Submission 849
Submission on the NDIS Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
I am: A clinician and a disabled person
- Introduction / my connection to this issue I am a Speech Pathologist with experience supporting children, adolescents, and adults across school, disability, and private practice settings. My focus areas are neuroaffirming social communication, self-advocacy, and gender-affirming voice and communication support, and work predominantly with autistic, intellectually disabled, physically disabled, and psychosocially disabled people — many of whom are NDIS participants.
I am also an autistic person myself. I understand the NDIS not only as a clinician who helps people navigate it, but as someone whose own capacity to live, work, and participate in the community depends on access to appropriate supports.
I am submitting this because I have serious concerns about this Bill — both for the people I support, and for myself.
- My overall position on this Bill I do not support this Bill in its current form and am asking the Government to withdraw it.
The proposed changes create a system that is harder to access, harder to navigate, and less responsive to the real and fluctuating needs of disabled people. For the communities I work with — autistic people, people with intellectual, physical, sensory, and psychosocial disabilities, and people with communication disabilities — these changes carry real risk of harm. These risks are compounded for disabled people from First Nations communities, culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, and other minority communities, who face additional systemic barriers to access and participation.
- My key concerns Communication access and the “not contactable” provisions As a speech pathologist, I work with many people for whom communication is not simple or consistent. This includes people who are nonspeaking or use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC), people who experience significant anxiety or burnout, autistic people who may need longer processing time, and people who are in crisis or mental health episodes.
The proposed provisions around participants being “not contactable” deeply concern me. The assumption that a person who does not respond within a required timeframe is disengaged — rather than dysregulated, overwhelmed, hospitalised, or simply unable to communicate in that moment — reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of disability.
Submission 849
I support people every week who cannot send an email during a difficult period. Whose phone calls go unanswered not because they don’t care about their supports, but because answering the phone is genuinely beyond their capacity at that time. For these people, having supports paused or plans affected because they could not respond is not an administrative inconvenience — it is a crisis that compounds the original crisis.
I have supported clients who have lost access to services during periods of burnout, only to spend months trying to rebuild what was lost. Each gap in support creates setback, not just inconvenience. Timeframes that do not account for this are not neutral — they are exclusionary.
Administrative burden The increased administrative and compliance requirements proposed in this Bill will fall hardest on the people least resourced to manage them.
Many of my clients are managing significant cognitive load already — executive function differences, anxiety, sensory processing needs, and the ongoing exhaustion of navigating a world not designed for them. Adding more formal processes, tighter timeframes, and greater compliance expectations does not create accountability. It creates barriers.
As a clinician, I already see the toll that NDIS administration takes on participants and their families. I support clients in writing emails, preparing for plan meetings, and advocating for themselves within a system that can feel overwhelming and opaque. If this Bill passes, I anticipate that load increasing significantly — not because people are less capable, but because the system will be asking more of people who already have less to give.
As an autistic person, I know this experience intimately. Administrative demands that feel manageable in a regulated period can become completely inaccessible during a difficult one. A system that does not account for this variability is one that will routinely fail the people it is meant to serve.
Automated and system-driven decision-making I am deeply concerned about the increased reliance on standardised and automated decision-making processes proposed in this Bill.
Disability is not uniform. The people I support have complex, intersecting needs that do not fit neatly into categories. An autistic person with significant support needs may present very differently from another autistic person with the same diagnosis. A person with a physical disability may require entirely different supports to someone with a psychosocial disability, even if they share a funding category. Decisions about supports need human review. They need flexibility. They need the capacity to consider context. Automated systems cannot do this, and when they make errors — which they will — the appeals and review processes create yet another layer of burden for people who are already stretched.
Funding flexibility and support categories
Submission 849
The proposed ability to adjust funding at a category level, rather than at the level of the individual, undermines the principle of individualised support that the NDIS was built on.
I have seen what happens when funding does not match a person’s actual needs. People go without therapy. They lose progress they have worked hard for. They make do. The idea that system-level adjustments to support categories could affect individual plans — without adequate individual review — is alarming.
For the people I work with, speech pathology supports are not supplementary. For many, they are foundational to communication, participation, safety, and quality of life. Any reduction in funding flexibility that affects access to these supports will have real consequences — as will reductions to any support that a disabled person relies on to live with dignity and independence.
- My lived and professional experience I want to offer a few observations from my work and my life, shared with care for privacy.
I have supported an autistic adult, during a period of significant mental health crisis, was completely unable to manage any administrative contact or use any form of communication (spoken or unspoken). Their supports were already insufficient. The idea that their plan could have been affected because they were unreachable during that time is genuinely frightening to me.
I have worked with families who spend hours every month managing NDIS paperwork, chasing approvals, and preparing for reviews — time that could be spent on connection, rest, or actual support. The administrative burden is already significant. More is not better.
I have experienced, as an autistic person, what it is like to have capacity fluctuate. To be articulate and capable on one day and genuinely unable to manage basic tasks on another. A system that measures my engagement by my ability to respond on demand does not understand disability. It understands compliance.
I also want to name something personal that I believe is directly relevant to this Bill. I have spent an extended period attempting to access the NDIS myself. As someone for whom verbal communication is not always accessible, navigating a system that relies heavily on phone calls, formal written correspondence, and timely responses has been an ongoing barrier. I have been pushed back repeatedly — not because my need is unclear, but because the system requires evidence I cannot currently access due to financial barriers and the absence of the very supports I am trying to obtain. I work part time because of my disability. That limits my income, which limits my ability to fund the assessments and reports the NDIS requires. It is a circular trap, and it is one that this Bill does nothing to address — and in several areas, would make worse.
- What I believe this Bill gets wrong
Submission 849
This Bill appears to be designed around an idealised participant — one who is consistently available, administratively capable, and able to engage with formal processes on demand. That person is not representative of the disabled community.
The people most at risk from these changes are the people who most need the NDIS to work well. People in crisis. People with communication disabilities. People who are autistic, physically disabled, psychosocially disabled, or navigating complex and intersecting support needs. The Bill, as proposed, would make the system harder for exactly the people it is meant to protect.
It also fails to account for the compounding disadvantage faced by disabled people from First Nations communities, culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, and other minority groups. For these communities, the barriers to navigating the NDIS are already significant. A system that becomes more rigid, more administrative, and less human will push them further out.
- What needs to change or be protected I am asking the committee to consider the following:
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Communication access must be built into all NDIS processes. Timeframes, contact requirements, and compliance expectations must account for the reality of disability, including fluctuating capacity, communication differences, and crisis periods.
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Administrative burden must be reduced, not increased. The system should work for participants, not the other way around.
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Human review must be maintained in all decisions affecting individual plans. Automated systems cannot substitute for individualised, context-sensitive decision-making.
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Funding flexibility must be preserved at the individual level. Changes to support categories must not override what a person actually needs.
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The voices of disabled people — including those with complex communication needs, physical disabilities, and psychosocial disabilities — must be central to any reform process.
- Final statement I am submitting this as a clinician because I am scared for my clients. I am submitting this as an autistic person because I am scared for myself — and because my own experience of trying to access the NDIS has shown me exactly how broken the current system already is.
I have been attempting to get my own application progressed for an extended period. Verbal communication is not always accessible to me, and the system’s reliance on phone contact, formal processes, and rapid responses has pushed me back at every turn. I have been asked for evidence I cannot afford to obtain, because I work part time due to my disability, and because I do not yet have the supports that might help
Submission 849
me access it. It is a system that asks disabled people to prove their need using resources that disability has already taken from them.
This Bill would make that harder. Not easier.
The NDIS, at its best, recognises that disabled people have the right to live full, connected, self-determined lives — and that support makes that possible. These proposed changes move away from that vision. They create a system that is more rigid, more demanding, and less human.
I am asking the Government to withdraw this Bill, and to return to reform that genuinely centres the experiences and needs of disabled people.