National Ethnic Disability Alliance
Hardwick House Unit 1, 6 Phipps Close
Deakin, ACT 2600
Submission to the Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme
Inquiry into the Integrity of the National Disability Insurance Scheme
Submitted to: The Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme Parliament House Canberra, ACT 2600
Publishing information:
National Ethnic Disability Alliance (NEDA) Submission to the Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme
© National Ethnic Disability Alliance, April 2026
© This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced without written permission from the National Ethnic Disability Alliance (NEDA). All possible care has been taken in the preparation of the information contained in this document. NEDA disclaims any liability for the accuracy and sufficiency of the information and under no circumstances shall be liable in negligence or otherwise in or arising out of the preparation or supply of any of the information aforesaid.
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About NEDA
The National Ethnic Disability Alliance (NEDA) is Australia’s national peak body representing people with disability from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds, their families and carers. NEDA holds Disability Representative Organisation (DRO) status and UN ECOSOC consultative status. We are governed by a Board with a majority of people with disability and have member organisations in every state and territory. NEDA advocates federally for the human rights, inclusion and equitable access of CALD people with disability across all aspects of Australian life.
Executive Summary
NEDA welcomes the opportunity to contribute to this inquiry and commends the Committee for examining scheme integrity in a way that centres participant experience. Scheme integrity, which includes the protection of participants from fraud, sharp practices and non-compliance, is not a uniform challenge. For participants from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, structural, institutional and ideational factors interact with compounding disadvantage in ways that increase vulnerability to exploitation and simultaneously reduce access to the safeguards and redress mechanisms designed to respond to it.
NEDA’s submission is grounded in the social model of disability, which locates barriers to participation in systems and structures rather than in individual impairment (Oliver, 1990), and in the rights framework of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), which obliges Australia to ensure equal recognition before the law, access to justice, and freedom from exploitation for all people with disability without discrimination (UN, 2006, Articles 5, 12, 13 and 16).
We offer this submission constructively. Our recommendations are designed to strengthen a scheme that NEDA supports and wants to see succeed for all participants.
(a): The nature and extent of non-compliance, including fraud and sharp practices
The social model of disability asks us to locate the problem not in the participant but in the system (Oliver, 1990). Applied to scheme integrity, this means recognising that CALD participants’ vulnerability to sharp practices is not a product of individual incapacity but of institutional arrangements that create conditions for exploitation while limiting the ability to recognise and report it.
Gratuitous concurrence and the limits of apparent consent
In 2024, NEDA commissioned RMIT University to conduct a national study of interpreters and translators working in NDIS settings with clients from CALD
backgrounds, a mixed-methods study involving 162 survey respondents and 19 in-depth interviews (Lai, García-Caro and Zhang, 2024). Interpreters working in these settings consistently observed a communication dynamic directly relevant to scheme integrity: gratuitous concurrence. This is the pattern, documented in Australian research contexts, where people from certain cultural backgrounds express apparent agreement by nodding, saying yes, not because they have understood or consented, but because agreement is the culturally safest response in a situation of perceived authority (Eades, 2016; Gray, 2022).
Interpreters reported observing clients from CALD backgrounds appearing to agree to service arrangements and plan discussions when, in the interpreters’ professional judgement, genuine comprehension had not occurred (Lai, García-Caro and Zhang, 2024). This has direct relevance to how sharp practices may operate in CALD settings. A provider engaging in high pressure sales, unnecessary service delivery, or misrepresentation of entitlements does not need to overcome explicit resistance from a participant from CALD background where these cultural and communicative dynamics are present. The UNCRPD is clear that equal recognition before the law and legal capacity require that consent be genuinely free and informed, with appropriate support (UN, 2006, Article 12). An integrity framework that does not account for the difference between apparent consent and genuine informed agreement in culturally and linguistically diverse contexts does not fully meet this standard.
Language accessibility of scheme communications
The RMIT study found that NDIS terminology frequently has no equivalent in community languages, or translates with completely different and sometimes alarming connotations (Lai, García-Caro and Zhang, 2024). Interpreters described having to coin new terms, paraphrase extensively, or leave terms untranslated because direct equivalents did not exist or carried inappropriate meanings in the target language.
NEDA notes that the NDIS plan documents and communications are not always written with translation in mind, using English-specific discourse, abbreviations that cannot be replicated in non-Latin scripts, and framing that assumes cultural familiarity not shared across the scheme’s diverse participant population (NEDA, 2026). In NEDA’s community experience, this creates conditions where participants may be engaging with service and plan arrangements without genuinely understanding the terms: a foundational precondition for sharp practices.
Community-based provider relationships
NEDA notes from its community engagement that participants from CALD backgrounds may be more likely to engage with providers from within their own cultural or linguistic community, drawn by the genuine benefits of cultural familiarity and shared language. While this often reflects excellent and appropriate community-led care, it can in some
circumstances create conditions where community authority or trust is leveraged inappropriately, and where participants have limited capacity to seek independent advisor. NEDA does not suggest community-based providers are inherently problematic; to the contrary, they often deliver the most culturally responsive care available. We note only that the integrity framework should be attentive to risks across all provider contexts, including culturally specific ones.
b): The impacts of non-compliance on NDIS participants and their families
Compounded harm for CALD participants
The impacts of non-compliance and sharp practices on NDIS participants, which include among others financial loss, reduced access to needed supports, psychological harm and erosion of trust are well documented. For participants from CALD backgrounds, these harms interact with existing structural disadvantage in ways that compound their severity. Where plan funds are exhausted through over-servicing or misappropriation, participants from CALD backgrounds face greater difficulty navigating the variation and review processes that would restore appropriate funding. NEDA notes that review, variation and complaint pathways are not meaningfully accessible to participants with limited English proficiency: they are not proactively communicated in community languages, require English literacy and bureaucratic confidence, and assume a level of scheme knowledge that many families from CALD backgrounds have not had the opportunity to develop (NEDA, 2026).
The UNCRPD’s requirement that people with disability have access to justice on an equal basis with others, including through procedural accommodations (UN, 2006, Article 13), is not met when redress mechanisms are practically inaccessible to a significant portion of the participant population. In many CALD households, one family member (often a carer) carries the entirety of the family’s interaction with the NDIS, frequently across a language barrier and without independent support.
The RMIT study documented the exhausting role of family members and carers in mediating between clients from CALD backgrounds and NDIS processes, and the additional burden that poor communication, system complexity and inadequate language support places on families already managing significant caring responsibilities (Lai, García-Caro and Zhang, 2024). Where that person has been subject to sharp practices, the consequences extend across the family system. For communities already significantly underrepresented in the NDIS at around 9% of participants against 22.5% of Australians who speak a language other than English at home (ABS, 2021; NDIA, 2025), this chilling effect on engagement has consequences that extend well beyond individual cases.
The UNCRPD framework
The UNCRPD requires that appropriate measures are taken to protect persons with disability from exploitation, violence and abuse, including by ensuring that protection services are gender and disability-sensitive and accessible to the full diversity of the disability population (UN, 2006, Article 16). NEDA submits that this obligation must extend to protection in service delivery contexts (including sharp practices) and that meeting it requires culturally and linguistically appropriate protective measures, not only the availability of English-language mechanisms that participants from CALD backgrounds cannot always practically access.
Underreporting means the scale of harm is not fully understood
The true extent of non-compliance and sharp practices affecting participants from CALD backgrounds is likely substantially greater than what official data reflects. Interpreters working in NDIS settings observed that clients from CALD backgrounds, particularly those from refugee or humanitarian backgrounds, were reluctant to share sensitive information with government officials, in some cases drawing on prior experiences of authority in countries of origin (Lai, García-Caro and Zhang, 2024). Cultural stigma may mean that being identified as a victim of exploitation is experienced as shaming within a community. Complaint processes require English literacy and trust in official channels that present practical barriers for many participants from CALD backgrounds. An integrity framework calibrated to reported incidents will tend to underinvest in the CALD population. Absence of data does not reflect absence of harm, it reflects the absence of accessible reporting infrastructure and the invisibility that flows from it.
c): The effectiveness and adequacy of successive government policies to improve
scheme integrity, safeguard participants, and tackle non-compliance
The structural gap in the current integrity framework
The current integrity framework, including the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission’s provider registration requirements, behaviour support frameworks, incident reporting obligations and complaints mechanisms, was designed for a generalised participant population. It does not include CALD-specific provisions in its core instruments. There are no minimum language accessibility standards for service agreements. There is no requirement for providers working with participants from CALD backgrounds to demonstrate cultural competency. There is no CALD-disaggregated reporting on complaints, incidents or compliance actions, meaning the Commission cannot readily identify whether CALD participants are disproportionately affected by non-compliance or whether enforcement is reaching them.
This is not a criticism of the Commission’s intentions, which NEDA recognises as genuinely participant-centred. It is a structural observation. The founding architecture of the scheme embedded assumptions about participant communication, consent and
complaint behaviour that did not account for cultural and linguistic diversity and, consistent with the new institutionalist concept of path dependence (Pierson, 2000), these assumptions have been reproduced across successive iterations of the integrity framework rather than deliberately examined and revised.
The NDIS Cultural and Linguistic Diversity Strategy and Action Plan 2024-2028 represents a meaningful and welcome commitment, and NEDA acknowledges its role in contributing to its development through the External Advisory Group (NDIA, 2024). However, as an operational strategy rather than a legislative or regulatory instrument, its provisions are not binding on providers and do not create enforceable participant rights.
NEDA submits respectfully that the gap between the CALD Strategy’s aspirations and the enforceable edge of the integrity framework is where participants from CALD backgrounds remain most exposed.
Accessibility of complaint mechanisms
The Commission’s complaint mechanism (the primary participant-facing channel for reporting non-compliance and sharp practices) presents significant practical accessibility barriers for participants with limited English proficiency. While TIS National interpretation services are technically available, accessing them requires a level of English literacy and scheme knowledge that creates a meaningful barrier in practice. Interpreters working in NDIS settings observed limited awareness among clients from CALD backgrounds of their rights within the scheme and reluctance to raise concerns with officials they perceived as government authorities (Lai, García-Caro and Zhang, 2024). The UNCRPD’s access to justice obligation, requiring procedural accommodations and appropriate support for all people with disability (UN, 2006, Article 13), suggests that proactive, culturally responsive outreach is necessary, rather than reliance on participants navigating English-language systems to access their rights.
d): Legislative or other reforms required to strengthen scheme integrity
NEDA offers the following recommendations constructively, designed to strengthen the integrity framework so that it reaches every participant.
RECOMMENDATION 1: CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE PROVIDER STANDARDS
Provider registration standards should include minimum cultural competency requirements for providers whose client base includes participants from CALD backgrounds, with compliance assessed as part of registration and renewal.
RECOMMENDATION 2: MEANINGFUL INFORMED CONSENT
Guidance should be developed on what constitutes genuine informed consent in culturally and linguistically diverse contexts, including recognition of gratuitous concurrence as a documented barrier to genuine agreement (Lai, García-Caro and Zhang, 2024; Eades, 2016; Gray, 2022). Service agreement processes should incorporate language support and plain language as standard practice for participants from CALD backgrounds, not optional accommodations.
RECOMMENDATION 3: CALD-DISAGGREGATED INTEGRITY DATA
The Commission should collect, publish and act on CALD-disaggregated data across complaint, incident and compliance action categories. This data should be reviewed by a CALD advisory body with the authority to recommend targeted enforcement and systemic responses and would provide the baseline currently missing for any meaningful equity assessment.
RECOMMENDATION 4: COMMUNITY OUTREACH FOR RIGHTS AWARENESS
The Commission should establish a proactive CALD community outreach function, delivered in partnership with CALD disability representative organisations and multicultural organisations to inform participants from CALD backgrounds of their rights and the complaint process in community languages and through trusted community channels.
RECOMMENDATION 5: EXPLICIT RECOGNITION OF CULTURAL EXPLOITATION RISK
The definition of sharp practices in the Commission’s framework should be clarified to explicitly include misappropriation of language barriers and cultural communication dynamics, and situations where apparent consent was obtained without genuine informed agreement due to the absence of appropriate language support.
RECOMMENDATION 6: PROACTIVE COMPLIANCE FUNCTION
A CALD-focused stream within the Commission’s proactive compliance function should be considered, with dedicated resourcing and public reporting, recognising that communities less likely to self-report benefit most from proactive rather than complaint-driven enforcement.
RECOMMENDATION 7: COMMUNITY-LED RESEARCH
Independent research must be commissioned that is community-led documenting the nature and prevalence of sharp practices and non-compliance affecting CALD NDIS participants, conducted in partnership with CALD representative organisations, researchers with lived experience. This would address the underreporting that currently limits understanding of the scale of harm.
Conclusion
Strengthening scheme integrity for all participants requires attention to the structural conditions that make some participants more vulnerable than others and less able to seek redress. For people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, those conditions remain under researched and under documented but are well-understood in the longstanding advocacy of CALD disability organisations across Australia.
NEDA welcomes the opportunity to engage further with the Committee and to provide additional evidence or community perspectives as the inquiry proceeds.
References:
ABS (2021) Census of Population and Housing: Cultural Diversity. Australian Bureau of Statistics, Canberra.
Eades, D. (2016, March). Judicial understandings of Aboriginality and language use. In The Judicial Review: Selected Conference Papers: Journal of the Judicial Commission of New South Wales (Vol. 12, No. 4, pp. 471-490). Sydney: Judicial Commission of NSW.
Lai, C. H. M., García-Caro Alcázar, O., & Zhang, E. (2024). Perceptions of Interlingual Communication Challenges in NDIS Service Settings with CALD Clients: A Study of Interpreting/Translating Practitioners.
National Disability Insurance Agency (2024) NDIS Cultural and Linguistic Diversity Strategy and Action Plan 2024-2028
Oliver, M. (1990). The politics of disablement - New social movements. In The politics of disablement (pp. 112-131). London: Macmillan Education UK.
Pierson, P. (2000) Increasing returns, path dependence, and the study of politics
United Nations. (2006). Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities