Submission to the Inquiry into the Integrity of the National
24 April 2026
About the Justice and Equity Centre
The Justice and Equity Centre is a leading, independent law and policy centre. Established in 1982 as the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC), we work with people and communities who are experiencing marginalisation or disadvantage.
The Centre tackles injustice and inequality through:
- legal advice and representation, specialising in test cases and strategic casework;
- research, analysis and policy development; and
- advocacy for systems change to deliver social justice.
We actively collaborate and partner in our work and focus on finding practical solutions. We work across five focus areas:
Disability rights: challenging discrimination and making the NDIS fairer to ensure people with disability can participate equally in economic, social, cultural and political life.
Justice for First Nations people: challenging the systems that are causing ongoing harm to First Nations people, including through reforming the child protection system, tackling discriminatory policing and supporting truth-telling.
Homelessness: reducing homelessness and defending the rights of people experiencing homelessness through the Homeless Persons’ Legal Service and StreetCare’s lived experience advocacy.
Civil rights: defending the rights of people in prisons and detention, including asylum seekers, modernising legal protection against discrimination, raising the age of criminal responsibility to 14, advancing LGBTIQA+ equality and advocating for open and accountable government.
Energy and water justice: working for affordable and sustainable energy and water and promoting a just transition to a zero-carbon energy system.
Contact
Mitchell Skipsey The Justice and Equity Centre Level 5, 175 Liverpool St Sydney NSW 2000
T: redacted
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Website: www.jec.org.au
The Justice and Equity Centre office is located on the land of the Gadigal of the Eora Nation.
1. Introduction
Since July 2019, the Justice and Equity Centre (‘JEC’) has used our legal and policy expertise to advocate for better outcomes under the National Disability Insurance Scheme (‘NDIS’) for people with disability. We do this in close consultation with disability representative organisations (‘DROs’), as well as legal and advocacy groups with similar expertise and reform concerns.
As outlined in Annexure A, this submission has been endorsed by a number of organisations representing people with disability and lawyers acting for people with disability.
The NDIS has transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people with disability, enabling people to live with independence and dignity. By providing individualised, needs-based supports underpinned by choice and control, the NDIS allows many participants to engage in education, employment, family and community life to a degree that was previously unattainable. These benefits extend beyond individual participants, strengthening families and carers, supporting workforce participation, reducing reliance on other systems, and contributing to broader social and economic inclusion.
It is of course crucial that the NDIS maintains integrity and addresses legitimate concerns about fraud and misuse of NDIS funds. In our experience, nobody is more concerned with the ongoing success of the NDIS, and preventing it from being undermined by malign actors and fraudulent practices, than the disability community and their representative organisations. Where funds are misappropriated, it is ultimately people with disability who suffer the consequences of the loss of resources intended to support them, and the undermining of public trust in the NDIS. However, protecting the integrity of the NDIS is not solely a matter of preventing fraud or sharp practices, but of ensuring that safeguards and compliance mechanisms support rather than erode the Scheme’s core objectives of choice, control, and supporting people to live full lives.
The JEC has heard growing concerns among the disability community about measures taken by the NDIA in the name of fraud prevention that ultimately restrict NDIS participants’ choice and control, or reduce supports that would otherwise be available to them. In particular, since 2023 – as concern with ‘rorts’ and ‘fraud’ have become an increasing part of political and media narratives around the NDIS – a series of reforms have been enacted, on the stated basis of fraud prevention, with the primary effect of constraining the way participants receive or utilise funding in their plans.1 Many of these changes, explicitly justified on the basis of preventing fraud and misuse of NDIS funds, were introduced by the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Getting the NDIS Back on Track No. 1) Act 2024 (Cth) (‘the 2024 Act’).2
1 This pattern has raised suspicions in the community that the stated fraud-based rationale is merely invoked to provide cover for shaping a less generous NDIS. These suspicions are particularly fed by the knowledge that government received messaging advice to the effect that the community is more willing to accept overhauls to NDIS mechanisms where these are presented as aimed at fraud-prevention, as opposed to other potential rationales – Rick Morton, ‘NDIS media strategy briefing given before review finished’, The Saturday Paper (27 July 2024), available https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2024/07/27/ndis-media-strategy- briefing-given-before-review-finished 2 For examples of these justifications, see then-Minister Shorten’s second reading speech introducing the legislation - Commonwealth, Parliamentary Debates, House of Representatives, 5 June 2024, 3747-3750 (Bill Shorten, Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme).
These reforms have had substantial, and often adverse, impacts on NDIS participants. We highlight in this submission several such measures which have had negative impacts on participants without clear evidence of their impacts on preventing fraud.
We encourage the Committee to interrogate the effectiveness of these policies having regard to the costs to participants – in terms of limiting access to necessary supports, increasing compliance burdens on participants, and denying choice and control. We are not aware of any detailed publicly available evidence released by government demonstrating the fraud-reduction impact of these policies. We encourage the Committee to seek this information from government, including data on the effectiveness of existing measures, and modelling of the impact of intended or anticipated reforms that aim to address non-compliance with Scheme rules.
It is critical, to ensure public confidence in the NDIS and the Government’s ongoing reform program, that claims about fraud reduction are tested, substantiated, and the underlying policies subject to careful weighing and deliberation by Parliament.
2. Policies implemented on the basis of fraud and non-
compliance
2.1 Funding periods
Funding periods were introduced by the 2024 Act and implemented for participants pursuant to the National Disability Insurance Scheme (Old Framework Plans) Determination 2024 (Cth).3 Funding periods break up the funding in a participants plan such that it can only be accessed in stages in line with the amount allocated to each period. The determination refers to funding periods being set with consideration of prevention of fraud or non-compliance with spending requirements, in line with the other measures of the 2024 Act aimed at fraud prevention.
However, funding periods are ultimately a constraint on participants’ use of their plan funds, imposing a temporal limitation on their spending. This poses significant problems for people with inconsistent or fluctuating disability needs, or in responding to unexpected costs or emergencies. There are serious concerns within the disability community about participants receiving plans with funding periods set effectively on a ‘default’ three-month basis for most supports, without proper consideration of the individual factors affecting the participant’s needs. This ‘default’ approach exacerbates the above concerns.4
3 Specifically, see s 7. 4 We note the Committee’s comments in its recent annual report that:
> ‘The committee encourages the NDIA to apply funding periods for a maximum period of 12 months as the
> default position, in accordance with the NDIS Act. Shorter, flexible funding periods should only be applied
> where the evidence supports this decision, does not put the participant at risk, and allows for improved
> participant budgeting.’ – Joint Standing Committee on the NDIS, Parliament of Australia, Annual Report
> No. 1 of the 48th Parliament (Final Report, 11 March 2026) 109 [7.31].
We are not aware of any shift in NDIA practice in response to that recommendation.
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It is not clear whether, how, or to what extent funding periods achieve fraud prevention. Similarly, we are not aware of any data or reporting to support and quantify other potential benefits of funding periods to participants, or the Scheme more generally. The significant downsides of constraining choice and control, and potentially failing to allow people to access supports when they need them must be considered in evaluating the effectivenss of this measure.
2.2 ‘NDIS supports’ definition
The listing of ‘NDIS supports’, which limits the items, therapies and services which participants can have funded by the Scheme, has been regularly justified by reference to fraud and scam prevention. In introducing the current lists, then-Minister for the NDIS, Bill Shorten, said ‘the lack of clarity has led to some scams, rorts, non-evidence-based therapies and the exploitation of participants’.5 Some public reporting has focused on the lists being necessary to prevent spending on items like holidays, groceries and luxury goods, where these are invoked as examples of misuse of NDIS funding.
While specification of NDIS supports plays an important role in the current Scheme and will take on greater importance for new framework planning, it is vital the lists of permissible supports be drafted as permissively as possible. An overly restrictive approach prevents participants from accessing the supports they need, or meeting their disability needs. To the extent the current NDIS supports lists have been developed to exclude items seen as posing fraud risks, these exclusions require specific and careful justification.
Where the lists have now been in place for around 18 months, sufficient data should be available to show where certain exclusions have prevented fraud that might have previously occurred. Where this data is not available, and the exclusions do not serve some other identifiable policy purpose, the lists should be revised accordingly.
2.3 Debt raising framework
The 2024 Act introduced a framework for raising debts against participants and others responsible for impermissible spending of NDIS plan amounts, with the self-evident object of addressing fraud and misuse of NDIS funding. However, as we have identified previously, this framework does not provide a means for participants or others to challenge a debt raised against them incorrectly.6
As well as presenting a practical injustice for those affected, we have heard from participants and their supporters who describe the chilling effects of these provisions, making them reluctant to spend plan funding even on things they believe are permissible out of concern the NDIA may – correctly or otherwise – consider the spending inappropriate and raise a debt against them.
5 Nas Campanella and Evan Young, ‘Bill Shorten responds to concerns around NDIS changes and defends handling of support list’, ABC News [online] (3 October 2024), https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-03/bill- shorten-defends-ndis-changes/104422544. 6 See Justice and Equity Centre, Submission No 19 to Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs (Legislation), National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Getting the NDIS Back on Track No. 1) Bill 2024 (10 July 2024), 5.
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There should be robust evidence of fraud-deterrent effect in order to justify such a unilateral and unchallengeable debt-raising power and yet we are not aware of evidence demonstrating such an effect.
2.4 New framework constraints on spending
Within the 2024 Act, and the proposed instruments for implementation of new framework planning as released for consultation earlier this year, a very large number of measures that restrict participants’ choices permit or require the NDIA to consider preventing non-compliant spending as a basis for their invocation. These include:
- approval of statements of participant supports;7
- imposing restrictions on a participant’s flexible funding;8
- refusing a participant’s self-management request;9
- varying a participant’s plan;10 and
- imposing a requirement that supports be provided by a specified person or persons in a specified class.11
Each of the above measures operate to refuse a participant freedom, or deny them choice, on the basis of the need to prevent fraud. They give the NDIA substantial scope to restrict funding and limit how supports are provided. Such measures can clearly negatively impact individual participants, and the simple fact of their existence can instil fear within the disability community. Government should be transparent about where these measures have been used and, for those powers that are yet to come into effect, their projected future use, in preventing fraud so that their value can be weighed against the negative impacts they can have on participants.
3. Conclusion
The concerns raised above are not exhaustive, but demonstrate the ongoing erosion of the rights and abilities of NDIS participants to access the supports they need in the way they would like. This is occurring under the guise of preventing fraud and avoid ‘rorts’ in the NDIS. This inquiry provides an opportunity to carefully weigh the costs and benefits of these measures.
Generalised invocations of fraud are not sufficient basis for measures that restrict participants rights, without evidence of those measures’ effectiveness. On the contrary, relying on such concerns without substantiation can undermine public trust in the administration of the NDIS. If fraud is to be meaningfully addressed, it must be grounded in evidence-based solutions, that return participants to the centre of the Scheme while preserving their choice and control.
7 ss 32D(6)(e), 33(6)(g) 8 s 32F(7)(b) 9 s 44(1)(c) 10 ss 47A(2A)(e) and (3)(g) 11 Materials released pursuant to consultation; see Australian Government Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, NDIS rules: Public consultation on new framework planning, (23 January 2026), available https://consultations.health.gov.au/ndis/nfp-public-consultation/, supporting resource ‘Explanatory document – New framework plan spending rules’.
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Annexure A – Endorsements
This submission has been endorsed by the following organisations:
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People with Disability Australia (PWDA)
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Australian Federation of Disability Organisations (AFDO)
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Children and Young People with Disability Australia (CYDA)
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Inclusion Australia (IA)
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National Ethnic Disability Alliance (NEDA)
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Australian Autism Alliance
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Every Australian Counts (EAC)
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National Legal Aid
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