NDIA Accountability Project

Protecting supports for people with intellectual disability, acquired brain injury, and Deafblindness

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NDIS Self Advocacy Working Group and SARU submission

The new NDIS Bill

Don’t cut what we need – the NDIS was a guarantee!

To Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee From The NDIS Self Advocacy Working Group’s campaign shared by The Self Advocacy Resource Unit (SARU) Date July 2026

The Government wants to change the NDIS so that the Minister can cut the supports people need to:

  • leave the house
  • live an everyday life
  • being in the community
  • have a say in decisions that affect them like in advisory groups.

The NDIS Self Advocacy Working Group says this must not happen. They are running a campaign to stop this.

The NDIS Self Advocacy Working Group is made up of representatives of different Self Advocacy Groups in Victoria.

Self Advocacy Groups and Organisations are run by and for people with disability with something in common. Members speak up on issues important to them and work together to make change for their communities.

NDIS Self Advocacy Working Group members work together to give advice to SARU, the NDIA and the Government about NDIS issues that are a priority to Self Advocates.

SARU supports this working group to run. SARU supports and resources Self Advocacy Group’s in Victoria run by people with intellectual disability, acquired brain injury and complex communication needs (like people who are Deafblind).

Submission from SARU

This submission was made by SARU to platform the NDIS Self Advocacy Working Group’s campaign.

Below are all the words from their campaign. The stories are stories self advocates shared as part of this campaign.

We all want to live everyday lives.

To leave the house. Be in our community. See friends. Exercise. Have a say in decisions that affect us.

People with disability have the same right to this as everyone else, even when they need support to make it happen.

The NDIS was designed to make sure this happened.

People with disability have worked hard for many years for equality and for their rights to be in the community and have a say.

People with disability are experts in our own lives. When we are in the room, decisions are better for everyone.

When everyone is included and heard, our whole community is safer, fairer and stronger.

This is what we need to protect.

What Support To Leave The House Makes Possible

(Real Self Advocates Stories)

The names have been changed in these stories.

Tahlia

Tahlia is a woman with intellectual disability who lives regionally. She is a leader in the self advocacy and disability rights community.

She does lots of casual ad hoc and unpaid or volunteer work in the disability rights community, advocating for the rights of people with intellectual disability who live regionally. Her supports to leave the house makes this possible. She said that if the Bill passes “I’m scared I won’t be able do anything anymore, I’ll become isolated and won’t be able to look after my physical and mental health, my mental health will become really bad again. I’m scared about what’s going to happen to me.”

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Sam is a woman with intellectual disability who lives regionally. She told us ‘I have support to see my friends in Echuca. I go 3 times a year - I can only see them with support.’ For Sam, this funding is the only thing that makes it possible to maintain those friendships at all.

Arthur is a Deafblind man. He is a leader in the self advocacy, disability rights and Deafblind community. He told us that without social and community participation funding, Deafblind people will lose their jobs, be stuck at home, and not be able to see friends, get to appointments, attend Deafblind events or take part in everyday life. It would also mean Deafblind community events that make connection between the Deafblind community possible stop. This because him and his fellow Deafblind co-workers at DBV run them and they wouldn’t have the funded supports that enables them to do this work anymore. In addition, there wouldn’t be anyone to run an event for, because all the Deafblind attendees wouldn’t have the support they needed to attend.

The Government is breaking the guarantee of the NDIS.

The Government wants to remove the legal protection that makes sure people can get the support they need to live an every day life.

The new Bill gives the Minister the power to cut funding people need to leave the house, live an everyday life, be in their community, see friends, or have a say in decisions that affect them.

The Disability Royal Commission told us that when people are isolated, they experience more abuse.

This Bill will make people more isolated. It will make people unsafe.

The Governments own Australian Disability Strategy (2021–2031) says people with disability must be more involved in leadership and decision- making.

This Bill cuts the supports many people need to make this possible.

The people most harmed by this Bill are the same people losing the support to speak up about it.

We need the Government to do 3 things:

  • Do not give the Minister power to cut community participation funding.

  • No one should be able to cut the supports people need to leave the house and be in the community.

  • Fund the supports people need to live an everyday life, not just medical appointments and work.

  • People should be able to leave the house for the same reasons as everyone else.

  • Make decisions with us, not about us.

  • People with disability are experts in our own lives. Nothing about us, without us.