NableU Advocacy
Advocacy & Submissions
We don’t just work around broken systems. We work to change them. NableU isn't just building systems. We also challenge existing systems and help shape new systems for our people. Many of the barriers experienced by disabled and neurodivergent people are not inevitable consequences of disability. They are consequences of systems that were designed around assumptions about how people communicate, organise themselves, access services, make decisions and ask for help. We want to change that.
Advocacy, research, consultation and policy engagement are part of NableU’s formal purpose, alongside building practical tools and community infrastructure. Our constitution explicitly commits us to advancing agency, autonomy, cognitive equity, accessibility, inclusion and meaningful participation.
From lived problems to system change
NableU is being built close to the problems it is trying to solve.
That gives us a useful perspective: we can see where policy intent, service design and lived reality stop lining up.
When we find those gaps, we do more than point at them.
We examine how the system works, identify where the failure occurs, gather evidence and lived experience, and propose practical ways to make it work better.
Our advocacy is therefore not separate from our product work. The same problems that lead us to build better tools often reveal where wider structural change is needed.
What we advocate for
Our work is centred on a few consistent principles:
Agency and autonomy People should have meaningful control over their own support, relationships, information and decisions.
Cognitive equity Systems should not quietly privilege people who can navigate bureaucracy, communicate in expected ways, remember complex processes or tolerate high executive-function demands.
Accessible systems by default Accessibility should not depend on someone repeatedly proving why they need an alternative pathway.
Lived experience as system evidence When the same failures keep happening to people, those experiences are not merely anecdotes. They can reveal defects in the design of the system itself.
Clear authority and accountability People should be able to understand who is making a decision, what authority they are using, what evidence it is based on and how that decision can be challenged.
Technology that strengthens human agency AI and digital systems should help people understand, decide and act. They should not quietly acquire authority over people because an algorithm produced a confident answer.
Practical reform Criticism matters when something is wrong. But wherever possible, we want to go further and show what a better system could actually look like.
Our submissions
NableU contributes to government consultations, parliamentary inquiries, standards development and other reform processes where our experience and work can add something useful.
Public record
Submissions & current advocacy
We publish our work here so people can see what we argued, who we put it to, and what happened next.
Published submissions
NATIONAL SAFETY & QUALITY SUBMISSION
NableU CURIOSITY INTO CAPABILITY NATIONAL SAFETY & QUALITY SUBMISSION Professional patience, interpretive restraint and distress-tolerant care A patient-safety standard for communication when people are unwell, in pain, overloaded or neurodivergent CORE PROPOSITION Healthcare should not require a patient to perform calmness, warmth, deference or neurotypical social signalling as a condition of being heard. The professional task is to preserve care, interpret communication in context, and base safety decisions on specific observable evidence rather than interpersonal reaction.
Privacy Amendment (Personal Data Protection) Bill 2026 submission | September 2026
NableU Community Systems Incorporated Privacy Amendment (Personal Data Protection) Bill 2026 submission | September 2026 Page 1 NableU Curiosity into capability Submission on the Privacy Amendment (Personal Data Protection) Bill 2026 Practical privacy control for people, sensitive information and AI Attorney-General’s Department consultation | NableU Community Systems Incorporated | INC2601035 | September 2026 Privacy is not meaningful control if a person cannot understand the permission, distinguish the purposes or withdraw it in practice.
NableU submission - Joint Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence can become one of the strongest capability multipliers available to Australians. It can also become an unusually powerful way to remove human agency if a system is allowed to move silently from assisting a person to deciding for them, acting for them, profiling them or controlling access to essential services.
NableU submission — Online Safety Amendment (Digital Duty of Care) Bill 2026
NableU Community Systems Incorporated opposes the Online Safety Amendment (Digital Duty of Care) Bill 2026 in its present form and asks the Committee to recommend that Parliament reject it. The proposed framework is too broad, its central obligations insufficiently bounded, and the safeguards for lawful expression, privacy, accessibility, individual agency and small community services inadequate. These are structural defects. They should be resolved in legislation before Parliament confers substantial new powers on a regulator or expects services to comply.
Supported Independent Living commissioning submission | September 2026
NableU supports a more active government role where the ordinary NDIS market is not reliably delivering safe, high-quality and sustainable Supported Independent Living (SIL). We do not support commissioning becoming a default mechanism that replaces participant-directed choice with government allocation, provider capture or regional monopoly. The Department's consultation paper says approximately 37,000 participants receive SIL and annual government expenditure exceeds $16 billion. It also makes clear that commissioning may not be suitable for the whole SIL market and that no decision has been made about its form, scope or implementation.
Submission to the NSW Reconstruction Authority
NableU Community Systems Incorporated welcomes the opportunity to contribute to the NSW Reconstruction Authority's first Disability Inclusion Action Plan. NableU is a NSW not-for-profit community association working to reduce barriers experienced by people with disability and neurodivergent people. Our work addresses accessibility, agency, cognitive equity, support coordination, community capability and the design of systems that enable meaningful participation. We approach disaster inclusion as a practical systems problem. A person may receive an emergency warning yet remain unable to act upon it. They may understand the danger but lack accessible transport.
Submission to the New Framework Planning and NDIS Supports Consultation
I write as President of NableU Community Systems Incorporated to provide our organisation's first formal submission concerning the National Disability Insurance Scheme and the rights, agency and practical experience of people with disability.