National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 3907
I am a disabled person and a parent of an autistic child supported by the NDIS, and I care for people with physical disabilities.
I am outraged the government announced autistic people to be at the centre of the 160,000 people cut from the NDIS. I am outraged that it was recently revealed via FOI that secretly the government intends to actually cut 240,000 NDIS participants.
This will have real impacts on autistic children and their carers. By removing supports it will create and intensify mental health implications for autistic people later in life, and for their carers and families. It will mean that they will miss out on speech therapies (lists are already incredibly long), occupational therapy, psychology, music therapy which all have implications on how children will learn foundational skills to regulate, communicate, and exist within a world that is not built for them. That already excludes and others them. It will mean they will have challenges finding work. They will be pushed further into poverty.
A reduction in supports will mean people with physical disabilities will reduce access to self care supports. They will (they already are) in greater numbers be forced into inhumane and undignified situations such as not being able to toilet, forced to sleep in chairs because they cannot transfer without assistance to a bed. For people with Long Covid, ME/CFS this will mean their conditions will worsen due to physical exertion required to meet their basic needs and no carers to do this for them, and they will be pushed to use ventilators more frequently and their symptoms to worsen. We can expect people to die in these situations.
Introducing machine learning into plan development, into appeals, and removing humans from this process will mean Australians will be denied their basic human rights with no oversight. This screams of Centrelink Robodebt, which resulted in people ending their life due to these erroneous debts. I have similar concerns for the mental health implications of these cuts. In fact the UK saw a jump in suicides due to recent cuts. Anecdotally i have heard that within the disability community assisted suicide is being discussed in the context of supports already being cut or fears of cut supports.
A reduction in supports has implications for people experiencing domestic and family violence - a support worker may be the only contact outside of a violent domestic situation.
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 3907
The Thriving Kids program is a concern. It is not set up or rolled out. There is no pilot. My child was not identified as requiring speech therapy, or autism, before the window had closed for effective best case treatment via speech therapy. We can assume the same will occur under this program called Thriving Kids. Now he receives speech therapy to manage it, but because of the lack of sufficient government support he will forever live with his condition.
Without psychological support, my child will not receive adequate psychoeducation and skills building to learn about his neurotype and how to exist in a neurotypical world. If he is removed from the NDIS, we may have to leave this psychologist, rupturing the therapeutic relationship, an attempt to begin another under the vague thriving kids plan. This will impact his mental health. It will also impact his parents’ mental health.
Without occupational therapy support assisting him to complete tasks that allow him independence, the skills to look after himself, to communicate; this will impact his job prospects, his ability to form relationships. It will put more pressure on us as parents to fulfill this role. We are just getting by. Costs of living are untenable, we are working and supporting our child but we just don’t have the time to learn to become an occupational therapist, a music therapist, a psychologist, a speech therapist - all things our child needs.
The wealthy in our society don’t need the NDIS. These are the people making these cuts. The people on the NDIS are lucky, but don’t get enough support as it is. The people with disabilities not on the NDIS often can’t access it because of the untenably complex bureaucratic system. Often these people need it the most, they are those struggling most with poverty, with trauma which impacts the ability to access supports. The NDIS needs more funding. It needs to be more accessible.
At its heart this bill will result in greater poverty, greater gendered violence, greater mental health issues, greater cost to the government as a result. It will result directly in death either by a withdrawal of basic needs, or by suicides as a result in worsening supports and an increase in trauma and mental health implications. Be clear about this.
I do not support this bill.