National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 3689
To whom it may concern,
The NDIS is akin to life support for myself and my wife who have a 10 year old son with severe autism (Level 3 ASD) and other related issues. Our son’s disability is permanent and we have accepted that he is never likely to lead what would be considered to be a normal life.
The proposed changes to the NDIS Act would send us back into turmoil as a family, the likes of which we experienced during the initial lengthy wait between diagnosis and eventual NDIS funding. That time was traumatic and created a world where we thought our son didn’t matter.
There doesn’t seem to be sufficient explanation around what exactly these changes entail, and that in itself provides unnecessary stress around uncertainty. The prospect of having our son’s funding cut, without explanation, at a time of the Government’s choosing by the Minister is insulting and dehumanises our son’s value as a human being.
These proposed changes would affect our son in innumerable ways. Being forced to decide how the major cuts would mean how we spend his NDIS budget would send our family into a crisis. We would have to choose what is more important for him, and by default, means that he would miss out on therapies that he should not be without.
As a result, we may be reduced to minimal hours for our son’s support worker, whose essential work has been a game changer for getting him into the community to interact socially. It would also mean that as individual part time employees, my wife and I only able to work around 40 hours combined each week, one of us would have to leave our jobs to take care of our son and continue with the necessary capacity building.
This would lead to a spiralling financial crisis within our household, in addition to in essence cancelling out all the great work that has been done through the NDIS. We cannot afford for our son to go backwards with his development, especially given he is already many years behind his peers.
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 3689
We urge you in the strongest terms possible to reconsider the seemingly draconian measures the Government wishes to put in place against the people who least deserve to be treated in such a sub human way.
Do the right thing by the people who need the help. Don’t let your Government be the ones where history will say “this was the time the Labor Government turned their back on everyone with a disability”.
Kind regards,