Submission Regarding Proposed Restrictions to NDIS Community and
Social Participation Funding
To Whom It May Concern,
I write as a concerned Australian citizen, family advocate, guardian, and carer for people living with significant disabilities.
I wish to express my profound concern regarding proposals that would restrict NDIS funded community participation only to activities that are primarily employment-related or medical in nature.
Such changes risk fundamentally undermining the purpose of social and community participation and would have devastating consequences for many Australians living with disability.
Human beings are not defined solely by their ability to work or attend medical appointments. Social connection, community engagement, recreation, culture, spirituality, and participation in everyday life are fundamental aspects of being human.
For many people with disability, community participation funding provides the support required to do the things that most Australians take for granted: enjoying a coffee at a local café, attending church, shopping for groceries or clothing, going for a walk in the community, visiting a local market, attending a social event, watching a movie at the cinema, visiting friends and family, or simply being present in the world around them.
Without support, many individuals would be confined to their homes for the majority of their lives.
I ask decision-makers to consider what message this sends to Australians with disability. If participation is only considered valuable when it generates economic productivity or involves a medical appointment, what does that say about how we value disabled people as human beings?
The proposal creates a troubling distinction between citizens who are free to participate in community life and those whose participation is deemed unnecessary unless it serves a clinical or economic purpose.
Many people with disability already experience profound isolation, loneliness, and social exclusion. Reducing access to community participation would only worsen these outcomes and increase the risk of depression, anxiety, deterioration in mental health, loss of
independence, and declining quality of life.
Research consistently demonstrates that social isolation is associated with poorer physical health, increased rates of mental illness, cognitive decline, higher rates of hospitalisation, and increased mortality. Restricting community participation may create short-term budget savings, but it risks creating significantly greater long-term costs through increased reliance on health services, crisis interventions, hospital admissions, aged care, and other government-funded supports.
It also raises an important question: are we unintentionally creating a society where people with disability become less visible? A society where they are removed from community spaces, social activities, places of worship, local businesses, parks, sporting events, and cultural activities?
A community should be judged by how it includes its most vulnerable members, not by how effectively it removes them from public view.
Australia is a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The Convention recognises the right of people with disability to participate fully and effectively in society, to be included in the community, and to enjoy equal access to cultural, recreational, leisure, and religious life. Policies that substantially restrict community participation risk moving Australia further away from these obligations rather than closer to them.
The principles of choice and control are central to the NDIS. Participants should have the right to decide what gives their life meaning, purpose, connection, and joy. For some, that may be attending church. For others, it may be visiting family, participating in a hobby, attending community events, volunteering, or simply enjoying a coffee with friends.
These activities are not luxuries. They are the very experiences that create belonging, identity, dignity, and wellbeing.
Disabled Australians are not defined by their diagnosis. They are mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, friends, neighbours, and valued members of our community. They deserve the same opportunities as every other Australian to participate in society, build relationships, practise their faith, enjoy recreation, and live meaningful lives.
Restricting community participation funding risks stripping away one of the most important protections against isolation and exclusion. It risks reducing life to a cycle of home, work, and medical appointments, while denying people access to the broader community that gives life purpose and meaning.
The NDIS was never intended merely to keep people alive. It was intended to help people
live. There is a profound difference between the two.
I respectfully urge the Government to reject any proposal that significantly restricts NDIS funded social and community participation and to preserve the principles of inclusion, dignity, choice, control, human rights, and community belonging upon which the NDIS was founded.
Every Australian deserves the opportunity not merely to exist, but to belong.