This article is a (slightly) edited version of the evidence Hannah Diviney gave to the Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs hearing into the NDIS Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026.
My name is Hannah Diviney, and I do not want to be begging the government to see people like me as human, begging you to understand the right the disabled community has to live rich and full lives that exist beyond any single four walls out in the world, but I have no choice.
None of us do.
If the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 gets passed into legislation, the consequences will be dire, far-reaching, and near impossible to undo.
And I cannot let them happen without putting up a hell of a fight. I owe it to myself, to all the people who have come before me, who never got the freedoms I have. I owe it to the people I sit shoulder to shoulder with in this new generation that is working so hard to bring disabled life into the light, and I owe it to everyone who will come after us as best they can, depending on what [is decided].
I have cerebral palsy, or CP for short, a physical disability that affects my fine and gross motor skills, and means I navigate the world in a wheelchair. It’s a permanent disability without a cure, which means I’ve had it since the moment I was born, and will have until my last breath.
No amount of treatment or medical intervention is going to change that.
If it seems strange that I’m bothering to define the word permanent, forgive me. The way I understand it, this Bill seeks to change that definition, seeks to challenge people’s right to access support and funding, unless they have demonstrated a willingness to try all appropriate treatments, regardless of cost, geography, or personal circumstance, including previous medical trauma or distress.
This amendment is, in my opinion, reckless, ill thought out, and entirely devoid of any shred of understanding of what living a disabled life is actually like for both the person themselves and their support network.
I’m told the decision about what’s considered appropriate will be the Minister’s. My apologies, I must have missed the part where the minister went to medical school or had any firsthand knowledge of the many complex realities that come with living with conditions like mine.
A man in Canberra with no relevant qualifications, making uninformed decisions about the life, well-being, and health, including potentially in its most intimate forms of a young woman. What could the problem with that be?
The only goal being to reduce spending, not upholding quality of life, not seeing a person as a full picture, merely a problem to be fixed – it is not something I am comfortable with, and I know I am not the only one. I dare say none of you in power would be comfortable if it were happening to you either.
Unless you are telling me that the Minister or Members of this Parliament know of some amazing breakthrough that neither I nor the world-renowned researchers I work with under one of my many jobs, have heard of, in which case, please let us know immediately.
My disability is not going anywhere, and neither am I, unless I happen into a vast fortune, either through my own grit and determination towards my career, or I happen to pick the right six numbers.
I will be an NDIS participant for life.
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While CP exists on something of a spectrum, my specific diagnosis manifests itself so that I need help with getting out of bed, going to the bathroom, getting dressed, and practically all aspects of personal care.
I can’t cook a meal, use a knife, or drive a car, and yet I am still a working actor, author, writer, speaker, advocate, screen writer, and media personality.
I made [to the Senate hearing in Canberra] with the help of a support worker who drove me from Sydney to Canberra. When I’m done here, she will drive me back. Six hours of driving over hundreds of kilometres for 10 minutes’ testimony – a roughly 12-hour shift. The money to pay for that will come out of my social and participation funding – those dreaded words that seem to make politicians quiver with fear.
Basically, anytime I leave the house, if I’m not with a friend or a parent, it costs something. That’s an incontrovertible fact of my life: freedom, ambition, career, a social life, all of the things other people take as a given or as a right even, has a price tag for someone like me, but what I am able to do and the person I am able to be because of that price tag makes it well worth the cost, as it does for so many other people I know, people who live vibrant, rich lives with so many dreams and so much to give.
This Bill will take that away, forcing people to weigh up and measure just how many times they can be out in the world.
How would you like it if we held you to the same standard of rules?
I’m lucky because my NDIS plan literally allows me to afford to be [at the hearing]. Many people whose lived experience this government would benefit in hearing from do not have that same luxury.
In fact, this process is absurdly and ironically inaccessible, perhaps on purpose. It is even lucky that I left my house as early as I did today because the time of the hearing was changed without any notice.
The less you are faced with the reality of disabled lives, the easier it is to hide, to bury your head in the sand.
Earlier this year, the Australian Financial Review published an article with the headline “NDIS spends $12 billion on support for haircuts, walks, and movies”.
That’s a headline designed with intentional misinformation to stir up fear, anger, and resentment, especially in a cost-of-living crisis towards disabled people.
Neither the government nor the NDIA responded to or corrected that narrative, failing to point out the truth of how social and community participation funding is actually used, instead preferring to obsess and panic, using our community as a scapegoat yet again.
Those who call the shots around [government] seem very upset about how big the spending has gotten in this category. How dare disabled people want to leave the house? Don’t we know we were never meant to be seen, heard, or thought of?
So, allow me to clarify: social and community participation funding does not pay for an item itself, but simply the privilege of being able to physically access it, a privilege most of the world doesn’t even realise they have.
Let me put it to you this way – without social and community participation funding, I can’t attend crucial therapies that are important for my health, wellbeing and the maintenance of the skills and strength I do have, attend appointments independently without support from my parents, both of whom are in the workforce.
Are you really expecting them to give up their livelihoods for me? Are you really putting more weight on families and loved ones already doing everything they can to help us navigate this world that is actively hostile and not built for us to survive, succeed, and thrive?
For many of us, our parents are ageing, that means their health is shifting in the balance too. Eventually, there will come a day when no matter how much they might want to, they are not physically capable of helping us anymore, but they might have to anyway. That’s going to put more pressure on our health and aged care systems and lead to more problems.
Without social and community participation, I would struggle to socialise with my friends, some of whom are able to physically assist me, but many who cannot. That means missing birthday parties, dinners, and opportunities to support them. It means never getting to date or go on any outings of my own volition.
That doesn’t seem like it’s going to be very good for my mental health, now does it? My anxiety and depression are going to love that.
But this is my favourite part:
If you cut participants’ social and community funding by the proposed 50% it means I won’t be able to make a living in all the ways I described earlier. I won’t be able to say yes to spontaneous creative opportunities like learning how to be a Play School presenter, I won’t be able to do the networking and challenging of traditional representation that means so much to so many people.
Without a livelihood, I will no longer be a taxpayer – one of those poor sods shouldering the burden of the NDIS – forgetting the fact that the disabled community is the only marginalised community a person can join at any time without any warning.
I suppose the only upside is if I’m not working, then I’ll have even more time to be a thorn in the government’s side, and so will my friends. That should be fun.
In spite of copious evidence that fraud plagues the NDIS, something this government has itself admitted, none of the proposed measures [in the Bill] actually address the issue. You claim they do, and that these changes will empower us, but we know the truth. They’ll do the very opposite.
Hang on a minute. Isn’t there a word for something claiming to be what it isn’t? Oh, yes. Now I remember. Fraud. Ironic, isn’t it?
The number crunchers around [the government] seem to have deluded themselves into thinking that disabled people daring to live costs too much, that our lives can be reduced to lines on a budget that simply must be balanced, forgetting all those zeros represent actual human beings, that all they need to do is cut our funding, kick a few 100,000 off the scheme – to be sent God knows where – because last time I checked, no other decent infrastructure has actually been built to accommodate this – and all will be well.
Let me tell you what I think is going to happen. There will be lawsuits and media circuses, negligence claims, and maybe even scary words like “manslaughter” thrown around if the worst thing happens.
The mental health crisis will escalate, as will the strain on our healthcare system. You’ll find the workforce shrinks as our support systems have no choice but to leave to ensure our safety and survival.
That’ll mean more people rely on other government support, Centrelink and the like, but those systems won’t be able to handle the load already stretched to breaking point.
What happens if they collapse? If our economy actually creeps closer to the edge of the cliff rather than further away, what happens then?
Disabled people will experience loneliness and isolation on a scale that belongs in the Dark Ages. We will slowly fade from view until some of us disappear completely. There will be people here now who have fought so hard and have so much to give that if this Bill goes through, we’ll eventually not be here anymore.
You may cast me as a frightened little girl, but hear this: when disabled people die as a direct result of this Bill – and they will – their blood will be on your hands.
How do I know people will die? Because you will have made it impossible for them to live in so many ways, and you will have to live with that every single day for the rest of your life, haunted by their ghosts and me every time I have a platform, because I’ll be damned if I ever let a single politician in this government forget what you did – if you dare position your own political power over our humanity.
This bill must be withdrawn. Otherwise, you are sentencing me and everyone in my community, including Senator Jordan Steele-John, to the dark, and we’ve worked so damn hard to come into the light.
Please don’t let that happen.
Hannah Diviney is a storyteller, writer, author, actress, disability advocate, media personality, co-founder, speaker, screenwriter, producer, advisor, and a research communications consultant at Cerebral Palsy Alliance.