur. Removing this funding in a regional area does not redirect people to other services; it removes the service entirely.
• Support workers are local employees. In a regional economy with limited employment opportunities, the disability support sector represents stable jobs for local people. These workers spend their wages locally, support local businesses and are woven into the economic fabric of our towns.
• The removal of social inclusion funding will generate job losses, reduced economic activity in already-fragile regional economies and increased pressure on other social services as both clients and workers face greater hardship. Any cost-benefit analysis of this policy change must account honestly for these downstream economic consequences.

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

Submission 3645

Some notes about social isolation and dignity:

• People with cognitive (and other) disabilities have the same fundamental need for social connection as all humans. They need a variety of experience, participation in community life, the opportunity to form their own relationships and to have the basic human right to belong. A life confined to one’s immediate family network, however loving, is not a full life.
• Research consistently shows that social isolation has severe consequences for mental and physical health, including increased risk of depression, cognitive decline, and reduced life expectancy. For people with disabilities, these risks are already elevated. NDIS social inclusion supports should not be viewed as a luxury; they are a health intervention and a recognition that every person’s life has equal worth and deserves equal opportunity for participation.
• A cognitively disabled person’s life matters just as much as any other. Policy must reflect that truth.

A warning from the library floor:

• There is another group I encounter regularly in my work that I feel compelled to raise in this context: people experiencing homelessness and severe mental illness who frequent our library and other public spaces. Many of these individuals are visibly distressed, and some present challenging or unsafe behaviour that affects both staff and other patrons.
• I do not raise this to stigmatise people experiencing homelessness or mental illness. I raise it because I believe many of them are where they are today (isolated, unhoused, without support) in part because early intervention, social inclusion and therapeutic supports were not available to them, or were removed, at a critical point in their lives.
• We are seeing every day in our library the human cost of a system that failed to invest in inclusion and early therapeutic support. Cutting NDIS social inclusion funding risks creating a new generation of people who will fall through the cracks, with consequences that are both personally devastating and costly to society in the long run.
• Prevention is always less expensive than crisis. Inclusion is always less costly than exclusion.

Thank you for the opportunity to share these observations and insights.