National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 874
Submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee: Inquiry into the National
Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS) Bill 2026
23 May 2026
Submitted by: A concerned Australian community member
I am not a disability advocate or a legal expert. I am an ordinary Australian who lives and works in a community where the NDIS is real, visible, and important. I see what it does. I see the kids who get to go to school, the parents who get to stay in the workforce, the adults who can maintain their independence and stay connected to the people around them. That is why I am writing this.
My concern with this Bill is straightforward. The 2023 independent review mapped out 26 recommendations and 139 specific actions, and it was explicit: implement them together, in order. Foundational supports were identified as a non-negotiable first step before any changes to who can access the scheme or how much funding they receive. Those foundational supports do not exist. The government has proceeded anyway, without explanation.
The scale of what is proposed is significant. Around 160,000 people are expected to lose access to the scheme, and average plans are set to be cut by $5,000. None of this was presented to Australians at the 2025 federal election. There was no mandate sought and none given. The justification offered over two years has largely centred on fraud, yet the confirmed fraud figure at the time a minister told parliament that billions were being rorted was $34.5 million across 72 active cases in a $42 billion scheme. Those two statements cannot be reconciled, and in March 2026 the government voted down a Senate inquiry that might have done so.
What concerns me most, as someone watching this from the community, is where the costs go when funding is cut. The NDIS returns $2.25 to the economy for every dollar spent. Reducing it does not eliminate that need, it moves it into hospitals, mental health services, housing crisis systems, and onto families, most often women. I think about the people I know. I think about what isolation does to mental health. I think about what happens to a parent who loses support and has to make impossible choices. These are not abstract consequences. They are already visible in communities like mine.
I would ask the committee two things. First, what does Treasury project that health, mental health, housing, and family systems will spend absorbing what the NDIS no longer covers, and if that modelling exists, why has it not been released? Second, the foundational supports the independent review prescribed as preconditions before eligibility changes do not exist. On what basis has the government proceeded?
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 874
I am asking the committee to reject this Bill until foundational supports are in place, and to require the government to table its downstream cost modelling before any further changes proceed. People in my community, and across Australia, deserve to know the full picture.
Yours sincerely in frustration, but also in hope,