NDIA Accountability Project

Impact of NDIS cuts on blind person's work and grandson’s metabolic condition

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Submission to the Senate Community Affairs Committee Inquiry

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

Submitted by:

Name:

Address:

Email:

Phone: -

I am very grateful to the Senate Committee for the opportunity to make this submission on the Bill.

Summary

Lived Experience

  • I am a blind person whose work and rich community participation is threatened by proposed cuts to NDIS support.
  • I am also greatly worried about the impact of potential cuts to NDIS support to my grandson who lives with a debilitating metabolic condition.

Concerns about the Bill

  • The timeline for passing the Bill and rolling out proposed changes is too fast and risks causing harm.
  • The Minister has been given too much power with insufficient Parliamentary oversight.
  • Eligibility thresholds and assessment criteria for the new needs-based functional assessment are not detailed and should be legislated.
  • It is unfair to exclude workers injured at work and people injured in motor vehicle accidents from the scheme.
  • Re-defining what supports should be the responsibility of parents and informal carers ignores the evidence that many parents and carers are already overwhelmed by their caring responsibilities.
  • Automated decision making for assessment may be inflexible and may not capture the full reality of the disabled person’s lived experience.
  • Assessment of a person’s needs should be holistic.
  • Blanket cuts to funding of social and community participation and for capacity building take no account of the personal circumstances and needs of individual participants.
  • There are concerns that alternative supports will not be available or of an inferior quality to supports currently available in the NDIS for the large number of participants expected to be moved off the NDIS.

My Experience of Living with a Disability under the NDS

I am a blind person. I was born with a genetic eye condition called . Over the course of my life, my retinal cells have died off progressively. As a result, my vision has deteriorated to the point where, today, I have little useful vision left. I can now only detect light and shade.

My partner and I have four adult children and six grandchildren. I am now■ and have worked full-time since 2001 for the Catholic Church in the areas of social justice, ecology and peace. From 2001 to 2022, I was

  •                 · Since 2022 until the present, I have held the position of Director of the-

My work has taken me to many places around Australia as well as to many Pacific countries, Asia and Europe. Major areas of focus of my work are justice for First Nations Peoples, refugees and people seeking asylum, homeless people and climate change.

I regularly participate in meetings, conferences and events associated with these priorities and have, on many occasions, spent time in communities such as Aboriginal communities in the Kimberley and Indigenous communities in West Papua.

Outside work, I enjoy a rich community life. I serve on two boards and regularly attend community events and actions in support of various social justice and environmental causes.

While I have received a lot of support from my family, friends and work colleagues, it is not possible for them to assist me all the time to travel and to participate in activities associated with my work and community commitments. I have had the great privilege, also, of being assisted by three guide dogs over the last twenty years, . Despite the greater independence they have afforded me, I still need support much of the time to work and to participate in the life of my community.

The NDIS has enabled me to hire support workers to not only assist me with travel, but to participate in meetings and activities. Without this support, I would find it incredibly difficult to continue my work and community commitments in the way I have done so for the last 25 years. My life would be much the poorer without the support the NDIS has made possible.

My Grandson’s Experience as an NDS Participant

One of my grandsons has a very rare genetic metabolic condition called He is_ , but it is likely that he will die before reaching adulthood. He is profoundly intellectually impaired, has no comprehensible speech, suffers epileptic fits, is incontinent and has difficulty in eating safely. He experiences head pressure and pain in different parts of his body, has difficulty sleeping most nights and his mobility is deteriorating. My daughter and son- in-law (who has ) devote a significant amount of time to caring for my grandson. They often have little sleep. While providing this care, they both go to work, manage their household and look after my- granddaughter.

Concerns about the Bill

The NDIS has helped to pay for support workers who ease the load on my daughter and son-in- law significantly. It has also enabled them to afford products needed to care for my grandson and the household modifications needed to make life safer and more comfortable for him.

Any cuts to the support given to him would impose an enormous burden on my daughter and son-in-law financially, physically and emotionally. This would be even more so as his condition deteriorates.

SAFEGUARDING, INTEGRITY AND FRAUD

There are significant challenges in overhauling and reviewing internal NDIS systems to improve the integrity of the scheme. These are large change projects and MUST be delivered properly first. Seeking to do this at the same time as large scale social policy program change and delivery is unsafe. Access to supports for disabled people should not be cut at the same time as these integrity improvements are designed and delivered.

TIMELINES & CO-DESIGN

The pace at which the Government intends to pass the legislation and implement significant and complex changes is too fast. The current timelines present a much greater risk of error and harm to vulnerable individuals. There is no genuine attempt to properly consult with the disability community and co-design any changes. Timelines for development and delivery must be significantly extended to ensure that disabled people do not suffer harm as a result of mistakes.

Ministerial Powers

The Minister will be given significant power without adequate safeguards under the legislation. There appears to be no Parliamentary oversight. The Minister will be able to make decisions on core scheme components around such matters as deciding eligibility to participate in the scheme, determining the amounts, types and value of supports to be provided to participants and making whole cohorts of disabled people ineligible for participation. Such core scheme components should be legislated changes.

ELIGIBILITY

All Scheme Participants are to be Re-assessed under new criteria. Participants have already spent much time, experienced stress and incurred expenses to gain access to the scheme. Lives have already been planned around current supports – including life saving measures

Workplace Injuries And Motor Vehicle Accident Injuries

Workers’ compensation is defined as an “alternative support” in the Bill meaning workers injured at work will be excluded from the scheme. State workplace compensation systems vary – none provide for lifetime support like the NDS. This is unfair and discriminatory. A similar situation applies to those injured in motor vehicle accidents. These exclusions should be removed from the Bill.

Increased Parent/Carer Loads

The NDIS Bill contains provisions shifting disability supports onto already overwhelmed families. This will have a disproportionate impact on women. Families are already experiencing care loads beyond what is safe and reasonable. Many are already unable to work. Some provisions in the Bill are demeaning such as the definition of “parental responsibility”. This is a provision which should not proceed without proper consultation with disability organisations. The experience of my daughter and son-in-law in caring for my grandson leads me to question whether the Government has properly consulted relevant groups which are informed by the lived experience of parents and carers. I believe the Government should remove all provisions pushing disability supports onto parents and informal carers. I also recommend that the Government commission gender impact modelling on all aspects of changes concerning parental responsibility before proceeding with the relevant legislative changes.

Assessment Automation

The Bill permits automated decision making for assessments. The detail is not available. There are reasonable concerns that such decision making will be inflexible and that appeal rights will be limited. There are also concerns that the automated assessment will not capture the reality of lived an intersectional experience. Details of the proposal should be issued for public consideration and consultation before the Bill is passed. Further, I recommend that the Government legislate and mandate a framework for NDS automated decision making which is transparent, oversighted by humans and reviewable.

Assessments Need To Be Holistic

The shift to functional capacity assessments

The shift to functional capacity assessments is meant to favour holistically determining needs. However, provisions in the NDIS Bill go in the opposite direction when looking at what supports a disabled person is entitled to. Where there are multiple conditions – the Bill arbitrarily separates them rather than looking at the disabled person’s circumstances and needs holistically to determine supports. See the example of Hamish p.26 of the Explanatory Memorandum, where limb difference + dyslexia are separated for determining communication support needs. The requirements lack coherence. This provision should be the subject of considerable consultation with the disable community.

CUTS TO SOCIAL AND COMMUNITY SUPPORTS AND Capacity Building

The minister will be given significant power to make cuts to support funding without considering individual need. The Minister has proposed cutting every participant’s social and community participation budget by 50% and their capacity building budget by 10%, Supports necessary to ensure safety, connection, independence and employment of disabled people. Such cuts would have an enormous impact on my work and community life. I love my work and am proud to be contributing my fair share of tax. I also relish contributing to the life and welfare of my community. Such blanket cuts take no account of my personal circumstances and the benefits which the community receives through my work and civic activity. It is immensely unfair.

NO ALTERNATIVE SUPPORTS

The expectation that the Minister will be able to remove a very large number of participants from the scheme, supposedly so that they can take up alternative supports offered by States and Territories, is deeply worrying. Many States and Territories do not seem to be prepared for this transition. Alternative supports should be like for like. They must be matching, address need, be inclusive and neurodiverse affirming, ensure choice, control and continuity of care, be culturally safe and regionally accessible. They must be properly planned, co-designed, quality assured and tested, funded, staffed, available, have responsibilities delineated and documented, transparently communicated to the community and be in place.