Bonus Episode - Strong Voices and the NDIS

Welcome to Strong Voices in the NDIS, a bonus episode of The Independent Assessment, a podcast produced by Radio One RPH in partnership with Advocacy for Inclusion. This episode is being recorded on Friday, 24 April, 2026 prior to the federal budget. I'm Seymour,

and I'm Craig Wallace. The Independent Assessment takes a look at disability issues in Canberra, beyond the parliamentary triangle, join us as we dive into reform politics and culture with curiosity and a sense of humor.

It's playful, curious, provocative, and possibly a bit raw, but most of all, it's unfiltered and completely unofficial. It's our views as public figures, and it's not a press release from our organizations, we'll talk to guests, introduce some regular segments, and try to fill an hour with mostly unscripted talk.

Well, thanks, C, obviously it's a big and very challenging week for the National Disability Insurance Scheme as we lead into federal budget. So, for this mini-sode, we are talking to Sam Connor, who is a well-known activist and campaigner close to the current NDIS reforms.

Well, this month we want to hear Sam's independent assessment of the hottest topic in town, and the best thing is we won't charge your NDIS package if you are lucky enough to still have one. So it's time to introduce Sam. Sam Connor AM is a disability rights activist, strategist, and professional thorn in the side of bad policy, she works across human rights, NDIS reform, access, advocacy, and community organizing, helping disabled people to build power, and one of her job titles is Social Media Assassin, and she's held a number of roles, including former president of People with Disability Australia. Welcome,

Sam. Thanks. Great to be here,

Sam. Welcome. We're going to actually set up by talking about something that's not about the hot issue of the day. So, we want to ask you about your favorite thing at large right now. Is there anything keeping you recharged, grounded or happy in the worlds of art, TV, books, and or pop culture, right now.
 
Oh gosh, it's a hard thing.

Well, I kind of mix up my art and relaxation things, so you know, you get to just hyper focus on that one thing that you're doing with your hands, as you know, but I mix it up with activism, so at the moment I'm making a musical claymation film of the NDIS, and Dorothy going to see The Wizard of Oz, a US, and looking for a brain, a heart, and a spine, and her adventures along the way. Bit of a spoiler, that Toto Alborz, that sounds so cool. It's great fun. It's keeping me busy in the moments that I'm not already busy yet.

Love it. Thanks, Sam. Look, we will move on to our main discussion here, so you know, obviously it's budget on 12th of May. Can you tell our listeners what are the actual confirmed changes to the NDIS that have been announced pre-budget?

Yeah, okay, so as you know, the scheme has gone through a number of changes, mostly legislative, for a few years now, we've been fighting whatever we can for the last, gosh, how long has it been? A long time, since about 2023 I think they started in earnest. The changes, well, you know that there's a new law that they're going to try and slam through in budget week, I think, and then otherwise in June, and that's the National Disability Insurance Scheme amendment, securing the NDIS for future generations, and that's something to do with eligibility, we don't have the detail on there, but it's also about how personal funding is managed, the rules for providers, and the overall budget of the scheme. We know that there's mass cutting of costs, and that's the big thing that's dropped. You know that before we had a 16% growth target, they called it. Now then, they said that they'd had a plan to let the scheme grow by 8% a year, and now they want to slash growth to just 2% of a year for the next four years, which means that the scheme has been raised back to seven eighths of what it was before, and in the next couple of years they'll let it rise to five. Percent, so they plan to do that by kicking a lot of people off the scheme by refusing entry for people who are going into the scheme, and for cutting the amount of money that's left for things like social and community participation, getting rid of the lists, the NDIS lists that they used to use, there's some direct cuts to funding around a bunch of things, so they expect that a lot of people will lose between five and $7,000 from their plan, and so it's been cut back to 2023 levels. They're also, they've also hinted at block funding and commissioning arrangements, so we don't know the fine detail of that, and we do know that they're going to require functional capacity assessments for people to justify changes of circumstances, requests, and a bunch of other things around fraud, and there's some slightly good news, and that they're setting up a $200 million inclusive communities fund, which pretty much seems like a drop in the ocean right now. So, it's, it is a bit dismal, that's what we know for sure. We have some speculation about a lot of other things, but that's what we know so far, and gosh, are we busy tearing things apart trying to fight this.

 
Thanks.
 
And what are some of the things that Mark Butler said about these changes at the press club this week? Like, what stood out?

I guess for me, but I'm autistic, so I kind of try and read people the best that I can, and I listen to their words very carefully, because you know people have natural language, and then when they say things that they don't usually say, I've never heard Mark Butler use the word shock, that was a very Bill Shortenes kind of word, and there was a lot of that, you know, that kind of stuff around fraud, he used the word activists, you know, which is something that I've never heard them talk about in a budget, budget speech. There was, you know, some very deliberate messaging, I think, that had been crafted in there. He did have the grace when a young disabled person, you know, asked a question to look ashamed, you know, to say that. Look, I'm sorry that your funding is going to be cut, and you know, there's some.. I think he, you know, probably wasn't very comfortable during it, but he really.. the things that he said were designed to make the NDIS look like a failing system to need, which needs urgent budget cuts to survive rather than a successful support network, so the other bit, I guess, is to explain why he argued that we can't afford the NDIS because we've got an aging population, they, they kind of played us off very successfully against the older people, they talked about the housing shortage, because some, you know, we've got a housing crisis, and that's very appealed, you know, appealing to people, but he didn't really mention that the affordability of the NDIS is a political choice, and that they could have taxed billionaires or gas exports, or, you know, AUKUS, they chose to punch down on people with disability in their family, and the cuts to the NDIS almost exactly match the additional funds that the government's paid, committed to pay for future AUKUS nuclear submarines. So, yeah, it's an interesting, an interesting speech. I thought,

 
Sam, this will sound like a bit of an obvious question, but out of the gamut of things that you've just talked about for the last sort of five or so minutes, what are you really worried about?
 
I think a return to the old system. I was watching a terrible.. I found some found some interesting information about the four of the big providers being sort of secretly given a bunch of money, and one of them just happens to be building a super one stop shop around the corner, and I followed the money back to the Senate orders, and found out that they've been given a bunch of money through a now dead program, and little bit furious, I'm worried that that's what we're going to go back to, you know, the whole one stop shop kind of thing, where we have a big disability center, where you have one choice of physio, you have very little personal care support, you don't have any choice and control, so for me, as a woman who is both a lesbian and also somebody who's a victim of child sexual assault. I don't particularly want a man sharing me, so some of the things that were announced was that personal care will be, you know, that we can only use registered providers, and so that, you know, we for. For choice and control, we fought for, you know, the choice where we didn't have to have a registered provider, we could hire somebody that we trusted, you know, even if it was another uni student to help you have a wee at lunchtime, and we fought for a scheme where overall we would get what we needed to be who we are, a goals-driven scheme, and we really have been talking about returning to a medical model, and that's what I'm concerned about. Sam, what would

 
you like to hear the media say about this right now?

 
I'd like them to talk, you know, I'd like them to work a little bit harder to be honest when we're talking about, you know, the numbers, and we're talking about things like fraud, look like that everybody likes to, you know, have a bit of a go at the bad guys, because we all used to play cops and robbers, and that kind of thing, but realistically, the fraud in Medicare is far, far higher than it is in the NDIS. The other bit of information that dropped on budget day that nobody really noticed was that the number of convictions that they've actually had for fraud is a whole 23 convictions. 23 convictions. Social Security overall is a lot bigger, but the criminals target the NDIS and Medicare, because you know that works better for large organized crime rings. I wish the, you know, before the media were given a little bit of a panic line, you know, that we actually had some real discussion about what it looked like, you know, for in the statistics and what the real facts of the matter matter are, and also that they'd understand disability a little bit better and talk to people about what it means for us.

 
I think that return to factual information on this is it's a theme we've got to run through the podcast, like how you find the genuine information and resources. What, what resources are out there? I guess, as activists, but also maybe people that are really, really worried and just want to find out more right now.
 
Well, we're going to have a town hall next week. We did last week, this week, sorry. Gosh, seems like about three years ago now. We have a group called DPAC, Disabled People Against Cuts, which has a Facebook page, and very shortly we'll have a website, and it's grown like Topsy. Every Australian council have been doing a great deal of work with information going out to community as well, but I guess you know resources for people help seeking help at the moment are really, you know, peers, I think we're all, we all just need to be straight up about how we're feeling, but this is really terrifying for a lot of people. There's, you know, advocacy for inclusion, there's Every Australian Counts, there's a bunch of different organizations, including the Peak Bodies, who should be helping with all of this stuff, and giving us reliable information, but also directing us to resources when we need them. But our biggest, our biggest source of information and comfort, I think, at the moment is each other, knowing that this is a time of anxiety, and that also we are the most resilient people in the world, that we are like cockroaches, that you know there's lots of things that we can do to fight that. Right now

takes a lot to step on us. Thanks, Sam.
 
I mean, speaking of what people can do, what can people do in their own state or at a federal level to advocate?

Oh, there's so much. We're putting together a 12 days of action from the first of May, but I joined a young greens meeting last night. I am neither young, I am, I am a green now, but I'm not young, but it was really interesting, you know, the young people are so passionate about this that they're planning marches across Australia. There's different people who are doing different things. PWDA have got a campaign going called Reasonable, Necessary, Ordinary, just saying, look, we don't want a luxurious life, we just want the reasonable and necessary things that other people get. But you can write to your MP, you can sign the open letter that's being organized by Every Australian Counts, Jordan Steele Johns office has a petition going, you know. Demand to see the law, you know, demand to see the full details of any new tests before any votes happen. You can pressure your state leaders, you can go and call or email your state premier and just say, look, you know this is our situation. Tell your story. It's the most important thing we've got, and you have to refuse to let the federal government kick people off the NDIS until fully funded state alternatives are up and running. Those mythical foundational supports, they just don't exist, and you can't kick us off into the so. Stratosphere, you can get involved in the state consultations for the Thriving Kids program to make sure it's helpful and not just a babysitting service. And if you do get a letter saying your funding is cut or that you've had a reduction, then immediately go to an advocacy service and start helping appeal it. The other thing that I think we can personally do, if you're on the NDIS, is start gathering fresh letters and evidence from your doctors, from nurses. If you've got, gosh, I hate to say, police reports, mental health reports, whatever bit of paper that you have, they're all full for functional tests. Get a cute little portfolio and start whacking them in it, and I've had some information dropped on me by a fabulous person who's inside the India, and thank you very much for that about what we might need for the new functional test, but I think as long as we're prepared to share information, work together, stand strong, we got this NDIS, and we're not going to give it away easily.

 
Thanks, Sam. What we were trying to do with this mini cert was provide a really brief encapsulation of what's happening out there and what activists want people to do, and that was really, really useful. It's been great to have you here on such short notice at such a busy time.

 
Thanks so much, guys. It's lovely to be here. Thank

 
you. Coming next in our regular programming is the politics of neurodivergence, or how neurodivergence is being politicized with two advocates for autistic people, Jared McLaughlin and Ian Perkas, who are neurodivergent themselves. It's shaping up as a great conversation, and so don't miss it. If you'd like to get in touch in the meantime, you can contact us at The Independent assessment@gmail.com The program is produced by Radio One RPH in partnership with Advocacy for Inclusion and is made possible with support from the Community Broadcasting

Foundation and the Aspen Foundation.