National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 844
Date: May 24, 2026 Mother and carer of two children navigating the NDIS (9-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter). Our family has used Plan Management successfully for four years.
As a mother of two autistic children who have benefited from the NDIS, I urge the Parliament not to pass this Bill in its current form. The proposed legislation requires extensive, genuine consultation with the disability sector and families.
The current system is not easy to navigate—every piece of funding we have received was won through years of fighting, advocating, and overcoming systemic barriers. Introducing further legislative hurdles, automation, and funding restrictions will push already breaking families over the edge.
Children are at their most developmentally vulnerable in their early years. Removing or reducing access to the early childhood partner pathways is short-sighted future planning. Failing to invest in children now will result in exponential long-term economic costs to society via mental health crises, welfare reliance, and justice system interventions.
The “alternative” community or school-based systems intended to support autistic children do not yet exist, nor have they been co-designed with the families who desperately need them. Removing NDIS access before these systems exist risks the futures of our most vulnerable young people.
Any legal definition of “functional capacity” must look at the whole picture, including a child’s capacity to attend school.
Neither of my children can attend school full-time without myself or my partner being physically present. This completely prevents us from working full-time. We do not ask the NDIS to fund school attendance; however, we desperately require allied health funding (OT, speech, psychology) as a baseline support so we can manage the rest of their lives and community participation.
The NDIS must recognise that disability is completely individualized, even within the same household.
My 5-year-old daughter faces complex communication challenges and struggles to be understood, which causes her severe distress. My 9-year-old son experiences extreme anxiety and sensory processing differences that make the world terrifying, manifesting as severe emotional dysregulation at school. Both will face these foundational challenges for life, but their needs will continue to evolve.
Only funding a single aspect of a diagnosis fails to see the whole person.
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 844
My son’s anxiety cannot be separated from his sensory profile; he requires both psychology and OT.
My daughter’s communication barriers have created an overlapping mental health issue of feeling isolated and different; she cannot be treated with speech therapy alone. Complex human problems require holistic, multidisciplinary solutions.
Giving the Minister broad powers to cap or reduce funding packages without transparent, individualised consultation is dangerous.
If my son’s Social and Community Participation budget is reduced, he will be forced to leave the community clubs he has attended for over three years. These clubs are his primary peer network. They are invaluable to his psychological well-being, his capacity to read social cues, and his ability to learn how to interact with the world.
Investment in community integration is long-term sustainable planning. Funding should be dictated by individual human need, not by a ministry adjusting budgets at will without consultation.
Choice and control must include the right to choose how our budgets are administered.
I have used the same Plan Manager for four years. They seamlessly manage our budget, ensure our providers are appropriately registered for the specific line items, and process invoices rapidly and efficiently.
Forcing families away from successful, trusted plan-management structures into rigid agency managed or automated systems makes no administrative sense and adds a massive cognitive load to exhausted carers.
Decisions regarding the funding of human lives must be made by human beings capable of empathy and understanding a family’s unique narrative. Algorithms and machines cannot comprehend the nuances of a crisis.
Centralising and automating decision-making will not fix the administrative errors, waste, or backend incompetence currently facing the NDIA. In fact, removing human oversight will lock in these errors and worsen outcomes.
This Bill prioritises short-term fiscal wins over human safety and long-term economic sustainability. I ask the Committee to recommend that the Bill be paused until a rigorous, empathetic, and co-designed consultation process has occurred with the disability community. Thank you for considering the reality of our family’s life.