July 24, 2026

I keep hearing the same words across the disability community:

“The NDIS Bill will pass.”

I understand why people are saying this. We have to be honest about the parliamentary numbers and the political reality in front of us.

But I also need to be honest about what hearing that phrase over and over has done to me.

It has overwhelmed me. It has sometimes frozen me when I needed to write, organise or think clearly. It has fed a kind of despair that says none of our work will matter anyway, so what is the point?

I had already started trying to climb out of that dark place. I raised it today at an Every Australian Counts forum with Dr George Taleporos because I wondered whether other people might be feeling it too.

George reminded us that the disability community is strong when we come together. He said we can still do a lot to make the Bill better, prevent harm and secure good amendments.

Ross Joyce from AFDO said: “We’re not stopping.”

Sam Petersen said: “All resistance is useful.”

I found those words deeply helpful.

Not because they brought back a bright, euphoric hope that we are going to win everything and stop every bad thing from happening. I do not think that kind of hope is available to me right now.

What they gave me was something quieter and more useful.

Sometimes, when a total win no longer feels realistic, a gentler and more tempered hope gives us a way back.

I have been working in disability advocacy for a long time now. I am a disabled mum raising a disabled child. I am the president of a disability-led organisation. I work alongside people I love and respect, many of whom are just as tired, frightened and stretched as I am.

We have worked incredibly hard.

Many of us are doing this while navigating our own disability, parenting, caring responsibilities, poverty, illness, housing stress and the systems that already take so much from us.

We are not standing outside this fight. We are living inside it.

That is why I think we need to shift the frame. I know I have personally needed to, for my own wellbeing and to ensure I keep working for the community.

“Block the Bill” may still be an important demand. We should keep opposing harmful provisions and telling the truth about what they will do.

But stopping the whole Bill cannot be the only way we measure whether our resistance has mattered.

If we make our entire sense of hope depend on one parliamentary outcome that we cannot personally control, we risk leaving ourselves with nowhere to stand. Every update starts to feel like a final defeat. Every setback feels like proof that we have failed.

That is not sustainable, especially for a community already carrying so much trauma. So what if we think of it a different way? What if we think about this in terms of harm reduction – a dimmer light, instead of an on/off switch?

A harm reduction frame gives us another way to understand our work. It asks what we can still change, what harm we can prevent and what power we can use right now.

We can fight for better amendments.

We can force greater scrutiny.

We can get evidence onto the parliamentary record.

We can expose contradictions and unintended consequences.

We can document what governments were warned about.

We can prepare for implementation and challenge decisions that are unlawful or unfair.

We can support people through cuts, reviews and appeals.

We can protect some people from some harms, even when we cannot yet dismantle the whole system causing them.

That matters.

It does not mean accepting the Bill. It does not mean lowering our expectations or pretending that partial improvements are justice.

It just means refusing to abandon people while we keep fighting for something better and it also means recognising that our own capacity is worth protecting.

Disabled activists are not an endless resource. Our bodies and nervous systems are not fuel to be burned until there is nothing left.

When we protect our capacity, we protect our contribution. When we protect our contribution, we protect the strength and memory of our movement.

We need people who can speak publicly, organise, analyse legislation, write submissions, gather evidence and support individuals.

We also need people who can make dinner, care for their children, take their medication, turn off their phones and sleep.

Sometimes resistance looks like a public speech, or correcting one paragraph in a submission, or helping one person understand their rights.

Sometimes it looks like resting today so you can come back tomorrow instead of completely giving up…and all of it is useful.

So this is the frame I am trying to hold now:

Reclaim the limited power that is actually yours: To do what you can, start where you are, and use what you have.

Work alongside your comrades, and let them carry parts of the load that you cannot carry today.

Then go to bed and say: Enough. Today, I did enough.