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

Submission 3864

Submission on the NDIS Amendment Bill

Hello, my name is Artemis Munoz.

I am a proud Disabled person and have been an NDIS recipent since 2017. I have first-hand experience of how life-saving it is. I would not be able to do my job without NDIS support. It’s possible without it I would be in debt or maybe even not alive. Currently I work as an access advisor for arts programs at the City of Melbourne. Not only are many of my close friends and community disabled but so are the people I work with on a day today basis.

I do not support this bill. As it currently stands, I have serious concerns that these amendments will have strong adverse effects on the lives of myself and many people I care about.

The administrative overhead of managing an NDIS plan is already excessive and difficult to manage for me personally. I am currently plan-managed and thus have support with this, yet the task is still difficult. This bill proposes changes that will make this already difficult task even more unmanageable. For example, requiring tighter turnarounds for responses could very well put my access to these life-saving supports at risk.

As a person with both neurodevelopmental and psychosocial disabilities, I often need support to do things like reply to emails. I find it very difficult to answer the phone unless a call is expected. If this bill is passed unchanged and the NDIA begins to mandate that I respond within short timeframes, it’s possible that I will not have the opportunity to get together the support I need to respond in time. This concern is escalated by the aspects of this bill that aim to instate new rules that will pause or call for a review of supports in the event that participants cannot be contacted within a short window of time.

As a participant I already greatly fear the review process, concerned that the little support I currently have might be taken away at the whims of an individual worker who might not have a clear understanding of my disabilities and how they affect my life. The proposals in this bill to shift that process to an automated one rather than a process led by a human being that I could speak to and hopefully get to understand and empathise with my daily struggles gravely concerns me. Additionally, the prospect of shifting support allowances by category rather than considering individual cases may very likely mean that I lose some key supports which are vital to my own daily functioning - merely because they may not necessarily be needed by every person with my disabilities.

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

Submission 3864

For the last 5 years or so, the NDIA has offered me a roll-over of my plan. Even though my circumstances have changed and my current supports are less than I need to actually thrive (and not just survive), I have accepted this, as the fear of losing the little support I have through the review process is very real. If this Bill is passed, that fear will become significantly worse. There would be many more threats to the supports I currently have. Let me be very clear; without this support I don’t think I would be able to continue to live independently. I certainly wouldn’t be able to keep building a career.

Outside of myself, I worry about the future of the disability community and our continued involvement in all levels of public life if these changes are put forward. Even if my own funding was protected through all of these changes and that they would only apply to new applicants, I foresee great consequences. For each disabled person rejected from this life saving scheme, people will become reliant on others around them. Not only will this mean those disabled people’s access to the community would be dependent on the whims of non-disabled folks but it also increases opportunities for abuse as there are far less safeguards for informal supports than the formal supports one can receive via the NDIS.

For the entirety of my time as a participant, I’ve heard the words ‘choice and control’ banded about as pillars of what the NDIS was meant to stand for. To be very explicit; this bill threatens that choice and control to an obscene degree.

I ask the committee to consider my lived experience when reviewing this Bill.