National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 646
Submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee
Re: National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submitted by: Tanya Pisk
I am a wheelchair user and long-term NDIS participant living in Zetland, Sydney, writing to express my serious concern about the proposed 30% reduction to Core Supports funding for Assistance with Social and Community Participation. I rely on this funding not as a luxury, but as the mechanism that makes community life possible for me at all. Without it, my ability to maintain physical health, social connection, and independence will be significantly and irreversibly diminished.
Currently, I attend a weekly Boxercise class where my support worker holds the pads for me — a task I cannot perform myself due to my disability, and one it would be unreasonable to ask a fee-paying participant to take on. This activity has been transformative: it builds my upper body strength and has allowed me to form genuine friendships with able-bodied community members who are glad to see people with disability participating in mainstream fitness activities alongside them. I also attend a weekly Day Program that directly supports my NDIS goal of meeting people with shared lived experience and participating in activities that promote my health and wellbeing. Through adaptive HIIT, creative arts, drama, cooking and dance, I have grown in confidence, built meaningful friendships, and been motivated to contribute to my community through volunteer work. I have also recently developed a keen interest in adaptive mountain biking — an activity that offers profound physical and mental health benefits, from cardiovascular fitness and strength building to the well- documented mood-lifting effects of time spent outdoors in fresh air and natural environments. For a person with disability, being out in the community on a trail alongside able-bodied riders is not only empowering, but also a powerful statement of inclusion. However, pursuing this requires not only an adaptive bike but a support worker to accompany me on outings in case I need assistance — a need that is reasonable, legitimate, and directly tied to my safety. Losing this funding would mean losing access to an activity I have only just begun to discover, and that has already shown real promise for my wellbeing.
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 646
As I have aged, I have made the responsible decision to reduce my driving due to
declining judgement, which means I now depend on support workers to help me
travel further distances to see family and friends. Cutting this funding does not make
me more independent — it makes me a prisoner in my own neighbourhood. I urge
the Committee and Minister Butler to recognise that for participants like me, this
category of support is not discretionary spending. It is the infrastructure of a life lived
with dignity, connection, and purpose, and cutting it runs directly counter to the
NDIS’s foundational promise.