Submission to the

Systemic Implications of Governance, Compliance and Safeguarding Failures for Child Participants in the NDIS

Author: Alyson Lewis

(Individual submission)

Date: Sunday 18 January 2026

Executive Summary

This submission is made by Alyson Lewis in an individual capacity and draws on direct experience engaging with the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) as a Support Coordinator, Child Representative and parent of a child participant. It is informed by findings from multiple Auditor-General reports examining governance, compliance, performance measurement and regulatory effectiveness within the Scheme.

The Auditor-General’s findings demonstrate persistent and unresolved weaknesses across plan assurance, compliance controls, performance measurement and regulatory oversight. While these issues are often framed as technical or administrative, this submission contends that their cumulative effect is the displacement of risk, safeguarding responsibility and evidentiary burden onto individuals operating within the Scheme.

The submission outlines how incomplete assurance mechanisms, limited pre-payment compliance controls and the absence of outcome-based performance measures result in a system that relies heavily on downstream correction rather than upstream prevention. Support Coordinators, Child Representatives and families are required to identify, manage and mitigate risks without formal authority, transparency, or protection.

Particular emphasis is placed on the impact of these systemic weaknesses on children.

Auditor-General reporting confirms that early intervention outcomes for children are not measured at a system level, notwithstanding early intervention being a core objective of the NDIS. In this context, families bear the burden of repeatedly justifying supports while children experience delays and instability without evidence-based accountability for the developmental harm caused.

The submission further highlights that compliance and enforcement activity is recorded without corresponding measures of effectiveness. As a result, participants may experience service disruption, provider withdrawal, or delayed intervention without assurance that safeguards are improving or that risks are being meaningfully reduced.

Taken together, the evidence demonstrates that safeguarding within the NDIS is reactive, fragmented and informally delivered by those least equipped to sustain it. This produces inequitable outcomes for participants, particularly children, whose access to timely and consistent supports depends on family capacity rather than systemic protection.

The submission concludes with recommendations aimed at restoring upstream assurance, introducing outcome-based performance measures, strengthening regulatory oversight, rebalancing responsibility and authority and prioritising the safeguarding of child participants. Without structural reform, the current reliance on informal safeguards is unsustainable and will continue to expose children and families to preventable harm.

Introduction, Author Standing and Scope of Submission

1.1 Introduction

1.1.1

This submission is made by Alyson Lewis in an individual capacity, for the purposes of this parliamentary inquiry.

1.1.2

The submission is prepared solely for the purposes of this inquiry. It has not been published elsewhere and is intended to assist the Committee by providing evidence-based observations drawn from direct experience and from publicly available findings of the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO).

1.1.3

The submission addresses matters relevant to the inquiry’s terms of reference, with particular focus on the practical operation of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), the effectiveness of regulatory and governance arrangements and the downstream impact of systemic failures on participants, families and informal safeguarding actors.

1.2 Author Standing

1.2.1

The author makes this submission drawing on four concurrent and intersecting roles, each of which is directly affected by the matters under inquiry:

a. an NDIS Support Coordinator, engaged in day-to-day implementation of participant plans and interaction with NDIA systems, providers and compliance processes;

b. a Child Representative acting in the best interests of a minor participant within the NDIS;

c. a parent of a child NDIS participant, responsible for safeguarding the child’s supports, funding, continuity of services and wellbeing; and

d. an individual with sustained practical exposure to NDIS governance, compliance and regulatory interfaces through repeated engagement with planning, review, provider oversight and escalation processes.

1.2.2

The author’s standing arises not from isolated experience, but from ongoing operational engagement with the Scheme across multiple roles that collectively reveal how policy, governance and regulatory decisions translate into real-world outcomes.

1.3 Basis of Evidence

1.3.1

This submission is informed by and relies upon, a consolidated review of multiple Auditor-General reports, including:

Auditor-General Report No. 22 (2024-25)
Auditor-General Report No. 25 (2024-25)
Auditor-General Report No. 39 (2024-25)
Auditor-General Report No. 41 (2024-25)

#\n## Auditor-General Report No. 48 (2024-25)\n## Auditor-General Report No. 2 (2025-26)\n\n### 1.3.2 These reports collectively identify systemic weaknesses in:\n\n- plan approval and quality assurance processes;\n- financial and compliance controls;\n- performance measurement and evidentiary systems;\n- governance oversight at Board and executive level; and\n- regulatory effectiveness of the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission.\n\n### 1.3.3 Rather than restating those findings, this submission focuses on their practical downstream consequences for individuals operating within the Scheme - particularly where risk, compliance burden and safeguarding responsibility are displaced onto participants, families and informal supports.\n\n# Scope of Submission\n\n### 1.4.1 The submission addresses the following themes, which align with the inquiry’s terms of reference:\n\n- the systemic context in which NDIS decisions are made, including known governance and assurance limitations;\n- the implications of those limitations for Support Coordination as a function within the Scheme;\n- the impact of regulatory and compliance failures on safeguarding and risk management;\n- the consequences for Child Representatives required to navigate procedurally fragile systems; and\n- the direct and cumulative impact on child participants whose outcomes depend on timely, lawful and well-evidenced decision-making.\n\n### 1.4.2 The submission does not include identifying details of other individuals, including children and does not make allegations against named persons or organisations. All observations are framed at a systemic and structural level, supported by audit findings and practical experience.\n\n# Purpose of Submission\n\n### 1.5.1 The purpose of this submission is to assist the Committee by demonstrating that deficiencies identified by the Auditor-General are not abstract governance concerns, but produce predictable, recurring impacts on the operation of the Scheme.\n\n### 1.5.2 In particular, the submission seeks to show that:Submission into the Inquiry into the administration of the NDIS. Individual: Alyson Lewis Page 4 of 26

safeguarding and compliance functions are increasingly performed informally
accountability for risk is displaced away from agencies with statutory
families and Child Representatives bear disproportionate procedural and
child participants experience instability and harm as a foreseeable

1.5.3 The submission concludes with recommendations aimed at addressing these structural

issues and strengthening the integrity, fairness and safeguarding effectiveness of the NDS.

Systemic Context: Regulatory, Governance and Compliance Failures

Overview

2.1.1 The Auditor-General’s reports reviewed for this submission collectively demonstrate that the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) is operating within a documented environment of systemic fragility, characterised by incomplete assurance, immature regulatory controls, unresolved governance risks and insufficient performance measurement.

2.1.2 These failures are not confined to a single agency, function, or reporting period. They arise across:

NDIA plan approval and quality assurance processes;
financial management and compliance controls;
fraud prevention and detection systems;
governance oversight at Board and executive level; and
regulatory supervision by the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission.

2.1.3 The cumulative effect of these failures is the displacement of risk, compliance responsibility and safeguarding labour onto individuals operating within the Scheme - including Support Coordinators, parents and Child Representatives - without corresponding authority, transparency, or protection.

Plan Approval and Quality Assurance Are Not Operating as Designed

2.2.1 Auditor-General Report No. 22 (2024-25) identifies that the NDIA’s plan approval and quality assurance processes are not operating as intended, with a significant proportion of participant plans selected for compliance testing remaining untested, despite formal assurance frameworks claiming otherwise.

2.2 Compliance Assurance

2.2.1 The Compliance Program Does Not Operate As Designed

The Auditor-General notes that this undermines confidence that tested samples are representative or risk-based and explicitly identifies a risk that the compliance program does not effectively control the risks it was designed to address.

Auditor-General Report No. 22 (2024-25) found that the NDIA’s plan approval assurance program is not operating as designed. The ANAO identified that “a significant proportion of the samples selected for the compliance activity remained untested”, with untested items fluctuating month-to-month. The Auditor-General further noted that “it is unclear whether samples tested remain representative of underlying plan approval populations; and whether the samples tested reflect the stratified and risk-based sample selection”. Critically, the report concludes that where testing is not completed in accordance with program design, “there is a risk that the program does not efficiently and effectively control risks that the compliance program was designed to address.”

2.3.3

The same report identifies the absence of performance measures assessing the

effectiveness of early intervention supports for children, notwithstanding early intervention

being a core objective of the Scheme.

Auditor-General Report No. 25 (2024-25) further identifies a critical

omission in the NDIA’s performance framework. The Auditor-General

found that “there were no performance measures relating to the

effectiveness of early intervention supports for children”,

notwithstanding early intervention being a core objective of the Scheme.

In the absence of such measures, the NDIA cannot demonstrate whether

eye intervention decisions are achieving intended outcomes, nor assess

the impact of delayed or denied supports on children’s developmental

trajectories.

2.3.4

As a result, participants and families are required to justify supports, challenge

decisions and engage in review processes without the agency being able to demonstrate

whether its decisions are effective, lawful, or aligned with participant outcomes.

2.3.5

This creates a structural imbalance in which evidentiary burden is shifted onto [individuals], while systemic performance remains unmeasured.

2.4

Persistent Risk and Incomplete Remediation

2.4.1

Auditor-General Report No. 39 (2024-25) demonstrates that identified governance and assurance weaknesses are persistent rather than transitional, with agreed corrective actions frequently incomplete and interim controls becoming effectively permanent.

2.4.2

The NDIA is therefore operating in a known risk state, while compliance expectations continue to be enforced strictly on providers, participants, families and informal safeguarding actors.

2.4.3

This asymmetry reflects a structural issue rather than individual failure. Risk is acknowledged at system level but managed downstream, where individuals lack visibility of internal assurance failures and limited capacity to mitigate them.

2.5

Governance-Level Acceptance of Incomplete Assurance

2.5.1

Auditor-General Report No. 41 (2024-25) confirms that systemic assurance gaps extend to the highest levels of NDIA governance.

2.5.2

The Auditor-General found that compliance reporting to the Board is aggregated in a manner that limits visibility of control effectiveness and that senior executives advised the Board they could not provide full assurance over regulatory compliance.

2.5 Board-Level Awareness

2.5.1 Despite this advice, the Board continued to provide annual risk declarations without resolving those underlying gaps.

Auditor-General Report No. 41 (2024-25) confirms that senior executives advised the NDIA Board that they were unable to provide full assurance over regulatory compliance. Despite this advice, “the Board continued to provide annual risk declarations”. The Auditor-General further found that the Board did not obtain sufficient information to assess whether regulatory compliance risks were being effectively managed. These findings demonstrate Board-level awareness of incomplete assurance, notwithstanding the continuation of formal risk declarations.

2.5.2 The report also identifies insufficient Board scrutiny of participant outcomes, early intervention effectiveness and safeguarding impacts, indicating that financial and procedural considerations receive greater weight than lived participant experience.

2.5.3 These findings establish that governance weaknesses are known, documented and accepted at Board level, rather than being isolated operational anomalies.

2.6 Compliance, Fraud and Claim Management Failures

2.6.1 Auditor-General Report No. 48 (2024-25) finds that the NDIA’s management of claimant compliance with NDIS claim requirements is only “partly effective”, with significant gaps in prevention, detection and response systems.

2.6.2 The report identifies that only a very small proportion of claims are subject to manual pre-payment review, yet a majority of those reviewed are cancelled due to non-compliance.

2.6.3 The NDIA has acknowledged limitations in its ability to validate claims, fragmented data systems and inadequate analytics capability, with substantive system upgrades not expected to be fully operational until late 2025.

2.6.4 Despite this, the NDIA has not fully updated fraud and operational risk assessments to reflect these known weaknesses and performance reporting on compliance effectiveness remains inadequate.

2.6.5 The practical consequence is that compliance risk is identified late, corrected slowly and often disputed after funds have been spent, with impacts borne by participants and families.

2.7 Regulatory Failure and the Safeguards Gap

2.7.1 Auditor-General Report No. 2 (2025-26) finds that the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission is only partly effective in performing its regulatory functions.

2.7.2 The Commission lacks a fully established regulatory risk framework, does not consistently apply risk-responsive monitoring and has no quality assurance program to assess the effectiveness of its enforcement actions.

2.7.3 The report also confirms that the vast majority of active NDIS providers are unregistered and operate with minimal oversight, despite receiving a substantial proportion of Scheme payments.

2.7.4 As a result, early detection of harm is unreliable, complaints do not consistently result in protection and safeguarding functions are effectively displaced onto families and informal actors.

2.8 Structural Consequence

2.8.1 Across all Auditor-General reports reviewed, a consistent pattern emerges:

systemic weaknesses are identified;
risks are acknowledged;
remediation is partial, delayed, or prospective; and
downstream actors absorb the consequences.

2.8.2 This context is essential to understanding the issues addressed in the following sections. The challenges experienced by Support Coordinators, Child Representatives and child participants do not arise from individual behaviour or isolated error. They are the foreseeable and documented consequences of systemic fragility.

3. Implications for Support Coordination

3.1 Support Coordination as a De Facto Safeguarding Function

3.1.1 The Auditor-General’s reports reviewed for this submission collectively demonstrate that Support Coordination within the NDIS is operating in a context far beyond its nominal description as a service that “connects” participants to supports.

3.1.2 In practice, Support Coordinators are increasingly required to perform informal safeguarding, quality assurance and compliance correction functions in response to systemic deficiencies in plan approval, performance measurement, compliance oversight and regulatory enforcement.

3.1.3

This role expansion is not a matter of individual practice preference. It is a predictable response to documented system fragility, as identified repeatedly by the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO)

3.2 Reliance on Support Coordinators to Correct Plan and Decision Failures

3.2.1 Auditor-General Report No. 22 (2024-25) establishes that NDIA plan approval and quality assurance processes are not operating as designed, with a significant proportion of plans selected for compliance testing remaining untested.

3.2.2 Where internal assurance mechanisms fail to operate effectively, errors in plan content, funding allocation, or decision logic are not detected at source. Instead, they are identified only once plans are implemented, when participants attempt to access supports.

3.2.3 At that point, Support Coordinators are routinely required to:

identify inconsistencies or errors in plans;
explain and mitigate the consequences of those errors to participants and families;
engage in review, escalation, or corrective processes to stabilise supports; and
absorb the time, complexity and emotional labour associated with those processes.

3.2.4 This reliance on Support Coordinators as a corrective mechanism is further reinforced by findings in Auditor-General Report No. 25 (2024-25), which confirm that NDIA decisions are made in an environment where governance, data integrity and performance reporting systems cannot consistently evidence the quality or legality of decision-making.

3.2.5 In this context, Support Coordination functions as a secondary assurance layer, despite having no formal authority within the NDIA’s governance or compliance framework.

3.3 Compliance Monitoring and Claim Scrutiny Displaced Downstream

3.3.1 Auditor-General Report No. 48 (2024-25) provides particularly strong evidence that compliance risk management within the NDIS is structurally incomplete.

3.3.2 The report confirms that the NDIA’s management of claimant compliance is only partly effective, with limited pre-payment validation, fragmented data systems and inadequate performance measurement.

3.3.\x{fffd} The practical consequence of these deficiencies is that non-compliant claiming is frequently identified after funds have been spent, if it is identified at all.

3.3.4 In this environment, Support Coordinators are routinely required to:

scrutinise invoices and claims to identify potential non-compliance;
challenge providers regarding billing practices;
liaise with plan managers to halt or reverse incorrect payments; and

Operating Within a Known Risk Environment

3.4.1

Auditor-General Report No. 39 (2024-25) confirms that governance and assurance weaknesses within the NDIA are persistent rather than transitional, with known risks remaining unresolved over multiple reporting periods.

3.4.2

Support Coordinators therefore operate within a known risk environment, where system limitations are acknowledged at agency and governance levels, yet their consequences are managed at the point of service delivery.

3.4.3

Despite this, Support Coordinators are expected to:

operate efficiently within fixed funding limits;
ensure continuity of supports;
prevent misuse of funds; and
protect participant wellbeing, without visibility of internal assurance failures or systemic risk mitigation strategies.

3.4.4

This creates a fundamental asymmetry between responsibility and authority, in which Support Coordinators are expected to manage risks they did not create and cannot formally control.

3.5 Regulatory Gaps and the Expansion of Support Coordination Functions

3.5.1 Auditor-General Report No. 2 (2025-26) finds that the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission is only partly effective in performing its regulatory functions, with limited risk-based monitoring and no quality assurance over enforcement actions.

3.5.2 The report further confirms that the majority of active NDIS providers are unregistered and operate with minimal oversight, despite receiving a substantial proportion of Scheme payments.

3.5.3 In the absence of effective regulatory oversight, Support Coordinators are often the only actors positioned to:

identify unsafe or poor-quality service delivery;
recognise patterns of non-compliance or risk; and
intervene early to protect participants.

3.5.4 This situates Support Coordination as a front-line risk filter, compensating for regulatory gaps rather than operating solely as a coordination function.

3.6 Structural Implications

3.6.1 The cumulative effect of the issues identified above is that Support Coordination within the NDIS has evolved into an informal safeguarding role, created by system design rather than policy intent.

3.6.2 This role expansion:

is not formally recognised in governance or regulatory frameworks;
is not consistently resourced or protected; and
exposes Support Coordinators to disproportionate professional, ethical and emotional burden.

3.6.3 These implications are not confined to workforce experience. They directly affect participants and families, whose access to lawful, timely and safe supports increasingly depends on the capacity of individual Support Coordinators to compensate for systemic failure.

3.6.4 The following sections address how this displacement of responsibility impacts Child Representatives and child participants specifically.

4. Implications for Compliance and Safeguarding

4.1 Asymmetrical Compliance Expectations

4.1.1 The Auditor-General’s reports reviewed for this submission demonstrate a persistent asymmetry in how compliance obligations are imposed and enforced within the NDIS.

4.1 Inadequate Assurance

4.1.2 While participants, families, providers and informal actors such as Support Coordinators are expected to comply strictly with complex legislative, policy and administrative requirements, the agencies responsible for scheme administration and regulation operate within acknowledged environments of incomplete assurance, immature controls and unresolved risk.

4.1.3 This asymmetry is not incidental. It is structural and has been repeatedly identified by the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) across multiple reporting periods

4.2 Compliance Systems That Do Not Prevent Harm

4.2.1 Auditor-General Report No. 48 (2024-25) finds that the NDIA’s management of claimant compliance with NDIS claim requirements is only partly effective, with significant gaps in prevention, detection and response.

4.2.2 The report confirms that:

pre-payment validation of claims is extremely limited;
non-compliance is primarily identified post-payment, if at all; and
system and data limitations constrain effective detection and enforcement.

4.2.3 The fact that a high proportion of claims subject to manual review are cancelled due to non-compliance underscores the inadequacy of existing prevention controls.

Auditor-General Report No. 48 (2024-25) highlights the inadequacy of existing prevention controls within the NDIS claim compliance framework. The Auditor-General found that “by dollar value, over 50 per cent of claims reviewed pre-payment were cancelled in 2024”, despite the fact that “the number of manual pre-payment reviews conducted represented less than 0.1 per cent of the total number of NDIS claims paid during 2024”. These findings indicate that where pre-payment review occurs, non-compliance is frequently identified, underscoring that current prevention mechanisms are neither sufficiently comprehensive nor effective in preventing non-compliant claims from being paid.

4.2.4 Safeguarding frameworks that rely primarily on post-hoc detection do not prevent harm. They allow risk to materialise first and be addressed later, often after funding has been exhausted or services disrupted.

4.3 Safeguarding Is Displaced, Not Delivered

4.3.2 The report further establishes that the majority of active NDIS providers are unregistered and operate with minimal regulatory oversight, despite receiving a substantial proportion of Scheme payments.

4.3.3 In this context, safeguarding does not operate as a systemic function delivered by regulators. Instead, it is displaced onto informal actors, including participants, families and Support Coordinators.

4.3.4 These individuals are required to:

identify unsafe or poor-quality service delivery;
recognise patterns of non-compliance or risk;
escalate concerns through opaque or inconsistent processes; and
manage the consequences of delayed or ineffective regulatory response.

4.3.5 This displacement of safeguarding responsibility occurs without corresponding authority, protection, or access to regulatory information, creating a significant integrity gap within the Scheme.

4.4 Compliance Burden Without Visibility or Protection

4.4.1 Auditor-General Reports No. 22 and No. 39 (2024-25) confirm that internal NDIA assurance mechanisms are incomplete and that governance and control weaknesses remain unresolved over time.

4.4.2 Despite this, individuals operating downstream are expected to comply with decisions and processes as if those decisions were made within a fully controlled and reliable system.

4.4.3 Participants and families are not provided with visibility of internal assurance failures, unresolved audit findings, or system limitations affecting decision-making quality.

4.4.4 As a result, compliance obligations are enforced without transparency and safeguarding responsibility is exercised without protection.

4.4.5 This dynamic undermines procedural fairness and increases the likelihood that harm will go unrecognised or unaddressed until it becomes acute.

4.5 Compliance Performance Is Not Measured Against Safeguarding Outcomes

4.5.1 Auditor-General Report No. 25 (2024-25) identifies the absence of performance measures relating to fraud, non-compliance and early intervention effectiveness.

4.5.2 Without performance measures that assess whether compliance and regulatory activities actually reduce harm or protect participants, safeguarding cannot be meaningfully evaluated.

4.5.3 This creates a system in which:

compliance activity is reported, but effectiveness is unknown;
enforcement action is recorded, but outcomes are not measured; and
participants bear the consequences of failure without evidence that safeguards are improving.

Auditor-General reporting confirms that while compliance and regulatory activity is recorded, the effectiveness of those activities is not measured.

Auditor-General Report No. 25 (2024–25) found that “there were no performance measures relating to the effectiveness of early intervention supports for children”. Similarly, Auditor-General Report No. 48 (2024–25) found that “the NDIA does not have measures to assess the effectiveness of its claimant compliance activities in preventing or deterring non-compliance”. In the absence of outcome-based performance measures, enforcement activity may be undertaken without evidence that safeguards are improving, while participants continue to bear the consequences of system failure.

4.6 Cumulative Safeguarding Risk

4.6.1 Taken together, the Auditor-General’s findings demonstrate that safeguarding within the NDIS is not failing due to isolated errors or individual misconduct.

4.6.2 Rather, safeguarding risk arises from:

incomplete compliance prevention systems;
delayed detection of non-compliance;
limited regulatory oversight of a largely unregistered provider market;
governance-level acceptance of incomplete assurance; and
the displacement of responsibility onto informal actors.

4.6.3 This creates a system in which harm is foreseeable, recurrent and unevenly borne by those least equipped to absorb it.

4.7 Structural Consequence

4.7.1 Compliance and safeguarding within the NDIS currently operate as reactive mechanisms, rather than proactive protections.

Implications for Child Representatives

Child Representatives as Informal System Safeguards

5.1.1 The Auditor-General’s reports reviewed for this submission demonstrate that Child

Representatives within the NDIS operate in a system characterised by documented governance, compliance and regulatory weaknesses.

5.1.2 In this context, Child Representatives are not merely acting as advocates for a child’s

interests. They are routinely required to function as informal safeguards, compensating for deficiencies in system design, regulatory oversight and assurance mechanisms.

5.1.3 This role expansion is not formally acknowledged within NDIS governance or policy

frameworks, yet it is a predictable consequence of the structural failures identified by the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO).

Procedural Burden Without Corresponding Authority

5.2.1 Auditor-General Reports No. 22, No. 39 and No. 41 (2024-25) confirm that NDIA

plan approval, governance and assurance processes operate within environments of incomplete control and unresolved risk.

5.2.2 Despite this, Child Representatives are required to engage with decisions as if they were produced within a fully assured system and are held to expectations of timeliness,

collaboration and procedural compliance.

5.2.3 Child Representatives are therefore required to:

accept decisions that may later be shown to be flawed;
pursue review and escalation pathways to correct errors;
manage service disruption and instability while reviews are underway; and
absorb the emotional and administrative burden associated with repeated system failure.

5.2.4 These expectations are imposed without corresponding authority, access to internal

guarantee information, or transparency regarding unresolved audit findings.

5.2.5 This creates a fundamental imbalance between responsibility and power, in which

Child Representatives are expected to mitigate risks they did not create and cannot formally control.

5.3 Evidentiary Burden Shifted Onto Families

5.3.1 Auditor-General Report No. 25 (2024-25)

confirms that the NDIA lacks reliable performance measures relating to fraud, on-compliance and early intervention effectiveness.

5.3.2 In the absence of robust internal evidence, the burden of proof shifts outward. Child

Representatives are routinely required to:

gather and present evidence to justify supports;
demonstrate the necessity of early intervention;
rebut assumptions made in planning or review decisions; and
repeatedly re-establish the basis for supports previously agreed.

5.3.3 This evidentiary burden is not evenly distributed. It disproportionately affects families who:

are supporting children with complex or neurodivergent needs;
lack legal or administrative literacy; or do not have access to funded advocacy or specialist support.

5.3.4 The Auditor-General’s finding that early intervention outcomes for children are not measured at system level underscores the inequity of this burden.

Auditor-General Report No. 25 (2024–25) found that “there were no performance measures relating to the effectiveness of early intervention supports for children”. In the absence of system-level outcome measurement, responsibility for demonstrating the value, necessity and impact of early intervention is effectively displaced onto families and Child Representatives. This creates an inequitable burden, whereby individuals must repeatedly justify supports for children without access to evidence that the Scheme itself does not collect or analyse.

5.4 Exposure to Regulatory Gaps and Delayed Protection

5.4.1 Auditor-General Report No. 2 (2025-26)

finds that the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission is only partly effective in performing its regulatory functions, with limited risk-based monitoring and no quality assurance over enforcement actions.

5.4.2 As a result, Child Representatives are often required to identify and respond to risks before regulatory systems intervene, if they intervene at all.

5.4.3 Where concerns are escalated, Child Representatives may experience:

delayed responses;
inconsistent handling of complaints;
limited feedback on outcomes; and
uncertainty as to whether risks have been mitigated.

5.4.4 This regulatory gap places Child Representatives in an untenable position: expected

to ensure safety and continuity of supports, while operating within systems that cannot

reliably deliver timely protection.

5.5.1 Auditor-General Report No. 41 (2024-25) identifies that NDIA Board oversight of

compliance, risk and participant outcomes is weakened by aggregated reporting and

inconsistent scrutiny.

5.5.2 The Board was advised that full assurance over regulatory compliance could not be

provided, yet continued to issue risk declarations without resolving those gaps.

5.5.3 For Child Representatives, this means that decisions affecting children are made

within governance environments where known assurance limitations are accepted, but not

disclosed to families.

5.5.4 This lack of transparency undermines informed engagement and places additional

pressure on Child Representatives to identify and challenge issues without access to the

information necessary to do so effectively.

5.6 Structural Consequences for Child Representatives

5.6.1 Taken together, the Auditor-General’s findings demonstrate that Child

Representatives are being relied upon as unrecognised risk mitigators within the NDIS.

5.6.2 This reliance:

is not codified in policy or legislation;
is not supported by access to information or authority;
is not accompanied by procedural protections; and
exposes families to cumulative administrative and emotional strain.

5.6.3 The impact of this strain is not abstract. It affects the capacity of families to engage

sustainably with the Scheme and undermines confidence that the best interests of children are

being protected in practice.

6. Implications for Child Participants

6.1 Children as the Ultimate Risk-Bearers in a Fragile System

6.1.1 The Auditor-General’s reports reviewed for this submission make clear that systemic

weaknesses within the NDIS do not operate in the abstract. They have direct, foreseeable and

compounding consequences for child participants, who experience system failure not as

policy deficiency, but as instability in daily life.

6.1 Ineffective Governance Controls

6.1.2 Where governance, compliance and regulatory controls are incomplete or ineffective,

children become the ultimate risk-bearers. They absorb the consequences of delay, error and inconsistency at developmental stages where continuity and predictability are critical.

6.1.3 Unlike adult participants, children do not have the capacity to self-advocate,

self-navigate, or absorb disruption without impact. The burden of system failure therefore falls on children indirectly but decisively, through disruption to supports, routines and developmental progress.

6.2 Plan Instability and Developmental Harm

6.2.1 Auditor-General Reports No. 22 and No. 39 (2024-25) confirm that participant plan approval and assurance processes operate within environments of incomplete control and unresolved risk.

6.2.2 For child participants, this manifests as:

plans that require repeated correction or review;
delays in accessing approved supports;
interruptions to service continuity; and
uncertainty for families attempting to plan care, education and therapeutic intervention.

6.2.3 Children experience this instability during critical developmental windows, where missed or delayed supports cannot always be recovered through later intervention.

6.2.4 These impacts are not incidental. They are the predictable outcome of systems that permit error to persist until challenged, rather than preventing it at source.

6.3 Early Intervention Without Evidence of Effectiveness

6.3.1 Auditor-General Report No. 25 (2024-25) identifies a significant and troubling omission: the absence of performance measures assessing the effectiveness of early intervention supports for children.

6.3.2 This means that while families are required to repeatedly justify early intervention,

The Scheme itself does not measure whether early intervention is working, where it is effective, or how outcomes differ when supports are delayed.

6.3.3 The consequence is a system in which:

early intervention is rhetorically prioritised;
families bear the burden of proof; and
children experience delays without evidence-based accountability for the harm caused.

6.3.4

For children, delays in early intervention are not neutral administrative events. They have lasting implications for functional development, participation and long-term support needs.

6.4 Compliance Failure and Service Disruption

6.4.1

Auditor-General Report No. 48 (2024-25) confirms that NDIA compliance systems are only partly effective, with limited pre-payment validation and delayed detection of non-compliance.

6.4.2

For child participants, delayed compliance action often results in:

sudden provider withdrawal;
service suspension while disputes are resolved;
loss of funding already allocated to supports; and
emotional distress arising from disrupted relationships and routines.

6.4.3

Children do not experience compliance failure as a financial or administrative issue. They experience it as loss, confusion and disruption, often without explanation they can understand.

6.4.4

These consequences are rarely measured, tracked, or reported as participant outcomes, despite their significance to child wellbeing.

6.5 Regulatory Delay and Exposure to Harm

6.5.1

Auditor-General Report No. 2 (2025-26) finds that the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission is only partly effective as a regulator, with limited capacity for early detection of harm and no quality assurance over enforcement actions.

6.5.2

For child participants, regulatory delay increases exposure to:

unsafe or inappropriate service delivery;
prolonged engagement with unsuitable providers; and
repeated cycles of complaint and escalation without timely resolution.

6.5

6.5.3 Where regulatory systems do not intervene early, children remain exposed until a parent or caregiver identifies risk and acts, reinforcing reliance on informal safeguarding rather than systemic protection.

6.6 Children Experience System Failure as Instability, Not Policy

6.6.1 Across all reports reviewed, a consistent theme emerges: system weaknesses are known, documented and accepted as matters for future remediation.

6.6.2 For children, however, system failure is experienced in the present.

6.6.3 Children experience:

cancelled or delayed sessions;
changing providers; inconsistent support; highened stress within the household; and reduced opportunity to build trust, routine and skill.

6.6.4 These experiences compound over time, particularly for children with disability, whose capacity to tolerate disruption may already be limited.

6.7 Structural Injustice for Child Participants

6.7.1 The Auditor-General’s findings establish that current NDIS systems rely heavily on parental vigilance to prevent harm to children.

6.7.2 This reliance creates a structural injustice:

children with parents who can navigate complexity are better protected; children whose families lack time, capacity, or resources are more exposed; and outcomes depend on informal labour rather than consistent system safeguards.

6.7.3 A scheme designed to promote equity should not produce such uneven protection.

6.8 Summary of Impact on Child Participants

6.8.1 The combined effect of governance weakness, compliance failure and regulatory ineffectiveness is that child participants:

experience preventable instability; lose access to timely and consistent supports; bear the developmental cost of administrative delay; and rely on parents to perform safeguarding functions the system does not reliably deliver.

6.8.2

These impacts are not the result of individual error or isolated failure. They are the foreseeable consequence of a system operating with acknowledged fragility.

7. Cumulative Impact and Structural Risk

7.1 Systemic Failure as a Pattern, Not an Exception

7.1.1 The Auditor-General’s reports reviewed for this submission do not describe isolated deficiencies or transitional weaknesses. Taken together, they establish a pattern of systemic fragility across governance, compliance, performance measurement and regulatory oversight within the NDIS.

7.1.2 These weaknesses recur across multiple reporting periods, agencies and functional domains. They are acknowledged, documented and, in some cases, accepted as unresolved while remediation is deferred.

7.1.3 This persistence indicates that the risks identified are structural, not incidental.

7.2 Interlocking Failures Across the Scheme

7.2.1 The cumulative impact of the identified failures arises not from any single issue, but from the interaction of multiple deficiencies:

incomplete plan assurance processes;
absence of meaningful performance measurement;
ineffective compliance prevention mechanisms;
limited regulatory oversight of a predominantly unregistered provider market; and
governance-level acceptance of incomplete assurance.

7.2.2 Each of these weaknesses amplifies the others. Together, they produce a Scheme that relies on downstream correction rather than upstream prevention.

7.2.3 This interdependence means that remedial action in one area, without corresponding reform in others, is unlikely to materially reduce risk.

7.3 Displacement of Risk and Responsibility

7.3.1 Across all sections of this submission, a consistent structural outcome is evident: risk and responsibility are displaced away from system owners and onto individuals.

7.3.2 Support Coordinators are required to function as informal compliance officers and safeguards.

7.3.3 Child Representatives are required to absorb evidentiary, procedural and emotional burdens to secure basic continuity of supports.

7.3

Disruption and Instability

7.3.4 Children bear the developmental and psychological cost of instability, delay and disruption.

7.3.5 This displacement occurs without formal recognition, authority, transparency, or protection.

7.4 Erosion of Safeguarding Integrity

7.4.1 Safeguarding within the NDIS is undermined not because safeguarding is absent, but because it is reactive, fragmented and informal.

7.4.2 Compliance systems identify risk after harm has occurred.

7.4.3 Regulatory systems intervene late, inconsistently, or not at all.

7.4.4 Governance systems lack the visibility required to assess whether safeguards are effective.

7.4.5 The result is a Scheme in which safeguarding exists in theory, but is delivered in practice by those least equipped to sustain it.

7.5 Inequitable Outcomes as a Structural Feature

7.5.1 The cumulative impact of these failures produces inequitable outcomes for participants.

7.5.2 Families with capacity, time, administrative literacy and professional support are better able to compensate for system deficiencies.

7.5.3 Families without those resources are more exposed to harm, delay and instability.

7.5.4 Children’s outcomes therefore depend not only on their needs, but on their family’s ability to navigate complexity.

7.5.5 This outcome is inconsistent with the foundational equity objectives of the NDIS.

7.6 Loss of Trust and System Credibility

7.6.1 Repeated exposure to plan instability, delayed compliance action and ineffective regulatory protection erodes trust in the Scheme.

7.6.2 For families, trust is not eroded by a single adverse decision, but by recurrent experiences of having to correct, contest, or compensate for system failure.

7.6.3 Loss of trust has tangible consequences, including disengagement, reduced participation and increased adversarial interaction with the Scheme.

7.6.4 These consequences further strain already fragile systems.

7.7 Structural Risk to Scheme Sustainability

7.7.1 The NDIS is increasingly reliant on informal labour to function safely and lawfully.

7.7.2 This reliance is unsustainable.

7.7

7.7.3

Support Coordinators, families and Child Representatives cannot indefinitely absorb safeguarding and compliance responsibilities without burnout, withdrawal, or error.

7.7.4

As informal safeguards fail, risk will escalate rather than diminish.

7.7.5

Without structural reform, the issues identified in this submission will continue to compound.

7.8

7.8.1

The cumulative impact of the Auditor-General’s findings demonstrates that:

system fragility is known and persistent;
safeguarding is displaced rather than delivered;
responsibility is imposed without authority; and
children bear disproportionate harm.

7.8.2

These outcomes are not accidental. They are the predictable result of governance, compliance and regulatory systems operating below the threshold required to protect the most vulnerable participants.

8. Recommendations

8.1

Restore Upstream Assurance in Plan Decision-Making

8.1.1

The Committee should recommend that the NDIA be required to implement and publicly report on fully operational plan assurance mechanisms, including:

completion of all planned quality assurance testing of participant plans;
transparent reporting on assurance coverage and outcomes; and
independent verification that plan decisions comply with legislative and policy requirements.

8.1.2

Until assurance mechanisms are demonstrably effective, downstream actors should not bear the consequences of plan errors.

8.2

Introduce Performance Measures Linked to Safeguarding Outcomes

8.2.1

The Committee should recommend the development and publication of performance measures that assess safeguarding effectiveness, not merely activity.

8.2.2

These measures should include, at minimum:

effectiveness of fraud and non-compliance prevention;
timeliness of regulatory intervention; and
outcomes of early intervention supports for children.

8.2.3

Without outcome-linked measures, compliance and safeguarding cannot be meaningfully evaluated.

8.3 Rebalance Compliance Responsibility and Authority

8.3.2 In particular, where Support Coordinators and families are relied upon to identify compliance risk or safeguarding concerns, they should be:

formally recognised within governance frameworks;
provided with clear escalation pathways; and
protected from adverse consequences arising from good-faith compliance action.

Monitoring of Child-Specific Impacts Arising from Administrative Delay or Error

Address Structural Reliance on Informal Safeguards

8.7.1

The Committee should acknowledge that the NDIS currently relies heavily on informal labour to function safely.

8.7.2

The Committee should recommend reforms to ensure that safeguarding, compliance and risk management are delivered systemically, rather than being displaced onto individuals without authority or protection.

Ongoing Parliamentary Oversight

8.8.1

Given the persistence of identified risks across multiple reporting periods, the Committee should consider recommending:

regular follow-up reporting on implementation of Auditor-General recommendations; and
continued parliamentary oversight of safeguarding outcomes for children within the NDIS.

Closing Statement

8.9.1

The Auditor-General’s findings demonstrate that the issues addressed in this submission are known, documented and unresolved.

8.9.2

This submission has sought to show that these failures produce real and disproportionate consequences for child participants and their families.

8.9.3

Without structural reform, the burden of safeguarding will continue to fall on those least equipped to carry it.