27 October 2025
Parliament House, Canberra
Craig Wallace, Head of Policy, AFI
Yuma and greetings from Ngunnawal and Ngambri lands in my home city of Canberra and the ACT. I am a short balding man in a wheelchair wearing a suit.
Over a decade ago I was proud to stand with many of the people here campaigning for a better life for people with disability around Australia.
We all fought hard to get the NDIS funded and to make it rights based. It was a campaign that brought together activists and advocates, people with disability and parents and carers. And politicians too.
We were promised this hard work would see a permanent end to the era of worry. Worry that the money would run out. Worry that we would have to move into nursing homes, or live in group homes, with people that we did not know who might hurt us.
Many of the people in the building behind us supported us. They recognised that the time had come to write a great wrong in Australia. That we could start to undo the two hundred years of misery, which saw us forced into asylums, trapped in our homes, and suffering indignity, pain and mess.
We were told that NDIS would be permanent like Australia’s other great social reforms like Medicare, arbitration or superannuation.
And yet, cut by cut we see threats to the promise. The permanent has become uncertain. The old worries never went away.
A person centred scheme is now about faceless assessors armed with their ipads and clipboards who come to test us.
We have been tested enough. We are tested every day
And then there are the cuts to plans and supports
People have lost their physiotherapy and mental health support.
People are being told they need to choose between having a shower and going out once a week to help in a community garden
Deaf children with down syndrome are losing their Auslan.
There are problems with the NDIS.
But they are not problems caused by us. They are caused by the decisions of the people in this building. They are problems with services, markets and providers and State governments pulling away.
And yes disability is expensive. And that cost is borne by us. And by families and by carers and eventually by the whole community. It is counted in pain, indignity and discomfort, and nights of lost sleep.
And meanwhile we failed to fix the other things – to ensure we can access hospitals, schools, employment and the community. We can’t even access Mark Butlers office through the front door.
In 2013 in the parliament, Prime Minister Gillard said there was no turning back. That there would be no more in principle. And no more support when circumstances permit. I think she got it and she meant it.
This was a great historic promise. And we hold this govt to account.
We say no to the dismemberment of the scheme. We say yes to the bold vision, outlined by its founders. We say no to the creeping RoboNDIS, the assessors and the profiteering and we come together to protect a great Australian reform in the interests of us all.
We assert that great call of the disability rights movement for nothing to be done about us without us. Thank you.