National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 1139
Committee Secretary Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee Parliament House Canberra ACT 2600
To the Senators of the Australian Senate,
Re: Opposition to the Proposed National Disability Insurance Scheme Legislative Amendments
26 May 2026
I write to express my profound alarm and opposition to the current Bill before the Senate proposing sweeping changes to the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS).
I am a professional working in the allied health space for children, but more importantly, I am the parent of a remarkable 19-year-old daughter with significant and multiple disabilities, including Cerebral Palsy. She is intelligent, funny, determined, deeply loved, and an important part of our family and community. Her disability does not diminish her value, her humanity, or her right to live a safe, meaningful, connected and dignified life.
Yet these proposed legislative changes place her future, her life, her choices, her health — and the future of countless disabled Australians and their families — at enormous risk.
This Bill Fundamentally Changes the Purpose of the NDIS This Bill represents one of the most significant and dangerous shifts in the history of the NDIS. While the Government argues these reforms are necessary to improve the “sustainability”, “integrity” and “consistency” of the scheme, the reality is that the legislation fundamentally alters the purpose and philosophy of the NDIS itself.
The NDIS was created because existing systems had failed disabled Australians for decades. It was intended to provide reasonable and necessary supports so people with disability could live with dignity, inclusion, safety, participation and opportunity.
This Bill moves the scheme away from those principles and toward a far narrower, more restrictive and bureaucratically controlled model.
At the centre of these reforms are sweeping changes to:
• how supports are defined, • what supports may be excluded, • how evidence is interpreted, • how eligibility is assessed, • how budgets are determined, • and how much power is concentrated in the hands of the Minister and the NDIA.
The proposed legislation significantly increases administrative discretion while simultaneously narrowing participant protections and individualised decision-making.
Most concerningly, many of these changes appear designed primarily around cost containment rather than participant wellbeing, human rights, long-term outcomes or genuine disability support needs.
Disability is not a budget problem to solve. Disability is a normal part of humanity.
The issue is not that disability is “growing”; it is that society is finally beginning to recognise disabled people as deserving visibility, inclusion, support and equal participation.
The consequences of these reforms will not be theoretical. They will be borne by real people, every single day.
This Bill Does Not Meaningfully Address Fraud — It Primarily Reduces Participant Supports I wish to state clearly, of course fraud should be identified, investigated and addressed wherever it exists. Fraud within
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 1139
any government-funded system undermines public trust and diverts resources away from the people who genuinely need support. But this Bill does not meaningfully address the structural causes of fraud within the NDIS.
Instead, it overwhelmingly focuses on restricting, narrowing and reducing access to supports for legitimate participants.
That distinction matters enormously.
It is deeply disingenuous for the Government to repeatedly frame these reforms as primarily about “integrity” and “fraud reduction” when the legislation itself does little to address the underlying systemic failures that have contributed to waste, inefficiency and exploitation within the scheme.
This Bill does not fundamentally reform:
• poor internal governance systems, • inconsistent decision-making frameworks, • inadequate oversight structures, • lack of transparency and accountability, • administrative inefficiencies, • excessive bureaucracy, • workforce training deficiencies, • poor contracting and procurement processes, • review and appeals inefficiencies, • tribunal and legal cost blowouts, • provider market failures, • conflicts and gaps in regulatory enforcement, • or the systemic loopholes that have allowed opportunistic operators to exploit the scheme.
Nor does it adequately address the extraordinary administrative duplication and inefficiency many families, providers and clinicians experience daily when interacting with the NDIA.
Instead, the primary measurable mechanism within this legislation for “reducing costs” appears to be the direct restriction, removal or narrowing of supports available to disabled Australians.
That is not genuine reform. That is cost shifting onto vulnerable people.
The Government cannot credibly claim to be protecting the sustainability of the scheme while failing to adequately address the internal structural and administrative issues that contribute significantly to financial waste and system dysfunction.
The reality is that many of the most significant inefficiencies within the NDIS arise not from participants themselves, but from:
• poor system design, • repeated reassessments, • inconsistent planning decisions, • unnecessary adversarial processes, • expensive review and appeals pathways, • delayed decisions, • workforce shortages, • fragmented communication, • duplication of evidence requests, • and a culture of administrative defensiveness that frequently forces families into crisis before supports are approved.
Families and clinicians are routinely required to spend enormous time and money repeatedly reproducing reports, assessments and evidence that already exist within the system.
Therapists are increasingly spending time justifying supports rather than delivering them.
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 1139
Participants are pushed into reviews and tribunals at enormous emotional and financial cost because of inconsistent or unreasonable NDIA decisions.
These processes themselves generate substantial expenditure for the government.
Yet rather than genuinely reforming these systemic inefficiencies, this Bill instead concentrates greater discretionary power within the system while simultaneously reducing participant protections and narrowing support access.
That is not integrity reform. It is austerity directed at disabled people.
Fraud should be pursued rigorously. Poor providers should absolutely be held accountable.
But disabled Australians and their families should not become collateral damage for years of governmental failure to properly regulate, administer and govern the scheme.
Balancing budgets by reducing essential supports to vulnerable people while leaving broader structural inefficiencies inadequately addressed is neither ethical nor sustainable.
You Cannot “Return” People to Systems That No Longer Exist The Government repeatedly speaks about “clarifying boundaries” between the NDIS and mainstream services, implying that people can simply access support elsewhere. But the reality is that many of those mainstream systems either do not exist in any meaningful or accessible form, or are already overwhelmed and incapable of meeting demand.
• State disability services have been dismantled or dramatically reduced over the past decade. • Allied health systems are overwhelmed. • Mental health systems are overwhelmed. • Public hospitals are overwhelmed. • Education systems are overwhelmed. • Housing systems are overwhelmed. • There is nowhere for people to “return” to.
The very reason the NDIS was established was because these systems had already failed disabled Australians and their families. To now remove supports under the assumption that mainstream services will absorb the demand, and within some foolish and impossible political deadline, is not only unrealistic — it is reckless.
Requiring Families to “Exhaust All Other Options” Before Accessing the NDIS Is Fundamentally Flawed Another deeply concerning aspect of these reforms is the growing expectation that people with disability and their families must somehow “prove” they have exhausted all other systems, services and pathways before they can access appropriate NDIS supports.
This approach is fundamentally flawed, inequitable and completely disconnected from the reality of disability and healthcare access in Australia.
Allied health professionals play an absolutely critical role in the diagnostic, functional assessment and evidence-gathering process required for both NDIS access and ongoing support justification. Occupational therapists, physiotherapists, speech pathologists, psychologists and other clinicians are often the very people responsible for identifying functional impairment, documenting risk, assessing support needs, trialling interventions and providing the evidence the NDIA itself demands.
Yet these are precisely the services becoming increasingly inaccessible to families.
• Waitlists are enormous. • Public systems are overwhelmed. • Many regions have little or no access to specialised allied health professionals. • And private therapy is financially out of reach for countless families already carrying the extraordinary costs associated with disability.
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 1139
The result is a deeply unfair and dangerous reality: Access to the NDIS increasingly becomes dependent not simply on the existence or severity of disability, but on a family’s postcode, financial resources, ability to navigate complex systems, and capacity to privately fund the evidence required to “prove” eligibility.
That is not equity. That is not accessibility. And it completely undermines the core principles upon which the NDIS was founded.
Families should not be forced into financial hardship simply to obtain the reports and assessments necessary to access supports for lifelong disabilities.
Nor should disabled Australians be penalised because:
• there are no available local specialists, • there is no published information on a presentation, particularly in paediatrics where children may remain undiagnosed for many years, or in some cases, forever • public waitlists in health are years long, • families cannot afford private assessments, • or allied health workforces are themselves collapsing under systemic pressure and funding uncertainty.
This creates a cruel paradox: The Government increasingly demands extensive multidisciplinary evidence while simultaneously destabilising and restricting access to the very allied health professionals required to provide that evidence.
You cannot demand more evidence while dismantling the pathways required to obtain it.
These reforms risk creating a system where the people most able to access support are not necessarily those with the greatest need, but those with the greatest financial means, education, advocacy capacity and geographic advantage.
Disabled Australians should not need wealth, privilege or extraordinary personal resources in order to prove their disability, delay, or “impairment” deserves support.
The Proposed “Evidence” Hierarchy Fundamentally Misunderstands Disability One of the most alarming aspects of this Bill is the proposed hierarchy of evidence under new section 34(1F), which establishes a strict order of what evidence the CEO must consider when determining whether a support is appropriate and effective.
Under this hierarchy, priority is given to:
-
Published, peer-reviewed and generalisable research evidence; -
Evidence relating to the effectiveness of the support for the participant’s specific circumstances; -
Evidence of individual participant outcomes from previous plans, including maintenance of function or
prevention of decline.
While evidence-informed practice is important, this hierarchy fundamentally misunderstands the complexity and reality of disability support. It elevates narrow interpretations of published research above lived experience, multidisciplinary clinical expertise, demonstrated participant benefit and highly individualised outcomes.
Under these changes, life-altering decisions may ultimately be made by bureaucratic interpretation rather than appropriately qualified clinical judgement. This is deeply dangerous.
The NDIA already selectively interprets what constitutes “evidence”, often without transparency, consistency or accountability. Families and clinicians frequently experience decisions that appear driven less by participant need and more by budgetary priorities.
This Bill risks entrenching that problem even further. Science and clinical expertise should not be overridden by political priorities, administrative convenience or decision-makers operating outside their scope of expertise.
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 1139
Real Disability Support Cannot Always Fit Inside Research Models This proposed framework fundamentally disadvantages:
• highly individualised supports, • emerging and innovative therapies, • evolving evidence-based practices, • rapidly developing assistive technologies, • relationship-based supports built over years of trust, • and flexible therapeutic approaches that adapt to changing disability presentations.
Many highly effective supports do not yet have extensive peer-reviewed evidence precisely because disability research itself is chronically underfunded.
• People with profound and complex disabilities are frequently excluded from research cohorts. • Highly customised supports are inherently difficult to standardise within traditional research models. • And by the time formal research is published, technology, clinical practice and disability understanding have often already evolved.
Yet these are frequently the very supports that prevent deterioration, hospitalisation, institutionalisation, isolation and crisis.
This hierarchy sends a deeply damaging message to participants and families: That lived experience does not matter, that informed choice does not matter, that multidisciplinary expertise does not matter, and that years of documented participant benefit can be disregarded if they do not neatly fit narrow evidence frameworks.
Disability Is Not Static — Supports Must Evolve Across a Lifetime For many disabled people, including my daughter’s, supports are effective precisely because they are tailored to that individual’s:
• communication style, • sensory profile, • trauma history, • behavioural presentation, • learning pace, • physical needs, • developmental stage, • environment, • and changing medical circumstances.
Disability is not static. Needs evolve. Goals evolve. Bodies evolve. Supports must evolve too.
This Bill risks locking the NDIS into rigid, conservative and outdated models that fail to reflect the complexity of real human lives. I am deeply concerned that supports could be rejected simply because there is “limited published evidence”, even where:
• qualified clinicians support the intervention, • participants have demonstrated clear long-term benefit, • deterioration has been prevented, • crisis and hospitalisation have been avoided, • and families and multidisciplinary teams provide consistent evidence of effectiveness.
Maintenance and Prevention Are Valid Therapeutic Outcomes This Bill completely fails to recognise that disability-related skill development is often slower, non-linear, lifelong, and sometimes focused not on improvement, but on maintenance, safety and preventing decline. This is where access to the choice and control of therapy modalities and a variety of increased intensive and maintenance delivery strategies matters.
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 1139
Maintaining mobility matters. Maintaining swallowing safety matters. Maintaining communication matters. Maintaining regulation matters. Maintaining mental health matters. Maintaining social connection matters. Preventing deterioration matters. For many disabled people, particularly in adulthood, maintaining function is itself a profound success.
The notion that therapy should only exist for short-term “improvement” demonstrates a profound misunderstanding of complex disability. Therapy is not optional because disability is permanent. Disability is precisely why ongoing therapy is required.
Without appropriate supports, many people will experience:
• increased pain, • loss of mobility, • respiratory complications, • mental health deterioration, • behavioural escalation, • avoidable hospital admissions, • profound social isolation, • lack of access to appropriate equipment, technology, and other emerging supports • lack of frequency with allied health professionals • and significantly reduced quality of life.
Disabled Australians Should Not Be Forced to Repeatedly “Prove” Their Disability These reforms also place an extraordinary and deeply inhumane burden of proof onto people with permanent disabilities.
A person with cerebral palsy, intellectual disability, autism, acquired brain injury, intellectual disability or any degenerative neurological conditions for example, should not be forced to repeatedly prove the existence and severity of lifelong disability in order to access basic supports. No more than a “typical person” does not have to “prove” they may need access to Medicare or schooling. Disability does not disappear because governments want to reduce expenditure.
Families Are Already at Breaking Point Families are already drowning in administration, advocacy and exhaustion.
Parents should not need to become full-time lawyers, therapists, coordinators and bureaucratic negotiators simply to keep their children safe and supported. The emotional toll of constantly having to justify your child’s needs, deficits and humanity to systems designed to scrutinise and restrict support is enormous.
Families are repeatedly retraumatised by systems that require them to document worst-case scenarios in order to secure essential supports.
At the same time, these reforms appear built upon a dangerous assumption: That families can simply absorb the consequences of reduced supports.
We cannot.
Many disability families, including my own, are already functioning beyond sustainable human limits.
Parents are lifting adult children into beds, showers, and vehicles, managing medications, feeding, changing nappies, continence, therapies, medical appointments, equipment needs, communication systems, more appointments and constant advocacy to be included in schools, day programs, community activities, employment where possible, and every day life — often while attempting to maintain their own employment, finances, other children, relationships and their own within the family.
Most carers live with:
• chronic sleep deprivation, • physical injury from years of manual care, • financial insecurity, verging on poverty, with no security in retirement
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 1139
• career sacrifice, • deteriorating mental health, • and profound burnout.
Marriages collapse under this pressure. Siblings miss out. Families become isolated. This invisible and unpaid labour has been relied upon by governments for far too long. There is no superannuation, no living wage, no assistance with daily living costs, and limited, fragmented, and at best, disorganised and short-term supports (and that’s if you live in a metro area). NDIS is not recognising this in any tangible way.
These Supports Are Not Luxuries — They Prevent Crisis What makes this especially devastating is that disabled people like my daughter have an enormous capacity to continue learning, participating, contributing and experiencing joy when appropriately supported, when they have consistent access to:
• therapy, • assistive technology, • communication supports, • skilled support workers, • social participation, • community access, • and consistent allied health care,
My daughter can therefore continue living a rich, meaningful, healthy, and connected life. These supports are not luxuries. They are not “extras”. They are the very things that prevent decline, crisis, hospitalisation and isolation.
The same applies to all social supports, day programs, and people like support workers who can help facilitate this. Friendship, participation, purpose and community connection are not optional extras reserved for non-disabled Australians. Without these, social isolation destroys mental health and quality of life.
Yet these reforms specifically target many of the supports that enable participation and connection.
These Reforms Shift the Cost — They Do Not Remove It The Government also continues to speak about workforce participation and productivity while simultaneously undermining the exact supports that allow carers to remain employed and disabled people to participate in education, work and community life.
The contradiction is staggering.
These reforms are also profoundly gendered. Women make up the majority of unpaid carers and a substantial proportion of the disability and allied health workforce.
When supports are cut, it is overwhelmingly women who absorb the consequences through:
• reduced work hours, • lost income, • career sacrifice, • lost superannuation, • burnout, • and declining physical and mental health.
These reforms will not save money long-term. They will simply shift the burden elsewhere:
• to hospitals, • emergency departments, • mental health services, • aged carers, • exhausted families, • and ultimately disabled people themselves through declining health and preventable crisis.
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 1139
Reject This Bill and Return to Genuine Co-Design
I voted for this Government believing it would protect vulnerable Australians and uphold principles of dignity, fairness and inclusion.
Instead, this legislation represents one of the most devastating betrayals disability families have experienced.
This Bill is not merely flawed.
It is dangerous.
It is short-sighted.
And it fundamentally fails to understand the realities of disability, care, participation and human dignity.
I urge all Senators to reject this Bill in its entirety.
Return to genuine co-design with:
• disabled people, • families, • carers, • allied health professionals, • disability advocates, • and the broader disability community.
I urge you to listen to lived experience. Listen to clinical expertise. Listen to the people whose lives will be directly affected.
Disabled Australians are not economic liabilities to be managed. They are citizens deserving dignity, investment, opportunity, autonomy and human rights.
A civil society is judged by how it treats its most vulnerable people. Right now, this legislation fails that test. If you pass this, so will you.
Yours sincerely,
Parent, carer and advocate for all Australians living with disability