David Barbalet stood on the edge of Lake Burley Griffin a quarter of a century ago and watched his best friend get left on the shore.
His mate was a natural athlete who could run, kick a soccer ball, and join in almost every sport. But because of symbrachydactyly, a birth defect that left him without full fingers on one hand, rowing remained entirely out of reach.
There was no off-the-shelf device that would let him grip an oar, proving to the teenage industrial design student that the ultimate barrier to inclusion wasn't strength or determination. It was technology.
"I can design and build you something," the year 12 student said.
Weeks later, that same friend pushed off from the shore wearing a homemade rowing prosthetic - a functional device built for a school project that allowed him, for the first time, to row alongside his peers.
Watching from the bank, Mr Barbalet felt a spark that never left him: the pure joy of using technology to give someone a life they didn't think was possible.
"That was the first time that I designed and built something and was able to contribute to someone else's wellbeing and their life," he said.
"It enabled my friend to do something he'd never done, or never thought he could do."
That school project lit the fuse for Carbon Adaptive, the Canberra-based business Mr Barbalet ran from a "little manufacturing lab" at home.
"I could build an aeroplane here ... or disability support equipment," he said.
In May 2026, Mr Barbalet was awarded the Churchill Fellowship medallion at Government House in Canberra by Governor-General Sam Mostyn at the ACT Medallion Ceremony.
He received a Churchill Fellowship in 2024 and spent nine weeks in the United States and Canada, learning from carbon-fibre hypercar manufacturers in Seattle and Paralympic wheelchair makers in Montréal.
After the Albanese Labor government's $36.2 billion National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) overhaul in the 2026 federal budget, which introduced funding cuts and funnelled participants away from the scheme, Mr Barbalet found himself deeply troubled by the realities of the disability equipment market.
On paper, the NDIS was designed to open doors by funding devices that let people live, work, and participate on their own terms.
In practice, the system's design created perverse incentives and eye-watering prices, Mr Barbalet said.
In the current market, a wheelchair or assistive device that might sell for about $8000 in Canada could fetch more than $30,000 in Australia under NDIS-funded schemes.
"There are products that are like-for-like or identical to those sold overseas, but Australians are paying significantly more," Mr Barbalet said.
"We're spending enormous amounts of taxpayer dollars on devices that are much cheaper in other countries."
Rather than funding pure innovation, the scheme too often burned capital on layers of bureaucratic assessments, meetings, and administrative checks that ended up costing more than the product itself, Mr Barbalet said.
Friends of his who were NDIS participants frequently voiced criticisms of the support they received. Even as changes rolled out, Mr Barbalet feared the most glaring distortions would remain untouched. To him, part of the fix was remarkably simple.
"We live in a world where you can check the price of something in America, or in Canada, or the UK against what you pay for it in Australia," Mr Barbalet said.
"If the discrepancy is there, then you can easily put a quantifiable value on that - like, you know, is it 500 per cent more expensive here? Well, why is that? Those are really good questions to ask from a reform perspective."
In 2026, Australia ranked 74 out of 145 countries on the economic complexity index, which meant high-tech precision industry, especially involving high-performance composites like carbon fibre and titanium, was thin on the ground. For a small, niche maker, the consequences were constant.
"In North America, if you want an advanced composites product, you can order it and it will arrive the following day," Mr Barbalet said. "Here, it takes weeks. A lot of the manufacturing might has deteriorated in Australia."
Operating in a tight space defined by a small domestic market, high overheads and long lead times, businesses like Carbon Adaptive faced constant pressure to produce ultra-high-quality, high-margin products just to stay afloat.
Because most of the technical infrastructure required to build disability support equipment had migrated overseas, local users, NDIS participants and taxpayers ultimately paid the price.
"That means the user has to wait longer, and they don't necessarily get what's the best fit for them," Mr Barbalet said. "Making it locally means you can customise it, and you can receive it sooner, which has a lot of benefit."
Despite the hurdles, Mr Barbalet wanted Australians to know that specialised, life-changing gear was still being made here - quietly, by innovators who started out just trying to help a friend.
Two decades on from that day by the lake, the stakes were bigger and the systems more tangled. But as he looked out from his workshop, the primary goal remained unchanged.
"I felt overjoyed that I could use this technology to create benefit," Mr Barbalet said.
For Carbon Adaptive, it was still about finding ways for technology, policy and local industry to work together so that more people could grip the oar and push away from the shore.
