Submission 536
Wheelnutz Garage / Adventure Crew Pty Ltd
WHEELNUTZ GARAGE
Adventure Crew Pty Ltd
Queensland, Australia
SUBMISSION TO THE
Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee
Inquiry into the
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment
(Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
May 2026 wheelnutzgarage.com.au
NDIS Submission — Securing the NDIS for Future Generations Bill 2026 Page 1 of 6
Submission 536
Wheelnutz Garage / Adventure Crew Pty Ltd
Executive Summary
Wheelnutz Garage strongly opposes any legislative or administrative reform that narrows access to community-based psychosocial, participation and early intervention support under the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS).
While we acknowledge the importance of ensuring the long-term sustainability of the Scheme, sustainability cannot be achieved through reforms that reduce the very supports preventing
long-term exclusion, justice involvement, mental health crisis escalation and lifelongunemployment.
The proposed reforms risk fundamentally shifting the NDIS away from one of its greatest strengths, innovation.
Australia has historically been recognised internationally as a leader in progressive disability reform because the NDIS enabled participant choice, community-led solutions, flexible support delivery, psychosocial responsiveness, and innovative non-traditional service models.
Wheelnutz Garage exists because that innovation was possible.
Our organisation demonstrates that some of the strongest outcomes for highly disengaged
and complex participants occur outside conventional systems through identity-drivenengagement, practical participation, peer connection, vocational culture, lived experience leadership, and community-based support environments.
The participants achieving outcomes through Wheelnutz Garage are often those repeatedly failed by mainstream education, traditional disability services, clinical-only interventions, justice systems, and employment systems.
The proposed reforms risk dismantling precisely the flexibility that enabled these outcomes to occur.
This is not only a risk to people with disability. It is a risk to Australia’s future as a globally recognised innovator in disability reform.
About Wheelnutz Garage
Wheelnutz Garage is a People and Planet certified Social Enterprise operating across South East Queensland under Adventure Crew Pty Ltd.
We deliver integrated disability employment pathways, psychosocial supports, youth justice diversion, suicide prevention initiatives, and men’s mental health programs through an automotive workshop environment.
Our service model was intentionally developed for cohorts that traditional systems consistently fail to engage, including:
- Young people with complex trauma
- Participants with psychosocial disability
- Individuals involved in justice systems
- Disengaged youth
- People with intellectual disability
- Individuals experiencing substance misuse
- Men resistant to clinical environments NDIS Submission — Securing the NDIS for Future Generations Bill 2026 Page 2 of 6
Submission 536
Wheelnutz Garage / Adventure Crew Pty Ltd
Our programs are intentionally practical, relational, identity-based, community-centred,trauma-informed, and stigma-free. These characteristics are not incidental, they are the reason engagement occurs.
Importantly, approximately 80% of Wheelnutz Garage staff have either lived experience of disability or identify as people with disability themselves. This is central to our success.
Our workforce model creates an environment where participants experience genuine understanding, reduced stigma, authentic peer connection, and visible examples of long-term participation and employment.
Wheelnutz Garage therefore represents not only an innovative participant support model, but also a highly successful disability employment and workforce inclusion model.
Wheelnutz Garage as a National Example of Disability Innovation
Wheelnutz Garage represents a contemporary example of the type of innovation the NDIS was originally designed to enable.
Our model challenges the longstanding assumption that disability supports must occur primarily through clinical environments, office-based programs, segregated services, or compliance-focused systems.
Instead, Wheelnutz Garage demonstrates that some of the strongest outcomes for highly disengaged participants emerge when support is delivered through identity, purpose, trade
culture, practical engagement, peer connection, and psychologically safe communityenvironments.
The participants engaging with Wheelnutz Garage are frequently those considered “hard to engage,” “non-compliant,” “high risk,” or “complex” by traditional systems.
Yet through non-traditional, relationship-based and identity-driven approaches, Wheelnutz Garage consistently achieves:
- Sustained engagement
- Improved emotional regulation
- Workforce readiness
- Improved social functioning
- Community participation
- Employment outcomes These outcomes represent exactly the type of innovative, preventative and economically responsible intervention the future NDIS should actively prioritise.
The Proposed Reforms Risk Driving Australia Backwards in
Disability Innovation
One of the most significant unintended consequences of the proposed reforms is the likely suppression of innovation across the Australian disability sector.
The NDIS was internationally recognised as a world-leading reform because it created space for participant choice, flexible support delivery, community-led solutions, and innovative service models capable of responding to highly diverse needs.
Importantly, innovation under the NDIS has not been limited to technology or administration. The most transformative innovation has occurred at the human service level through:
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Submission 536
Wheelnutz Garage / Adventure Crew Pty Ltd
- New engagement models
- Community-based interventions
- Social enterprise pathways
- Psychosocial participation initiatives
- Integrated support environments If Australia moves toward increasingly restrictive, compliance-dominated and standardised disability frameworks, it risks becoming less innovative than countries now investing heavily in social prescribing, community participation, psychosocial flexibility, peer-based intervention, and identity-driven rehabilitation.
Rather than exporting innovative disability practice internationally, Australia risks returning to older institutional approaches that many nations are actively attempting to move beyond.
This would represent not only a setback for people with disability, but a reputational setback for Australia’s standing as a progressive and innovative social policy leader.
Evidence From Frontline Service Delivery
The following case studies (names changed for privacy) illustrate the impact of Wheelnutz Garage’s non-traditional approach.
Case Study 1 — “Rob”
Participant Profile
Rob is a 14-year-old young man with complex family trauma, exposure to criminality and substance misuse within the home environment, Autism Spectrum Disorder Level 2, and Oppositional Defiant Disorder.
Prior to engagement with Wheelnutz Garage:
- Rob had never meaningfully attended school
- Mainstream education settings were unable to manage his behaviours
- All attempts at home schooling failed due to non-engagement Rob commenced attending Wheelnutz Garage approximately 18 months ago. Initially attending on a highly limited basis, his participation gradually increased to two days per week through relationship-based engagement and a practical, identity-driven environment.
Today Rob is consistently engaged, demonstrates significantly improved emotional regulation, has developed future employment aspirations, and actively takes on mentoring roles within the workshop environment.
Without this intervention, Rob’s trajectory toward long-term justice system involvement, social exclusion and chronic disengagement was extremely high.
Case Study 2 — “Brendon”
Participant Profile
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Submission 536
Wheelnutz Garage / Adventure Crew Pty Ltd
Brendon is a participant with intellectual disability and a significant history of substance misuse and criminal behaviour.
Following involvement with the justice system, there were extremely limited pathways available to support meaningful transition away from offending behaviour. Wheelnutz Garage became one of the only realistic engagement options available to him.
Through structured participation in the workshop environment, Brendon has:
- Maintained consistent engagement
- Developed future employment goals
- Reduced antisocial behaviour
- Begun rebuilding identity outside criminal networks Most importantly, he now demonstrates hope and future orientation.
Case Study 3 — Re-engagement of Workers with Acquired Disability
Wheelnutz Garage has employed four individuals with acquired disabilities who werepreviously employed within the automotive industry prior to injury or disability onset.
For these individuals, returning to automotive environments was not merely vocational. It represented:
- Restoration of identity
- Rebuilding confidence
- Social reconnection
- Psychological recovery Three of these individuals have since progressed into further employment outcomes.
International Evidence Supporting Community-Based and Identity-
Driven Models
The effectiveness of community-based, identity-driven and non-clinical disability supports is increasingly recognised internationally.
Countries including the United Kingdom, Norway, Sweden and Canada are increasingly investing in:
- Social prescribing
- Vocational identity rehabilitation
- Trauma-informed community engagement
- Peer-led supports
- Justice diversion pathways Importantly, many international systems are moving toward greater investment in flexible community-based interventions, not away from them.
The proposed NDIS reforms risk placing Australia behind international best practice at the very moment the world is moving in the opposite direction.
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Submission 536
Wheelnutz Garage / Adventure Crew Pty Ltd
Recommendations
Wheelnutz Garage respectfully makes the following recommendations to the Committee:
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Protect funding for community participation supports that build social connection, routine, confidence, identity and meaningful community engagement.
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Preserve flexibility for psychosocial disability supports and avoid rigid functional assessment frameworks that fail to account for non-linear progress.
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Protect innovative and non-traditional service models from restrictive implementation settings that would suppress community-led innovation.
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Recognise early intervention and community engagement as preventative infrastructure that reduces long-term system expenditure and justice system costs.
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Increase representation of frontline community organisations in future reform co- design processes to ensure lived experience and sector expertise inform legislative change.
Conclusion
Wheelnutz Garage is not an example of system risk. It is evidence of system success.
Our organisation demonstrates what becomes possible when disability policy allowsinnovation, flexibility, community connection and identity-driven engagement to operate alongside accountability.
The future sustainability of the NDIS will not be achieved by narrowing support models into increasingly standardised frameworks. It will be achieved by investing in the approaches already demonstrating measurable success with the people at greatest risk of lifelong exclusion.
Australia has an opportunity to remain a global leader in progressive, community-based disability innovation. That opportunity will be lost if legislative reform prioritises control and standardisation at the expense of participation, flexibility and human-centred innovation.
Wheelnutz Garage welcomes the opportunity to provide further evidence at a public hearing.
Contact
Ms Jade Burgmann (Founder/Director)
Wheelnutz Garage / Adventure Crew Pty Ltd
Admin@wheelnutzgarage.com
Queensland, Australia
wheelnutzgarage.com.au
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