A key proposal would give new powers to the NDIS minister to reduce funding for whole categories of support, starting with 50 per cent cuts to social and community participation budgets.<\/p>\n
This category covers things such as hiring support workers to take participants out of homes and to appointments, the supermarket, work, or outings.<\/p>\n
NDIS changes could push families into crisis, inquiry warned<\/a><\/p>\n Exhausted families could be plunged further into crisis and have greater interaction with child protection services under the proposed overhaul of the NDIS, advocates say.<\/p>\n Asked by independent senator David Pocock if the “power to cut people’s budgets indiscriminately” could leave participants in unsafe situations, Disability Discrimination Commissioner Rosemary Kayess said “we know” it would.<\/p>\n She said the disability royal commission repeatedly heard over its four-and-half-year run that the worst abuse of people with disability occurred in closed settings and when they were isolated from the rest of society.<\/p>\n “That’s how they become vulnerable. They end up in either closed environments or isolated environments, and they are at risk of violence, abuse and exploitation,” she said.<\/p>\n Women With Disabilities Australia chief executive Sophie Cusworth said these were among several “foreseeable risks”, including the potential for more domestic violence.<\/p>\n “Imagine a woman whose social and community participation support is the only regular contact she has outside home. It helps her to attend appointments, access community and be seen by people who know when something is wrong,” she said.<\/p>\n “For women with disability, community participation is a safeguard. Under the bill, this category of support is reduced without regard to her circumstances and her isolation grows \u2026 the risk of violence increases and becomes easier to hide.” Sophie Cusworth says the bill could have serious adverse affects on women and girls. (Supplied: Women With Disabilities Australia)<\/p>\n The proposed cuts to social and community participation, in addition to a 10 per cent reduction to capacity-building budgets (which fund things such as therapies and training), is expected to account for about a third of the $38 billion in projected savings over the next four years.<\/p>\n The bill’s explanatory notes state that “specific controls over funding are needed to put the scheme back on a sustainable footing”, and that when making cuts the minister would have to consider participant safety.<\/p>\n The Senate inquiry received more than 4,000 written submissions in just over a fortnight.<\/p>\n Yesterday it heard from disability advocates who voiced concerns about the extra responsibility that could fall onto parents<\/a>.<\/p>\n Ms Kayess said the expansion of what was considered a parental responsibility would most negatively impact women, who had “overwhelmingly born the burden of the carer role”.<\/p>\n “A major factor with the development of the NDIS was being able to unlock that productivity and ability of women to be able to go back into the workforce,” she said.<\/p>\n “This is a bit of a complete turnaround from where the founding fathers \u2026 of the NDIS’s design and development was trying to get to.”<\/p>\n Ms Cusworth said the bill should not proceed without a comprehensive gender impact analysis.<\/p>\n “We believe that the bill risks shifting greater responsibility onto families and particularly mothers,” she said.<\/p>\n “Many families and mothers, including mothers with disability, are already at breaking point due to inadequacy of support.”<\/p>\n Alternate supports ‘not ready’<\/p>\n If passed, the proposed changes would result in about 300,000 people either being removed or prevented from accessing the NDIS over the next four years.<\/p>\n To counter that, the states and territories, who shut their disability services when the NDIS began<\/a> in 2013, have agreed to set up new ones.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/996fee3ea2799b5a1a82b4811fc97531.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/d4ad2b6e698030e989824460062e60bd.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n