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

Submission 3821

My name is , I’m a telecommunications technician from Melbourne, and several people in my life are NDIS participants. I believe that a society can be judged by how they treat their worst off, and our governments treatment of disabled people has been abhorrent.

I’m opposed to this bill in its entirety, because of the harmful effects it would have on the people I care about, and on disabled people as a whole. It’s important to me that disabled people are part of my community, and that they get the support they need to lead happy, fulfilling lives, and this bill threatens those things.

I’ve personally witnessed the struggles some disabled people go through when they don’t get supports, and it can be horrifying. I’ve also seen how people can thrive when they are given the right support. I believe it is important for disabled people to be able to access and be part of the wider community, and NDIS supports help them achieve that. I have at times been been in a position where it was necessary for me to act as an informal support for friends who had been denied access to the NDIS, and while I did my best, it is not a role I am suited for, and as a tax paying full time worker I believe that my tax dollars should be spent funding supports for those who need them, as opposed to me having to take time away from work to fill in where the system has failed.

If this bill passes, the people I care about would lose a lot of their independence, and some would be permanently housebound. One of my good friends is able to own a small business thanks to the support she’s getting from the NDIS to help with her daily life, and she’d most likely lose that if her supports were cut.

I’m particularly worried about this legislation allowing important decisions to be made by algorithms without proper human oversight, and taking away review rights for a lot of decisions. The NDIA has a poor history in the way it treats potential participants when they are being assessed for their need for support, and the use of these algorithms will only compound this issue. It is vitally important that disabled people are able to get these assessments properly reviewed by people who can understand their situation, and come to the right decisions.

Having algorithms decide how much disability support a person receives could kill people.

As succinctly stated in an IBM training manual from 1979, “A computer can never be held accountable, therefore a computer must never make a management decision.” This should apply even more so for a healthcare or disability support decision.

Reading this bill, I feel like the only lesson this government has taken from the horrific Robodebt scandal is to legalise harmful algorithms before deploying them. The lesson I hope the government takes from it is that any level of harm is unacceptable.

This bill in its current form is harmful and should not be passed by Parliament.

Thank you for your time.