Hi,

My community and I have been gravely concerned about the devastating cuts proposed by this new NDIS Bill and would like to discuss these with you in this email. I have discussed these changes extensively with people in my community with disabilities and those without, and this summary highlights just a few of the issues repeatedly raised.

In short, we feel the proposed NDIS Bill fundamentally betrays the Australian value of giving everyone a ‘fair go’, or to borrow the words of someone who once promised to stop the “unfair cuts” to the NDIS, it fails to fulﬁl a promise of “no one left behind”.

News of the proposed Bill has already caused many disabled Australians to:

Ask how to access voluntary assisted dying if they lose the supports they need to survive. This is devastating. In a humane society, it should be treated as a national emergency. There are realities worse than death for Australians with severe disabilities. We have seen in the news and in our own communities what happens when people lose essential supports: starvation, inability to wash, inability to access the toilet, and being left to rot in one’s mess and live in degrading and inhumane conditions. These outcomes are not theoretical. Participants are already having plans stripped without warning, consultation or adequate explanation.
Experience PTSD-like symptoms arising from years of poor treatment by the Agency itself. Constant changes, uncertainty and poor communication have left many participants in a permanent state of anxiety. Time and again, it has fallen to advocates and community leaders rather than the NDIA to explain major changes to participants. For example, the participant newsletter from the Agency to participants features zero information about the Bill, or the opportunity for disabled Australians to give feedback about it. Reports of dangerous or fraudulent provider conduct reported to the agency by participants often go ignored, while participants themselves are subjected to discriminatory and dehumanising treatment. There are countless stories of this occurring. I am concerned that many politicians either do not know about these systemic issues or are unwilling to discuss them openly.
Face increasing stigma and abuse from members of the public, fuelled by political rhetoric that frames disabled Australians as a cost burden or suspects them of widespread “rorting”. In reality, very little participant fraud has been identiﬁed, and these reforms do little to address fraud in any meaningful way. The result is that disabled Australians are increasingly blamed for problems they did not create. This is despite the fact that NDIS spending supports hundreds of thousands of jobs, enables participation in work and community life, and reduces costs elsewhere in the system. I learned not to bully

disabled people when I was four years old.

Yet increasingly, disabled Australians are ﬁnding themselves publicly portrayed as the problem, rather than the victims of a system plagued by inefficiency and waste. This is a consequence of the language this government has used with the public.

Many people have also questioned why the Government appears determined to cut participant supports while ignoring obvious areas where savings could be made. These include:

The more than $60 million spent by the NDIA in 2024-25 on lawyers to ﬁght participants at the Administrative Review Tribunal, despite the majority of these matters ultimately being settled or overturned.
The NDIA CEO’s salary of more than $800,000 per year, approximately $200,000 higher than that of the Prime Minister. This is not just an excessive salary for the public sector, namely for an Agency which is notoriously inefficient - it’s just bad optics.
Widespread provider overcharging and pricing practices that continue to drive costs throughout the scheme. This has inevitably resulted from a poorly structured and poorly communicated Price Guide and a complete lack of oversight over providers working under the scheme. Eg, Independent Support Workers without qualiﬁcations or considerable experience should be not charging maximum rates that the cost model set out for corporate providers who have substantially larger overheads.
Systemic inefficiency within the Agency itself. Most families of participants I have met could give a long presentation outlining the gross inefficiencies and waste made by the Agency, as well as a list of ways to cut costs.
Cutting the massive-scale corporate that Australians are seeing among the multinational gas corporations, who are accessing our collective natural resources whilst being heavily subsidised by the taxpayer. Polls show voters from Labor, Liberal, Coalition, One Nation and the Greens are heavily in favour of an increased ‘gas tax’. But our government is choosing to cull disability supports instead.
The up to $368 billion on AUKUS, for submarines many do not realistically believe will materialise.

Many have also drawn comparisons between aspects of this Bill and previous proposals, such Independent Assessments which Labour strongly criticised when advanced by the former Coalition Government. They’ve also drawn strong correlations between aspects of this Bill and Robodebt. Renowned advocate Samantha Connor

If this Bill proceeds, it will:

Not just likely, but inevitably, result in serious harm to disabled Australians, including deaths. I witnessed reports by parents of the deaths of disabled children following previous changes imposed by this government, through the communities I am part of. You cannot unsee that. The proposed cuts to social and community participation supports alone will push many disabled Australians out of society and back into isolation. People will miss medical appointments, be unable to access their communities, and struggle to undertake even basic activities such as grocery shopping. Can you imagine not being able to safely buy food without support? Or walk down the street to simply exercise? The lack of respect or value for disabled people by this government is appalling.
Leave more than 160,000 disabled Australians without any effective replacement for the supports they currently rely upon. Government modelling, as reported by the Guardian, predicts a future number closer to a quarter million. https://www.theguardian.com/australia- nnews/2026/may/28/ndis-document-reveals-241000-disability-participants-cut- in-four-years
Remind Australians that governments are willing to kill off, or effectively conﬁne disabled people to their homes, rather than pursue politically don’t (only due to the need to disappoint all-important lobbyists) alternatives to raise revenue or reduce waste elsewhere. Many Australians are increasingly questioning these priorities.
Erase individual needs and circumstances through sweeping reductions and broad ministerial powers that allow major changes to participant supports without proper consideration of individual situations.
Give the Minister signiﬁcant new powers to reshape the scheme while bypassing normal parliamentary scrutiny, raising serious concerns about democratic accountability and oversight. I am not sure why Prime Minister Albanese is so offended by the prospect of a functioning democracy but this is a moment that will be recorded in history next to his name as one of our darkest days.
Pull parents, partners, friends and neighbours out of paid employment to provide care. As with most unpaid caring responsibilities, this burden will fall disproportionately on women.

Shift disability costs rather than reduce them, placing additional pressure on hospitals, emergency services and other mainstream systems that are neither designed nor funded to provide long-term disability support.
Do little, if anything, to address provider fraud, proﬁteering or the NDIA’s own wasteful spending.

We will lose the $2.2 return for every dollar spent in the NDIS;

and the substantial employment for the casual workforce; and we will lose many taxpayers’ participation in the economy because they will be confined to their homes caring for high needs disabled community members. Finally, and something that will affect all Australians directly, is the expected ballooning in costs for the taxpayer, for healthcare, mental health crises, and emergency services of all kinds. Disability supports are not just responsive to needs - they are preventative and effectively stop people’s conditions from getting worse, and more costly.

This Bill, if it becomes law, is the start of a very dark chapter, one that will gain world renown in precisely the wrong way.

Kind regards.

Concerns over access to voluntary assisted dying for disabled Australians

Hi,

disabled people when I was four years old.

We will lose the $2.2 return for every dollar spent in the NDIS;