I want to write about someone I never got to meet in person.
Someone whose work I only understood fully after he was gone from the position that made it possible.
Adam Bandt.
Fifteen years as the Member for Melbourne. Leader of the Australian Greens. And from where I sit — as an NDIS provider who has spent the past seven months navigating a system under pressure — one of the few people in federal parliament who was genuinely, consistently, and publicly fighting for the people this system was built to serve.
I did not write this while he was still in his seat.
And I wish I had.
I came across his office while navigating the kind of situation that most NDIS providers are not talking about publicly.
I reached out.
His team responded.
And what I encountered was not the experience you get from most political offices — where the contact is polite and the outcome is nothing.
It was different.
There was an understanding of what the NDIS actually means to the people inside it. Not the budget figures. Not the policy framework. The people.
The participants trying to access support. The providers trying to deliver it. The families holding everything together while the system decides what it thinks they deserve.
That understanding is rarer in politics than it should be.
I have been watching what has happened to the NDIS from the inside.
The cuts. The payment reviews. The compliance pressure. The gap between what the system promises and what it actually delivers on the ground.
And throughout all of that — Adam Bandt was one of the consistent voices saying what needed to be said.
That cutting the NDIS to balance a budget is not responsible governance.
It is a choice about whose lives we decide are worth investing in.
That any changes to the scheme should be built with disabled people — not imposed on them.
That a system that was life-changing for millions of Australians deserves to be protected, not dismantled quietly while everyone is looking elsewhere.
He said this when it was politically inconvenient.
He said it when it put him in opposition to both major parties.
He said it because it was true — not because it was safe.
I think about what it takes to do that.
To stand in a parliament where the numbers are rarely in your favour. To fight for people who do not have the lobbying power of corporations. To keep saying the uncomfortable thing when the comfortable thing would have been so much easier.
And then to lose your seat anyway.
Not because the work was wrong.
But because politics is not always about the work.
I want to say something here that I think more people are thinking than are saying.
We live in a world — and Australia is not exempt from this — where the people who fight hardest for the vulnerable are not always the ones who get to stay.
Where playing the game matters more than serving the people.
Where a politician who takes on actual cases, fights actual battles, and says actual uncomfortable truths can find themselves removed by a system that prefers people who are easier to manage.
I am not naive about politics.
I understand how numbers work. I understand how swings work. I understand that seats are won and lost for many reasons.
But I also know what I observed.
And what I observed was someone who was genuinely for the people — in a sector that desperately needs people who are genuinely for the people.
And now he is gone from that position.
And the people he was fighting for are still there.
Still navigating the same system. Still waiting for the same funding. Still hoping that someone in power will see them the way he did.
I did not start a campaign when I should have.
I did not mobilise the community I am now building.
And I think about that.
Because sometimes you do not realise what someone’s presence means until you feel their absence.
What I can do now — what I am doing now — is say it clearly.
His work mattered.
To participants who got the funding they needed because his office took on their cases. To providers who had someone in parliament who understood what the sector actually looks like from the inside. To families who had at least one voice saying — these people deserve better than what they are being given.
That work does not disappear because the seat did.
But it does leave a gap.
And filling that gap — advocating for a system that actually serves the people it was built for — is something we all have a part in now.
I am a Sudanese-Australian woman building an NDIS business in a system that was not designed with me in mind.
I know what it feels like to be in spaces where you are not expected. Where you have to work twice as hard to be heard half as well. Where the structures around you were built by people who did not imagine you would be there.
And from that place — I recognise something when I see it.
I recognise someone who was not playing the game.
Who was there for the people.
Who understood that the point of having a seat at the table is to use it for the ones who do not have one.
Thank you, Adam Bandt.
Not from a party member. Not from a political ally.
From a provider who works every day inside the system you fought to protect.
Your work was seen.
It still matters.
And the conversation you started does not end because your seat did.
— Joice Motref