Public Position Statement: Dept of Employment and Workplace Relations Portfolio Budget Statement 2026–27

AuDHD Council of Australia welcomes the stronger national focus on psychosocial hazards, prevention, compliance, and evidence-based work health and safety reform reflected in the 2026–27 Employment and Workplace Relations Portfolio Budget Statements. However, we are concerned that people with AuDHD remain largely invisible within mainstream policy settings on psychological harm at work.

The Department of Employment and Workforce Relations carries its work out via the following relevant bodies: Fair Work Commission, the Office of the Fair Work Ombudsman, Safe Work Australia, and Comcare. Together, these entities shape the national settings for employment access, fair work, workplace compliance, WHS, and workers' compensation. These matter to people with AuDHD, whose experiences of work are shaped not only by individual barriers, but also by the systems that govern how workplaces operate, how disputes are resolved, and how safety is defined and enforced.

If governments, regulators and employers are serious about safer and healthier work, they must explicitly recognise the experiences and risks faced by neurodivergent workers, including people with AuDHD.

Key Takeaways

Employment Service Improvements

The portfolio overview includes several concrete measures that are relevant to our advocacy. The Government will provide $312.1 million over five years from 2025–26, with $35.9 million per year ongoing, for improvements to the employment services system — including $285.6 million over five years to strengthen employment services and support future reform, and $26.5 million over three years from 2026–27 to increase resourcing for the National Customer Service Line.

It also notes $11.2 million over two years from 2026–27 for workplace relations priorities, including $1.3 million in 2026–27 for the Fair Work Commission to continue specialised supports for small businesses navigating dispute resolution and Commission processes. These investments show that government is actively reshaping the service and regulatory environment in which people with disability and neurodivergent workers seek support, fairness and redress.

Disability Employment Services

The overview also identifies a direct link to Disability Employment Services through the Department of Social Services as a contributor to Outcome 1 — to foster a productive and competitive labour market by helping job seekers into work, including secure work, and meeting employer and industry needs. Outcome 3 is equally important: to facilitate jobs growth, including secure work, through policies and programs that promote fair, productive and safe workplaces.

Safe Work Australia's outcome is healthier, safer and more productive workplaces; the Fair Work Ombudsman's outcome is compliance through advice, education and, where necessary, enforcement; and Comcare's outcome is to promote and enable safe and healthy work.

The portfolio repeatedly frames these settings in terms of productivity, social wellbeing and economic resilience. For people with AuDHD, that framing must be matched by explicit action on psychosocial safety, accessibility, workplace adjustments and retention; otherwise inclusion will remain rhetorical.

Why This Matters

Psychosocial hazards do not affect all workers equally. For people with AuDHD, workplace harm can be intensified by inaccessible systems, communication barriers, sensory overload, poor job design, bullying, exclusion, rigid performance expectations, and a lack of appropriate adjustments.

Too often, these risks are treated as personal vulnerability rather than structural workplace failure. A policy framework that talks about psychological harm without acknowledging disability, neurodivergence and workplace exclusion will continue to miss the workers who are often carrying the greatest burden.

What the AuDHD Council Is Calling For

• Explicit recognition of people with AuDHD and other neurodivergent workers in national psychosocial safety and workplace mental health policy.
• Disability-informed guidance for employers, regulators and decision-makers on psychosocial hazards, workplace adjustments, and inclusive job design.
• Inclusion of neurodivergent workers in research priorities, data collection, consultation processes, and evidence development led by Safe Work Australia, Comcare and related agencies.
• Stronger employer education and enforcement approaches where bullying, exclusion, inaccessible systems, or poorly managed change create preventable harm.
• A national approach that treats employment inclusion, psychosocial safety, and career sustainability as interconnected policy goals.

People with AuDHD should not have to disappear into generic policy language in order to be protected. The national work health and safety agenda is moving in the right direction; now it must become more specific, more inclusive, and more accountable.

AuDHD Council of Australia calls on governments, regulators, employers and national institutions to ensure that psychosocial safety reform delivers meaningful change for people with AuDHD in real workplaces.

Our Position

AuDHD Council of Australia supports stronger investment in employment services, fair work systems, workplace compliance, and national work health and safety reform. However, we are concerned that people with AuDHD are still largely absent from the specific language of these measures.

If the Government is investing in participant experience, customer service, specialised supports, compliance, productivity and safe workplaces, then neurodivergent workers must be visible within that agenda.

We call for disability-informed and neurodivergence-informed approaches across employment services design, Fair Work education and dispute pathways, psychosocial hazard guidance, compliance activity, and research and evidence development.

We also call for people with AuDHD to be recognised as a priority cohort in any work to improve sustainable employment, psychologically safe work, and long-term workforce participation.

The Employment and Workplace Relations portfolio has the tools, institutions and policy levers to make work safer, fairer and more sustainable. The test now is whether those systems will recognise the real experiences of people with AuDHD and respond with the specificity, accountability and practical change that genuine inclusion requires.