NDIA Accountability Project

Need for new power chair and continued support due to MS degeneration

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

Submission 3688

I wish to make an anonymous submission

These are my key concerns:

  • General cuts to support
  • Loss of community participation funding
  • Changes that affect flexibility and individualisation

About me:

I am a woman in my 40s who has been living with MS for 26 years, and I have been an NDIS participant since 2021. I use a mobility scooter, and I have a walker, a stick and a manual wheelchair.

I have up to six support workers. These workers take me to medical appointments, such as twice weekly neurophysiotherapy sessions, various doctors’ appointments, frequent trips to the pharmacy and to get takeaway coffee. They also assist with basic day-to-day living such as allowing me to be able to sleep in a bed which stripped and has been made. The dirty manchester is washed, dried and folded.

Sometimes they can help me to go to my favourite café (often in a wheelchair) and pat dogs and have a coffee.

My reasoning:

  • I don’t rely on the NDIS lightly, and I work with the community already as much as possible to avoid depending on it. So there is no room for cuts that put more on us.

    • i use a mobility scooter exchanged with another disabled person when they could not longer use it my sister bought it from them.

      • Now I am degenerating so I need a new power chair and will needbhelp from the NDIS

    • my family either visit me at home or take me out to somewhere, like galleries on weekends. The NDIS also fund an alarm that I wear around my neck. It is to be pressed when I have fallen and I either cannot get back up without help or I have hurt myself and need an ambulance.

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

Submission 3688

  • I work hard to find creative solutions in life.

  • The NDIS reforms threaten things which make me feel human. I really feel like this whole reform is an attack on my humanity. I don’t’ feel like I can live a life experiencing joy.

  • These proposed cuts are the antithesis of the NDIS’s original aims.

  • It was meant to be empowering disabled people to support us to be healthier and happier, and also to decrease the long term cost to our government (for example, preventing hospitalisation)

    • My biggest fear is that I could end up in hospital.

    • I would be so scared to live that way.

    • It could definitely hasten this.

  • I want control over my life. I can have my own cat, flat, partner. I love my support workers.

    • I can’t maintain my flat without a support worker once or twice a week, who can come in and just do a few things around the place.

  • Going to a café and seeing other people and their animals gives me a sense of humanity. It satisfies a basic human need for interaction and joy.

  • Relationships with support workers are really important to my quality of life and make mefeel like a person.

  • Without these supports I would be much more isolated, I couldn’t attend twice weekly physio appointments (also funded by NDIS).