17/06/2025
15 June 2025
Dear Members, Ministers, Senators, the NDIS National Disability Insurance Scheme and the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission,
The Wondering Wattle are writing to you with empassioned and equally exhausted hearts.
For the seventh year in a row, Support Coordination pricing has been left untouched in the NDIA’s Annual Pricing Review. That’s seven years of rising costs, increasing compliance, and greater expectations, without any recognition in the funding. No wage increase coverage. No superannuation adjustment. No margin to sustain the work that quite literally holds people’s lives together.
We’re a small, values-driven organisation. We walk beside people navigating some of the most complex challenges life can throw at a person. We meaningfully and deliberately match deserving participants with high-calibre providers. We don’t do this work for profit, or take it lightly. We do it for people with disabilities. For their choice. For their inclusion. For their dignity.
But the truth is, this funding freeze is pushing us, and many like us, to the brink. We can't continue to 'run at a loss' behind inflation for another 12mths. Especially given the extra load we are carrying with rapid legislation changes and little rollout time to process and guide participants.
This year, the cost of delivering services has gone up again:
* A 3.5% Fair Work wage increase
* A 0.5% increase in superannuation
* New compliance costs linked to the upcoming NDIS Commission reforms, including mandatory registration for all Support Coordination providers (that's another huge cost for a tiny organisation like us).
And yet the price for Support Coordination has stayed exactly the same. For seven years in a row you've demanded that "we work more for less". We just can't any longer.
We ask you to consider what this means, not just for organisations like ours, but for the wonderful people we support:
+ Participants who rely on their Support Coordinator to find housing, engage with therapy, attend appointments, stay safe, or simply be heard.
+ Parents and carers who are stretched to breaking point, depending on Coordinators to manage crisis after crisis.
+ Employees who want to stay in the sector but can’t afford to, as wages stagnate and burnout rises.
Freezing prices while increasing expectations is not sustainable.
It’s not ethical. And it’s not what the NDIS was designed to be.
So we are standing up, with urgency, to ask, beg and even plead for you to, on our behalf:
+ Act now on our concerns to ensure the NDIA passes on the minimum wage and superannuation increases to Support Coordination pricing
+ Support an independent, transparent pricing model that reflects the true cost of service delivery, including wages, compliance, and the real value of our work
+ Engage meaningfully with Disability Intermediaries Australia (DIA) and similar peak bodies across the country who are calling out for fairness
We are proud to deliver support that’s generous, human rights–driven, and grounded in relationship. But we cannot do it alone and we cannot do it without fair funding.
To recipients of this open letter, we invite you to walk a day in our shoes. To see what it takes to hold complex lives with care. And to help us to continue to build a system that values not just service delivery, but the people delivering it.
Brave is kind
Meryl
💛
Founder, Specialist and Support Coordinator
