National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 786
SUBMISSION TO THE SENATE COMMUNITY AFFAIRS LEGISLATION COMMITTEE
Inquiry into the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission by: Autistic Haus Ltd
Date: 1 June 2026
We write to you as a representative organisation regarding the section of the NDIS bill concerning tightening access to the scheme by way of functional capacity assessments to remove a huge number of participants by the proposed implementation date of 2028. The basis of our argument is: notyet. We are a new charity organisation established to build a demonstrative pilot model for foundational supported homes to be fully functional by 2029. You won’t have heard of us yet, we haven’t had a chance yet to meet with you or your representatives. Instead of that novel status undermining what we’re here to say it makes our point: what the NDIS has supported is taking form. We’re founded and driven by disabled people who have begun to catch up with our potentials in the short lifespan of the comprehensive supports brought by the NDIS. We represent the difference between disability lived in survival mode and disability lived. We’re run by volunteers, some of whom will never have access to employment but by bridging the gaps just that much they’ve made it to the table to tell us what actually works, has worked and needs to work better. We’re founded by disabled people passionate about and informed by the research and evidence centred around us and we’ve finally been able to meaningfully contribute by volunteering at our own charity for and by autistic people to expand the reach of adequate evidence based supports and consequently measurably improve outcomes.
We won’t talk about the specific evidence today as we can see that established autism and disability organisations have done an exemplary job in this area. What we mean to address is a critical gap in understanding how simply taking disabled people out of survival states and affirming the principles of the NDIS in bringing an ordinary life and ordinary access to having a say in the world we experience, positively impacts outcomes, infrastructure, systems and society at a ground level. Missing from the Federal understanding of the daily dynamics of the NDIS is that it relies on disabled people doing the work. Disabled people do the work when we show up to therapy, when we accept the appointment, when we build or maintain capacity, and it benefits you as legislators. It doesn’t matter that the choice is to do the work or perish, that is the choice of work. That is what work is. And disabled people do the work whether they benefit from access to employment or not. Now that the NDIS has spent a decade engaging with us on the work of being disabled, the fabric of society is stitching together in threads you may not see yet. Maybe overnight success was expected, but there is cause and effect at play, and this is the time to push ahead not to run away. This is the work that we and our community are doing, work that not just saves ourselves but saves you money too. Helping with the bigger picture in building lives, connecting with and linking into state and community supports was a stated purpose of the NDIS.
We will leave it to our disabled colleagues in their submissions to explain how autism and disability broadly may not be understood by the system and to talk about the evidence, except to say that conversion practises on autistic people erode capacity, there are no savings down that path. We will demonstrate by means of achieving our organisational goals that there are savings and sustainability down the path of collaboration with nonprofit community organisations, of looking at the evidence the community is bringing to you and listening to what works. From our position on the ground in the disability community we assert that to call for a reduction in the number of participants and access to the scheme, even if projected years into the future, is premature. The foundational supports and intermediary infrastructure mustbe established before exclusions from the NDIS are planned in any manner. Partly because by having the infrastructure in place will organically reduce the cost of the scheme. By placing cuts and tightening of access ahead of enabling the community to house and include disabled and vulnerable populations, is to take a wasteful and disorganised approach which genuinely seems malicious and short sighted to the people in those communities. The NDIS has been called the only lifeboat in the ocean, in that analogy our organisation would be the equivalent of providing swimming lessons and floaties. Kindly desist in throwing people off the boat by which we mean reducing access to the scheme until we have finished (or even begun) thus equipping them. Once people have their floaties on and know how to swim, you will find they’ll get off the lifeboat. If you just push them off before then you know what’s going to happen and it will be a cost that can’t be negotiated. Disabled people will be left doing the work and still sinking.
Respectfully submitted,
Erica Greaves
Executive Director, Autistic Haus Ltd
ThissubmissionhasbeenauthorizedbytheExecutiveDirectoronbehalfofAutisticHausLtd.