National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Integrity and Safeguarding) Bill 2025
PO Box 87 Grange QLD 4051 | Ph: | Email:
6 February 2026
Committee Secretary Senate Standing Committees on Community Affairs PO Box 6100 Parliament House Canberra ACT 2600
Via web portal
Dear Committee Secretary
Submission: National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Integrity and Safeguarding) Bill 2025
Thank you for the opportunity to provide submissions on the above bill (‘Bill’) before the Standing Committee. This Bill would have significant effects on the National Disability Insurance Scheme (‘NDIS’) and the National Disability Insurance Scheme Act 2013 (‘Act’).
About Intrepidus Law
Intrepidus Law is Australia’s foremost NDIS and disability rights law firm. The Principal and Founder of Intrepidus Law is Belinda Kochanowska, who was awarded the prestigious Queensland Law Society Solicitor of the Year Award in 2025 and was a finalist of the 2025 Australian Human Rights Commission Law Award. Intrepidus Law has a practice focus on providing legal representation in NDIS appeals at the Administrative Review Tribunal and providing expert legal advice on NDIS law. Intrepidus Law is a private legal practice committed to reinvesting in our community through pro bono systemic advocacy.
Executive summary
The NDIS landscape is already renowned for its complexity and uneven, unpredictable enforcement. It is also a landscape in which people with disability face serious abuse, neglect and exploitation. All of these issues need addressing. While the Bill demonstrates an intention to address some of these issues, we submit that many of its amendments would likely not do so or exacerbate these serious problems. Lawmakers should return to the Scheme’s foundational principles in designing its reform.
The Bill seeks to deter misconduct by increasing penalties even higher than they already are. We submit that any deterrence gains are likely to be minimal and may create unfavourable off-target effects. The Bill would also introduce strict liability offences to an enforcement landscape not designed for them, risking miscarriages of justice and pushing providers out of the market.
Severity of New Penalties
Schedule 1 part 2 of the Bill substantially increases penalties across the NDIS landscape. Several criminal offences and civil penalty provisions attract a maximum sentence of 10,000 penalty units ($3,300,000) and up to 5 years imprisonment, if committed to the new standard of a ‘significant failure’ or ‘serious contravention’. There are serious civil penalties of up to 500 penalty units ($165,000) for behaviour not a ‘significant failure’ or ‘serious contravention’ and not prosecuted criminally.
The explanatory memorandum identifies the purpose of the increased penalties is to deter wrongdoing. Particularly, (1) to prevent serious abuse, neglect and exploitation of participants, and (2) to rebalance market incentives ‘to ensure a penalty cannot be considered an acceptable cost of doing business.’
There is well-established criminological literature that increasing penalties has diminishing returns on deterrence. Despite how important preventing misconduct is, the penalties in the Act as it stands are already high enough to make it doubtful that any further increase to those penalties will better protect participants or the Scheme’s integrity.
The explanatory memorandum suggests there might be persons currently performing supports which require registration, but opting to do so unregistered, as the current $82,500 penalty (under s 73B of the Act) might be an acceptable cost of conducting unregistered business. This is unlikely for many reasons:
- For most providers, this penalty is at least an order of magnitude more than registration would cost them.
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e The penalty applies each time a person provides a support they must be registered to provide. One individual working as such is unlikely to make more money than the penalty over the course of one year and would commit numerous breaches of the provision in doing so.
e Although registration as a larger provider may cost tens of thousands of dollars, multiple staff working unregistered would similarly lead to numerous breaches and compounding penalties.
e The requirement to not work unregistered applies to both the natural persons providing the support and to any provider business with corporate personhood providing the support through its employees or contractors. In such a structure, both persons would need to conclude that working unregistered is a rational financial choice. This would be less likely.
As the new penalties are unlikely to deter wrongdoing much further than the existing penalties, it may be that that the government’s motivation is to appear ‘tough on NDIS misconduct’ amid intense media and public scrutiny of their management of the Scheme.
Criminological literature repeatedly finds that increasing the perceived certainty of punishment is a much more effective deterrent than the perceived severity of punishment.’ Therefore to reduce NDIS misconduct, the Senate should ensure that the Agency is effectively detecting, investigating and prosecuting such wrongdoing. Other parts of this, and our previous, submissions indicate that this is not occurring effectively.®
Recommendation 1 The Committee should recommend that the Bill be amended to:
Embed procedural fairness and natural justice protections into enforcement mechanisms;
Introduce only evidence-based measures to deter misconduct, which guarantee fairness and ensure that the Scheme remains a market of choice for Australian businesses;
Omit or dial-back penalty increases to effective levels; and
Ensure the Agency designs robust systems infrastructure which preventatively incentivise compliance and increase the likelihood of detecting and prosecuting misconduct once it occurs.
- Strict liability offences for mandatory registration and banning orders Under the current Act, civil penalty provisions are the only mechanisms used to require registration and compliance with a banning order. Noncompliance presently carries a civil penalty of $82,500 and $330,000 respectively.?
Schedule 1 part 2 of the Bill would criminalise non-compliance with these requirements and also criminalise ‘Unregistered persons holding themselves out as being registered’. To do this, it gives three enforcement options for each of the three offences:
7 Above n 5. 8 Intrepidus Law, Submission to Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit, Senate, Inquiry into the Administration of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (30 January 2026). ° Act ss 73B; 73ZN. Page 3 of 14
- A fault-based offence (i.e. where intention must be proved), which attracts imprisonment and a high financial penalty.
- A strict liability offence with a moderate financial penalty.
- A civil penalty provision with a very high financial penalty.
Intrepidus Law supports empowering the NDIS Commission with a flexible range of powers to ensure enforcement across the diverse NDIS landscape. However, we are concerned with the introduction of strict liability offences to a regulatory landscape not designed for them.
The Act’s existing regimes around enforcing banning orders and mandating registration have been drafted deliberately broadly, to ensure that the frameworks are flexible enough to capture all the different kinds of behaviour Parliament was concerned about. 10 The framework for determining whether someone breaches these requirements, and punishing them for doing so, is done only through the civil penalty system, and without strong procedural fairness protections. Given that the risks of harm to participants are serious and widespread, lawmakers may have felt that this system was the right balance of these factors: protecting participants, ensuring fairness to providers and drawing a wide line around who is required to register.
Mandatory registration offences Introducing criminal offences to this landscape, especially ones of strict liability, disturbs Parliament’s previous balancing judgement. Take the proposed strict liability offence of an unregistered person providing a support for which they are required to be registered, under amendments to s 73B. This offence would have four physical elements:
(2) A person (the first person) contravenes this subsection if:
(a) the first person provides a support to another person; and
(b) the support is provided under a participant’s plan; and
(c) the National Disability Insurance Scheme rules require the first person to be
registered to provide the support under the plan; and
(d) the first person is not so registered.
Ordinarily, ‘fault elements’ (i.e. mental elements) would also need to be proven for each of the above paragraphs. But if prosecuted with strict liability under sub-s (5), the first person would likely be liable even if they:
(a) Did not intend to provide a 'support' to another person:11 for instance, where the line is
unclear between disability support and other forms of non-disability-related assistance.
Further, the amendment refers to the undefined and broad notion of "support" and not the
defined and constrained term "NDIS Support".
10 Explanatory memorandum, National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Improving Supports for at Risk Participants) Bill 2021. 11 CCC sub-s 5.6(1), s 6.1. Page 4 of 14
(b) Was not aware that they were doing so under a participant’s NDIS plan:12 for instance, where the line is unclear between informal caring arrangements and disability support work, and where invoicing a plan is performed by someone other than the person providing supports.
(c) Reasonably believed that registration was not required to provide that 'support': 13 it is
presently very difficult for people to determine what supports someone must be registered
to provide. There is no easily available plain-English or non-English guidance online which
would help an ordinary person determine case-by-case whether they need to become
registered to deliver this support.
(d) Was not aware that they were unregistered:14 for instance, because of confusions around the
process to become registered, or because the person was not aware that their registration
had been suspended or revoked. The Commission does not need to satisfy itself that the
person is aware it has suspended or revoked their registration, and any defects in the
obligation to provide the person written notice may not render the ban ineffective.15
It warrants exploring case studies where the NDIS rules require mandatory registration in a restrictive practices context, as these lead to manifestly unfair results which disturb the NDIS market in unexpected ways.
The requirement to register is the same under the current Act and the proposed amendments. Its full legislative and regulatory basis is provided for completeness below, with underlined emphasis in addition.
Act s 73E ‘Registration as a registered NDIS provider’ allows someone to be registered to provide ‘specified classes of supports’:
(2) A person may be registered in respect of one or more of the following:
...
(b) providing specified classes of supports under participants’ plans;
Act s 73B ‘Requirement to be a registered NDIS provider’ states:
(1) The National Disability Insurance Scheme rules may require that specified classes of supports
provided under participants’ plans are to be provided only by persons who are registered
under section 73E to provide those classes of supports.
NDIS (Provider Registration and Practice Standards) Rules 2018 (‘Registration Rules’) do require mandatory registration for ‘certain classes of supports’ through pt 2 ’When an NDIS provider must be registered. It provides:
6 Purpose of this Part
(1) This Part is made for the purposes of subsection 73B(1) of the Act.
12 CCC sub-s 5.6(2), s 6.1. 13 No fault element applies to this element whether prosecuted under sub-ss (4) or (5). The defence of ‘mistake of fact’ would likely not be available as this element is purely a question of law. See also CCC s 9.3. 14 CCC sub-s 5.6(2), s 6.1. 15 Act ss 73N, 73P. Page 5 of 14
Part — Classes of Supports for Which Registration Is Required
(2) NDIS providers of certain classes of supports under participants’ plans must be registered under section 73E of the Act to provide those classes of supports. This Part sets out what those classes of supports are.
7 Classes of supports for which NDIS providers must be registered
(1) A person must be registered under section 73E of the Act to provide specialist disability accommodation under a participant’s plan.
(2) A person must be registered under section 73E of the Act to provide a class of supports to a participant if, during the provision of the supports, there is, or is likely to be, an interim or ongoing need to use a regulated restrictive practice in relation to the participant.
(3) A person must be registered under section 73E of the Act to provide specialist behaviour support services
Rule 4 ‘Definitions’ of the Registration Rules completes r 7(2) above by providing:
regulated restrictive practice means a restrictive practice that is or involves any of the following: (a) seclusion … (b) chemical restraint … (c) mechanical restraint … (d) physical restraint … (e) environmental restraint ….
Note: For the definition of restrictive practice, see section 9 of the Act.
Act s 9 provides:
restrictive practice means any practice or intervention that has the effect of restricting the rights or freedom of movement of a person with disability.
This is a complicated framework. For other areas, the classes of supports which would trigger a registration requirement are clearly defined in rule 7 as ‘specialist disability accommodation’ or ‘specialist behaviour support services’. Either of these would be listed as the class of supports on the registration certificate per s 73E.
But for a restrictive practices registration, the requirement to register is instead tied to a legal test of necessity and probability. You are only required to register if, in the provision of (any) supports, there is a need to use regulated restrictive practices, or even if there is a likely need to use them. The provider being registered is not necessarily the person who is applying the restrictive practice, just whether one is likely to need application during the course of delivering any support.
The use of the condition ‘need’ is itself concerning. Need is not defined by the person with disability, his advocates, human rights instruments or disability rights activists. Necessity is determined by the tribunal of fact hearing the matter, with whatever biases they might import on the appropriateness of restrictive practices. It is worth reasserting here that restrictive practices are a form of disability- specific lawful violence which should be eliminated to realise the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).16
Tying the restrictive practices mandatory registration requirement to a strict liability offence in a
nation proliferated with restrictive practices against persons with disability draws a very wide circle around types of conduct that would become criminal.
For example, would invoicing a participant’s plan for providing any of these supports now be a criminal offence?
- A nurse, allied health worker, gardener or cleaner attending a participant’s home where regulated restrictive practices are used.
- An allied health provider in the community, if restrictive practices were applied by a registered support worker in transit to or from the clinic – or if restraints are kept on standby in case a participant displays behaviours of concern in that setting.
- A contractor driving an NDIS provider van, where a registered support worker has applied a manual restraint to a participant during transport.
- A business which sells mechanical restraints.
- A business which invoices low-cost AT or consumables which are not themselves restraints, but are used by a registered support worker in the concurrent application of a registered restrictive practice.
- A business selling anything while a participant is present in their shop and subject to restrictive practices.
What about a business which is not even aware that it is providing a service under a plan, for instance:
- A taxi driver accepting cash payment funded by a participant’s fortnightly transport payment, if manual, chemical or environmental restraints are applied by a support worker during that trip.
- A pharmacy which sells low-cost AT or consumables, which are purchased with cash by a registered support worker to use concurrently with a regulated restrictive practice, and which then claimed back from the participant’s plan by their nominee from a plan manager or the Agency.
- A hardware shop worker who transacts cash for a strap, which is unaware it will be used to mechanically restrain a participant, or that the nominee will lodge this receipt for reimbursement from their plan manager or the Agency.
If prosecuted with strict liability, the defence of ‘mistake of fact’ would only be open to someone who had considered both (1) whether they were providing a ‘support’ to the person, or doing so under the participant’s plan; and (2) reasonably believed at the time of sale or service that they were not providing a ‘support’ or not doing so under the participant’s plan.17
For most of the persons above, they would have no reason to ask themselves such a question. Further, ‘Support’ is not defined in the act, but likely has a separate meaning to ‘NDIS support’, making for an exceedingly difficult determination on the ground.
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Should every prudent business operating in the NDIS market now require a guarantee from their customer that they are not subject to restrictive practices, or likely to ‘need’ them? What about those non-NDIS businesses. Should they require a guarantee from every customer that they are not an NDIS participant? That may in turn raise questions under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992.
This in-depth legal analysis demonstrates the logical absurdities which result from departing from the principles of the Scheme and moving responsibility for compliance away from the Agency and to already over-burdened participants and providers. But these are more than mere legal oddities: they are risks which businesses and insurers will need to account for when deciding whether to remain open for business in the NDIS landscape.
Banning order offences
Intrepidus Law holds similar natural justice concerns for the proposed strict liability offence of breaching a banning order. A person may be liable even where they did not intend to engage in the conduct which ultimately breached the banning order, or if they did not even know that a banning order had been made against them.*®
The elements of this offence rely on the Act’s existing banning order process, which has weak procedural fairness protections as it was only ever designed to tie to a civil penalty provision. Under the Act:
e The Commission does not need to satisfy itself the banned person is aware of the order; e Faulty service of a notice may not render the ban ineffective; and
e There are explicit circumstances where the Commission can waive the person’s right to make submissions in their defence.’?
Basing the elements of an offence on this procedurally weak process, and then removing the fault elements from that offence, means the offences themselves are procedurally unfair and deny natural justice.
Schedule 1 part 5 of the Bill only compounds these natural justice concerns by substantially widening the categories of persons against whom it can issue a banning order with no regard to the above procedural fairness shortcomings.7°
It is easy to imagine circumstances where a person is genuinely unaware that they have been banned or deregistered because of an error of the Commission. Such persons would still be liable under this Bill.
Recommendation 2
The Committee should recommend that the Bill be amended to:
e Omit the strict liability offences from Bill items 33 (sub-s 73B(5)) and 43 (sub-s 73ZNA(3)).
48 Bill item 43, s 73ZNA. 18 Act s 73ZN. 20 Bill sch 1 pt 5. Page 8 of 14
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Create robust procedural fairness protections that embed natural justice into either the Bill’s new offences and civil penalty provisions, or into the Act’s existing frameworks for:
Oo Mandatory registration (s 73B); oO Suspension and revocation of registration (ss 73N, 73P); and o Banning orders (ss 73ZN—-73ZNA).
These protections should be commensurate to whatever enforcement regime they apply to, and the strongest if the Senate proceeds with strict liability offences.
Require the Minister, CEO and/or Commissioner to publish public education materials to assist participants and providers to understand any new offences under the Act. These materials should:
oO Explain what their obligations are in day-to-day terms;
o Describe how the offences draw on obligations in other parts of the Act and rules (e.g. how a provider knows if they are performing a support for which they must be registered to provide); and
Be published in plain English and accessible formats.
- Commission’s new power to request information and deregister providers Schedule 1 part 6 of the Bill is directed to the Commission’s information gathering powers. The Commissioner presently has a power under s 55A of the Act to request information from non participants that could help it identify wrongdoing or ensure the integrity of the Scheme. This Bill would allow a notice period of less than 14 days in certain urgent circumstances.
S 73F of the Act currently contains a registration condition, that registered providers comply with a request from the Commissioner for information within 14 days. The Act at present is ambiguous whether this is a s 55A request (in which case the information or document must be relevant to a Scheme-integrity function under sub-s (2)) or a separate power with no restrictions.
In our view the latter interpretation would be incorrect as it violates the principle of legality. Such an interpretation would abrogate the fundamental common law rights to privacy, silence and against self-incrimination.”: It would also operate against an object of the Act under s 3(1)(i), to give effect to Australia’s treaty obligations which protect those same rights.””
However, Bill sch 1 item 90 would provide an express intention to the contrary by inserting sub-s 73F(4), meaning the latter interpretation would become the active law.
(4) To avoid doubt, paragraph (2)(i) confers on the Commissioner a power to request information that has effect independently of, and does not limit, any other provision of this Act.
21 Coco v The Queen (1994) 179 CLR 427. 22 See International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights done at New York on 16 December 1966 ([1980] ATS
- arts 9 and 17. If the Parliament introduces criminal offences with respect to registration, then see also art
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This item should be understood as creating an extraordinary new power for the Commission to request any information or document from a registered provider, for any reason or none. The information or document need not be reasonable, related in any way to any of the Commission’s functions or tied to any of the factors listed at ss 73F(2) or 73G(3).
If a provider does not comply within the notice period, it has breached a condition of its registration. It is liable to a civil penalty provision of 250 penalty units ($82,500) under s 73J, and having its registration suspended or revoked under ss 73N and 73P.
This power is repugnant to the rule of law and an abrogation of other fundamental common law rights. This overreach of executive power cannot be justified in a free and democratic society.”? The information-gathering powers under s 55A are already fit-for-purpose and should be relied on instead.
Recommendation 3
The Committee should recommend the Bill be amended to:
e Expressly indicate that the ‘request’ in s 73F(2)(i) means ‘a request under s 55A’.
- Agency’s pre-payment information-gathering powers Bill schedule 1 item 5 appears designed to legislatively entrench a legally dubious and improper Agency system of manual claim reviews and information-gathering. To understand the amendments, one must first understand how this system is operating on the ground and how the Act does or does not empower it.
Agency’s existing pre-payment powers: ss 45—45A
Sections 45 and 45A of the Act empower the CEO to require relevant information or documents before a claim can be processed. The Agency may cancel, release or hold claims indefinitely. Parliament designed these powers to allow the Agency to verify invoices for potential non-compliance with claim requirements. Critically, there is no appeal right for a participant or a provider pursuant to ss 45 and 45A as the Agency is expected to make appropriate decisions and claims can be resubmitted once corrected.
The Agency has relied on these powers to instigate ‘manual claim reviews’. Notionally the Agency only reviews an invoice manually if the claim fits into one of five established ‘risk profiles’ (e.g. claiming from expired plans, large drawdowns and short-term accommodation claims),”* or presumably if referred through a tip-off. Public information on manual claim reviews indicates that the system is just used to ensure claim compliance as designed by Parliament above.”
This does not reflect the on-the-ground experience of many NDIS claimants. We are also concerned that the Agency’s use of these powers is quasi-investigative and manipulates the market when certain providers are frozen out. Unlike with the Agency’s investigatory functions to pursue fraud and obtain
23 See e.g. R v Oakes [1986] 1 SCR 103 [69]—[70] (Dickson CJ).
24 Auditor-General, National Disability Insurance Agency’s Management of Claimant Compliance with National
Disability Insurance Scheme Claim Requirements (Report No 48, 25 June 2025) [2.68].
25 Ibid, ch 2. Page 10 of 14
Agency’s proposed new pre-payment powers: sch 2 pt 2
The proposed amendments to s 45 do not address any of the above concerns with the pre-payment review system. Bill item 5 of Schedule 2 would insert five sub-sections into s 45. Relevantly:
(3A) The Agency must not pay an amount under the National Disability Insurance Scheme
to any person in respect of a participant’s plan if the person who made a claim under section 45A for payment of the amount has not given the CEO the information or documents requested under subsection (3B) within the specified period.
Note: If an amount cannot be paid because of this subsection, the person may resubmit a
claim for the amount in accordance with section 45A.
(3B) The CEO may, by written notice, require a person who makes a claim for a payment
under section 45A to give the CEO such further information or documents in relation
to the claim as the CEO reasonably requires.
The following sub-sections ensure a minimum 14-day notice period with extensions at the CEO’s discretion. These amendments would not substantially change the pre-payment system in operation. The addition of a reasonableness test is welcome, but without a dedicated appeal right this is largely decorative. The only substantive protection for notice recipients is the addition of a fixed minimum notice period, but no appeal pathway.
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These amendments do however protect this system with a more robust framework of powers. It is unclear whether the Act actually empowers the present manual claim review system, which involves the ad hominem request of specific information from a specific provider for a specific invoice. Or indeed, apply an ad hominem payment block on every invoice payable to a given provider the Agency finds suspicious.
Though avenues to challenge the Agency’s power to make such a request are narrow and may not be available to many claimants, if the decision were to be litigated, a court may find it was not supported by the Act. Reading down the Agency’s powers would accord with the principle of legality, as Parliament is presumed not to intend to abrogate fundamental common law rights without ‘unequivocally clear language’.”® This Bill item would provide sufficiently clear language to make a legislative challenge to the pre-payment system unlikely to succeed.
The Senate should not allow the Agency a blank check to obtain such a wide amount of information, including personally private participant information, from claimants. It should also ensure that the Agency cannot use these powers to block or indefinitely hold payment from providers without affording procedural fairness protections. If in either case the Agency suspects wrongdoing, it has largely fit-for-purpose investigative and information-gathering powers under other parts of the Act.
Recommendation 4 The Committee should recommend the Bill be amended to: e Omititems 5 and 8 from Schedule 2.
e Reduce the Agency’s powers to approve or deny claims under ss 45—45A by providing:
oO That the CEO must provide detailed and particularised reasons for denying a claim;
That a decision to deny a claim, or bundle of claims, is internally and externally reviewable;
That a claim is paid automatically if the CEO does not deny a claim within a period of time;
That the Agency can only hold payments beyond this period if it is actively investigating the claimant for fraud or misconduct under other powers in the Act.
e Clarify the Agency’s information and document requests power under para 45A(3)(b) by stating:
O That the CEO is only empowered to set general requirements around the kinds of documents or information to accompany claims in general, or classes of claims, but not with respect to a particular claimant;
Oo That the CEO may only require claims be accompanied by certain information or documents where it (a) is reasonably necessary for the CEO to determine whether the claim is compliant, and (b) does not infringe on personal privacy; and
Oo That such decisions are reviewable decisions.
28 Momcilovic v The Queen (2011) 245 CLR 1. Page 12 of 14
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e Require the Agency to only conduct investigations through the appropriate investigatory
powers already under the Act.
- Electronic claim forms Bill schedule 2 item 4 amends the CEO’s powers and duties with respect to approved forms under s 9A. Instead of mandating that ‘the CEO must publish each approved form on the Agency’s website’, it instead allows the CEO to publish ‘a representation of the form’. The explanatory memorandum notes:
The representation of the form could include a series of screenshots and step-by-step guidance on how to complete the form. A representation of the form could also include software specifications, outlining a package of information that the NDIA’s information systems would accept as a claim. This would be appropriate where approved third-party software is configured to transmit claims directly to NDIA systems.??
The memorandum says that this amendment ‘addresses the practical difficulty of publishing an approved form for a claim that is to be submitted through an online system, such as the my NDIS
Provider Portal’ .*°
Item 4 also allows the CEO ‘to approve different forms for different classes of application, claim, report, request, or statement’. Item 6 would amend s 45A to require that claims ‘be made in the manner approved … by the CEO’, for instance, through the my NDIS Provider Portal or a new electronic claims system.
The proposed new system is not explained in any detail. We are left with the following questions:
e Will there be a new electronic claims system? e Will it exist along side the ability to submit Word or PDF forms? e Will the new system be accessible for everyone who uses it?
e How difficult will the new system be to use? Will it cost businesses more in labour costs to submit the new approved forms?
e How many different forms or systems will be available, for how many different classes of claim? Will providers have a different system to participants?
e Isthe my NDIS Provider Portal unable to process Word and PDF documents? This seems to be the suggestion of the explanatory memorandum. If so, has that failure to create appropriate systems informed the Agency’s design of new systems?
Recommendation 5
The Committee should clarify the answers to the above questions to determine whether these amendments should be passed or omitted.
2° Explanatory memorandum, National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Integrity and Safeguarding) Bill
2025, 38. 3° Ibid.
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Conclusion
This Bill makes an already complex and difficult to navigate NDIS environment more dangerous for participants and providers trying to do the right thing. Instead of designing an easier to use and more robust system and skill-building people in how to correctly use it, these amendments increase penalties, introduce unfair offences and allow the executive branch to intrude into people’s lives with few limitations.
It is essentially outsourcing compliance to participants and providers of the scheme, instead of the scheme designing infrastructure and proactively ensuring and being responsible for providers and participants at point of sale or preservice delivery do not misuse a plan or deliver an unlawful support. Providing the option for participants or providers to receive Agency preapproval of what services can be lawfully purchased with a plan, and who can provide the service, before the support is purchased or delivered, may mitigate risk on non-compliance if the proposed punitive measures in the Bill are to proceed.
Businesses operating in the NDIS market would be justified to ask why they should have to play “Russian roulette” every time they transact business. They would not need to if they moved to another market. Meanwhile participants, who rely on the Scheme to survive, have no choice but to play and try their hardest to follow punitive rules which require them to not misuse plans which are not clearly explained or understood in the first place.
If the Scheme were serious about compliance, it would take direct responsibility for compliance occurring before the service or support is delivered or purchased. The issue is knowledge, and the inherent lack of knowledge participants and providers have about what a NDIS plan permits and what a NDIS Supports is, creates an environment of non-intentional non-compliance risk which is unreasonable in light of the punitive penalties and consequences being proposed by the Bill.