Three futures of the NDIS, and the one voice missing from all of them

I lodged my submission to the Senate inquiry into the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 yesterday. I write as a registered nurse, a PhD candidate researching neurodiversity in the nursing workforce, and a current NDIS participant. From inside the scheme, three competing futures are being argued out in public right now. Disabled people designed none of them. Submissions were due to close on 29 May but have been extended to close of business Monday 1 June. The Committee reports on 16 June.

This post provides general information only. It does not constitute legal or clinical advice. If you need guidance about your specific situation, speak with your employer, union, the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA), or a disability rights adviser.

Three futures, designed without us

The first is the Government’s. The April Press Club address set a 2 per cent annual cost-growth target for four years, returning to 5 to 6 per cent from 2030, with around $15 billion in annual savings and participant numbers falling from approximately 760,000 to about 600,000 by 2030. The Grattan Institute has called the package “a step forward” while warning that the 18-month eligibility-reform timeline is tight.

The second is institutional capital. Commentary in the Australian Financial Review argues for consolidating the NDIS provider market into a handful of mega-providers backed by superannuation funds and impact-investment capital. The structural reality of that proposal is a pipeline of public funds running through institutional investors, with surplus distributed as returns to shareholders rather than reinvested into participant supports. Australia has run this experiment in childcare and in residential aged care. The Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety documented the outcomes.

The third is what the submissions describe — hundreds of them by the close of the inquiry. They converge on a single proposition: reform that removes support before alternatives exist is not reform. That phrase, now appearing across published submissions, the ACT Disability Caucus position paper, and recent commentary in Crikey, is the community’s shared frame for what is being proposed. The bill was introduced on 14 May and referred to this Committee the same day, with fifteen days for the public to respond, now eighteen, and no formal co-design process.

What the bill misunderstands about neurodivergent lives

Neurodivergent nurses bring patterns of attention, pattern recognition, and direct communication that improve patient safety. We carry adaptive labour the rest of the workforce does not see. What the bill gets wrong about that labour matters for whether we can keep working, and whether neurodivergent participants can keep being supported.

Three provisions sit at odds with how neurodivergent people actually live. The requirement that supports must “directly arise” from a single eligible impairment ignores co-occurring profiles. A standardised functional-capacity assessment that excludes environmental context does not capture masking, fatigue cycles, or the gap between what a person can do briefly in a clinical room and what they can sustain in real life. The “all appropriate treatment” gate sits at odds with the neurodiversity paradigm: autism is not a condition to be exhaustively treated before support can be funded.

The social-relational understanding of disability holds that impairment effects are real and that the social environment shapes how much they matter. The bill assumes only the first half of that.

What is still influenceable

The submission deadline has been extended to close of business Monday 1 June. If the bill affects your work, your patients, or your own access to the scheme, and you have not yet written one, the next 48 hours are it. Submissions already published are on the inquiry page. Public hearings run 9 to 11 June. The Committee reports on 16 June. Reading the submissions, including those that disagree, is one of the more useful things a non-disabled colleague can do this fortnight.

Disabled people are not absent because they have nothing to say. They are absent because none of the architects of these futures built the room with them inside.

For the detail of what the bill proposes and why it matters for the nursing workforce, see What the NDIS Future Generations Bill 2026 Could Mean for Neurodivergent Nurses. For the legal framework that governs reasonable adjustments at work independently of the NDIS, see Reasonable Adjustments in Nursing: What Australian Law Actually Requires.

References

Bennett, S. (2026). The NDIS reform package is a step forward. Grattan Institute, 22 April 2026.

Commons, A. (2026). The NDIS needs reform. Not whatever this is. Common Ground Disability, 25 May 2026.

Keating, T. (2026). Saving the NDIS or shrinking it? History has a warning for Mark Butler. Crikey, 21 May 2026.

ACT Disability Caucus (2026). NDIS Reforms 2026: Real World Impacts, Risks and Safeguards. Advocacy for Inclusion, 7 May 2026.

Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety (2021). Final report: Care, dignity and respect. Commonwealth of Australia.

Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee (2026). Inquiry into the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026. Parliament of Australia.

National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 (Cth).

Thomas, C. (2007). Sociologies of Disability and Illness: Contested Ideas in Disability Studies and Medical Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan.

This post contains general information only and does not constitute legal, medical, or professional advice. Information is accurate to the best of the author’s knowledge at the time of publication. For advice specific to your situation, please consult an appropriately qualified professional.