Submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee RE: National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
To the Committee,
I am writing as the parent of an autistic child who relies on the NDIS to access essential supports, therapies, and services that allow him to participate in daily life safely, meaningfully, and with dignity.
I understand the need for accountability and long-term sustainability within the NDIS. Fraud should be addressed, and public funding should be protected.
If the government is genuinely committed to improving the long-term sustainability of the NDIS, scrutiny must also be directed toward internal inefficiencies, administrative waste, and the cost of adversarial processes within the NDIA itself.
Significant public funds are spent on legal disputes, appeals, repeated reassessments, external consultants, bureaucracy, and litigation against participants and families who are often simply trying to retain essential supports. Many families experience the system as combative rather than supportive, forcing vulnerable people into lengthy and expensive review processes that create further distress and cost taxpayers substantial amounts in legal and administrative expenditure.
Greater transparency, independent auditing, reduction of unnecessary bureaucracy, and investment in collaborative decision-making would likely save money without placing additional harm or pressure on disabled Australians and their carers.
I am deeply concerned that the proposed reforms risk causing significant harm to genuine participants and families who are already under immense pressure.
My lived experience as a parent has shown me that the greatest issue facing families is not exploiting the system. It is constantly fighting to prove our children deserve support in the first place.
Every reassessment, funding delay, plan review, policy change, or reduction in support creates instability for children who rely on routine, regulation, consistency, and specialist care. For families like ours, the NDIS is not a luxury. It is often the only thing preventing crisis.
The public conversation around “sustainability” increasingly frames disabled people as financial burdens instead of human beings. That narrative is dangerous. It creates fear among families and fuels misunderstanding about what disability support actually does.
The Committee must understand that these reforms are not abstract policy changes. They directly affect the safety, wellbeing, and survival of disabled Australians and their families.
When essential supports are removed or reduced, families can reach breaking point. Parents and carers of autistic children and children with high support needs already experience extreme
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levels of exhaustion, financial stress, isolation, sleep deprivation, and psychological strain. Many are providing around-the-clock care with little respite.
Cuts, delays, or uncertainty in support do not simply create inconvenience. They can create crisis.
There is a very real risk that removing critical supports will lead to:
- increased family breakdown,
- mental health collapse among carers,
- neglect caused by burnout,
- hospitalisation,
- homelessness,
- children entering unsafe situations
- preventable deaths. The government must acknowledge that policy decisions in this space carry life-and-death consequences. If supports are cut without adequate safeguards, the risk of severe harm — including suicide and family tragedy — increases.
Autistic children are vulnerable. Many cannot independently advocate for themselves, explain distress, communicate pain, or safely navigate the world without support. Reducing access to therapies, support workers, behavioural supports, respite, or assistive services places these children at genuine risk.
These are not budget figures on a spreadsheet. These are human lives, families, and futures.
Living regionally in Queensland adds another layer of vulnerability that these reforms fail to properly account for.
In regional areas, there are already severe shortages of therapists, specialists, support workers, behavioural clinicians, respite providers, and disability services. Families often sit on waiting lists for months or travel long distances simply to access basic supports.
There are no alternative systems waiting to step in if NDIS supports are reduced.
When support breaks down in metropolitan areas, families may still have some access to private providers, specialist schools, emergency respite, or multiple service options. In regional communities, those options often do not exist at all.
If supports are cut or delayed, children can be left without therapy, without regulation support, without safe supervision, and without meaningful participation in education or the community. Parents are then forced to absorb the entire burden alone.
The assumption that families can simply “fill the gaps” is unrealistic and dangerous, particularly in regional Australia where services are already stretched beyond capacity.
The impact on the public education system must also be acknowledged.
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When autistic children lose access to appropriate supports, therapies, behavioural interventions, regulation strategies, or support workers, those needs do not disappear when they walk into a classroom.
Instead, the burden is shifted directly onto an already overwhelmed public school system.
Teachers, teacher aides, and schools are increasingly expected to manage highly dysregulated children without the staffing, training, funding, or specialist resources required to do so safely and effectively.
This creates harm for everyone involved:
- autistic children become overwhelmed, excluded, suspended, or traumatised,
- teachers experience increased burnout and stress,
- classrooms become harder to manage,
- and other students lose learning time in environments stretched beyond capacity. Many parents are already being called repeatedly to collect children from school due to dysregulation, emotional distress, sensory overload, or behavioural escalation. Without adequate NDIS support, these situations increase significantly.
This has direct consequences for workforce participation because parents cannot maintain stable employment while constantly being pulled from work to manage crises that appropriate supports could help prevent.
Schools are education providers. They are not replacements for disability services, behavioural specialists, mental health systems, or therapeutic supports.
If the government reduces NDIS supports without strengthening alternative systems, the result will not be reduced need. It will simply transfer the crisis into classrooms, homes, hospitals, and emergency systems already operating beyond capacity.
I am also deeply concerned about the broader economic impact of reducing support.
The NDIS should not be viewed purely as a government expense. It is an investment in long term participation, independence, and economic contribution.
Early intervention and consistent support give disabled children the best possible chance to develop communication, emotional regulation, education pathways, social participation, and future employment capacity. Every skill gained through support increases the likelihood of future independence and reduces long-term reliance on crisis systems and social welfare.
When supports are removed or reduced, the consequences ripple far beyond the participant themselves.
Parents are often forced out of the workforce because they become full-time unpaid carers. If my son loses support, I lose the ability to work consistently because I am constantly responding to school calls, behavioural crises, appointments, regulation needs, and supervision requirements.
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That means the government does not just lose funding in one area — it also loses taxpayers, workers, productivity, and economic participation.
Without adequate support:
- parents reduce hours or leave employment entirely,
- families become financially unstable,
- reliance on Centrelink and emergency assistance increases,
- school attendance declines,
- hospital and mental health presentations increase,
- and future employment outcomes for disabled children worsen. The NDIS reduces pressure on multiple other systems when it functions properly. It keeps families stable, children engaged in education, carers in the workforce, and vulnerable people safer in the community.
Supporting disabled children properly now is far less expensive than paying for the long-term consequences of neglecting them later.
I am particularly concerned about:
- increased restrictions around eligibility and access,
- overreliance on standardised assessments that fail to reflect real daily functioning,
- reduced flexibility in plans,
- excessive reassessment requirements that retraumatise families,
- growing administrative burdens on carers,
- and insufficient consultation with disabled Australians and their families before reforms of this scale proceed.
Families like mine already spend enormous amounts of time gathering evidence, attending appointments, advocating in schools, managing therapies, navigating systems, and fighting for support. Many carers are already beyond exhaustion.
My son is not a line item in a budget forecast. He is a child with strengths, needs, potential, and rights. The supports he receives are investments in his future ability to communicate, regulate, learn, participate socially, and eventually contribute meaningfully to society.
A sustainable NDIS should not come at the cost of vulnerable children losing support or families living in constant fear of reassessment and cuts.
The NDIS was created to provide dignity, inclusion, safety, and opportunity. Those principles must remain at the centre of any reform.
I ask the Committee to ensure any changes:
- Protect participant rights and procedural fairness.
- Preserve individualised and flexible supports.
- Recognise lived experience as valid evidence.
- Reduce unnecessary reassessment and administrative burden.
- Maintain accessible appeal and review pathways.
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Properly consult disabled Australians, carers, and families before major structural reform proceeds.
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Recognise the economic value of keeping carers in the workforce and disabled children supported early.
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Ensure regional and rural families are not disproportionately harmed by service shortages and lack of alternative supports.
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Recognise that schools cannot absorb the fallout created by reductions in disability support. The question should not simply be how much the NDIS costs.
The question should be what it will cost Australia if vulnerable children and families are abandoned.
Thank you for considering my submission.
Sincerely,
Parent and carer of an autistic child and NDIS participant