National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 115
SUBMISSION
Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee
Inquiry into the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submitted by Adrian Praljak
22 May 2026
Contact details — for the Committee Secretariat, not for publication
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National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 115
Introduction
I make this submission as a person with disability and a participant in the National Disability Insurance Scheme, and as a person with formal legal training (including a Master of Laws). I write in a personal capacity. My concerns are systemic. This submission addresses the structure, drafting and likely operation of the Bill across the participant population; it names no individual, agency, officer or provider, and raises no individual case.
I support the Bill’s stated objectives: protecting the scheme for people with permanent and significant disability, securing its financial sustainability, and strengthening it against fraud and exploitation. My submission is that several mechanisms reach further than those objectives require, and in doing so risk reducing eligibility and supports for people with disability without adequate definition, individual assessment, transition protection, or independent review. The Bill can achieve sustainability and integrity while preserving these safeguards. Because the Bill will reassess the entire existing participant cohort over three years, the cost of getting the drafting wrong is borne at scale.
Summary of recommendations
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The redefinition of “substantially reduced functional capacity” and of “permanence” must not raise the access threshold; episodic, fluctuating and lifelong-but-treatable conditions must remain in scope; and any standardised assessment instrument must inform, not displace, individualised clinical evidence and merits review.
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The word “directly” in the “arising directly from an impairment” test should be removed or defined, so as to preserve the established position that a support is fundable where a qualifying impairment contributes to the need for it.
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The progressive adjustment of social, civic and community participation and capacity- building budgets, and “support determinations” used as a sustainability lever, should not operate as across-the-board reductions; any reduction must be individually assessed, evidence-based, set in the primary Act, and subject to merits review.
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Minimum notice and transition periods should be legislated before any reassessment, plan renewal or plan suspension reduces or ceases funding, with full merits review and continuity of existing supports pending review.
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Limits on registered plan-management providers should be reconsidered to protect continuity of care, choice and control, with existing arrangements grandfathered and a longer transition.
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The NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission should be resourced and its independence safeguarded so that the new compliance and civil-penalty powers are effective in practice, with transparent enforcement reporting.
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Whistleblower protections should be robust and accessible, covering participants, families, workers and providers, with enforceable anti-reprisal remedies.
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Substantive eligibility and funding rules should be moved out of delegated instruments into the primary Act; remaining instruments should be disallowable and reviewed by the Scrutiny committees; a whole-of-government cost-shift analysis should be published; and the consultation period should be extended.
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National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 115
- Access: the redefinition of functional capacity and permanence (Schedule
Schedule 1 defines “substantially reduced functional capacity” and “permanence,” and provides for eligibility to be determined through a new standardised, evidence-based assessment of functional capacity, with existing participants reassessed over three years. Definitional change at the access gateway has outsized consequences: a narrower test does not refine eligibility, it removes people from the scheme, with no comparable safety net beyond it.
Three risks require attention. First, a standardised assessment instrument, if treated as determinative, risks displacing the individualised clinical evidence on which fair decisions depend, and risks operating as quasi-automated decision-making over deeply individual circumstances. Second, a “more consistent” permanence test that turns on whether an impairment can be alleviated or treated risks excluding conditions that are lifelong in their disabling effect even where some symptoms are theoretically treatable, and risks excluding episodic and fluctuating conditions assessed on a good day. Third, reassessing the entire existing cohort against a new threshold places hundreds of thousands of people at risk of losing access through definitional change rather than any change in their disability.
Recommendation 1. The Committee should seek assurance, on the face of the Act, that the new definitions do not raise the existing access threshold; that episodic, fluctuating and lifelong-but-treatable conditions remain eligible; and that any standardised assessment instrument informs but does not displace individualised clinical evidence and full merits review.
- “Arising directly from an impairment” — the consequence of a single word
The Bill appears to recast the test for fundable supports from “arising from an impairment” to “arising directly from an impairment.” The addition of “directly” is not cosmetic. The established position has been that a support is reasonable and necessary where a qualifying impairment contributes to the need for it, even where non-qualifying factors also contribute — a position that protects people with co-occurring and complex conditions. Inserting “directly,” without any definition or published guidance, invites a narrower construction that strips supports addressing combined need, and shifts a contested interpretive question onto individual participants at reassessment.
Recommendation 2. Remove “directly,” or define it on the face of the Act, so as to preserve the contribution test: a support should remain fundable where a qualifying impairment contributes to the need for it.
- Reductions to participation and capacity-building supports by determination (from 1 October 2026)
The reform provides for participant budgets for social, civic and community participation supports and capacity-building daily activities to be progressively adjusted from 1 October 2026, and introduces “support determinations” to manage financial sustainability. These are precisely the supports that keep people connected, in work, education and community life, and out of crisis, hospital and institutional settings. Two problems arise. A budget adjustment applied across a class of supports is not an individualised assessment of what is reasonable and necessary for a particular person; it substitutes a population-level cost lever for the scheme’s individual-needs logic. And effecting reductions through determinations and rules,
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National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 115
rather than primary law, removes these decisions from full parliamentary scrutiny and disallowance even though they materially change people’s lives.
Recommendation 3. Any reduction to these supports should be individually assessed, evidence-based, set out in the primary Act rather than delegated instruments, and remain fully subject to merits review. Support determinations should not authorise across-the-board reductions untethered from individual need.
- Reassessment, plan renewals and plan suspension (Schedule 1)
Schedule 1 replaces the practice of plan continuations with “plan renewals,” tightens the criteria for unscheduled plan reassessments, and expands the power to suspend plans in certain circumstances. Each carries risk. Tighter criteria for unscheduled reassessments may trap people in outdated plans when their needs have genuinely changed — for example, a young person whose support needs change sharply on leaving school. Renewal of a plan that no longer reflects a person’s life is not continuity; it is a frozen plan. An adverse reassessment, and any suspension, can have immediate and severe consequences. Sustainability does not require speed at the expense of fairness.
Recommendation 4. Legislate minimum notice and transition periods before any reassessment, renewal or suspension reduces or ceases funding; preserve continuity of existing supports pending review; guarantee timely access to merits review in the Administrative Review Tribunal; and ensure people whose needs change can still obtain a timely reassessment.
- Registration and continuity of care (Schedule 2)
Integrity measures are legitimate. But limiting the number of registered plan-management providers, reshaping provider obligations through deeds of arrangement, and changing the definition of “NDIS provider” and claiming timeframes, can disrupt established, trusted relationships and undermine choice and control — core statutory principles of the scheme. Abrupt provider change is itself a risk to participants, and a six-month transition may be inadequate for people with complex arrangements.
Recommendation 5. Where consolidation of plan management proceeds, grandfather existing participant–provider relationships, lengthen the transition period, require structured transition planning, and guarantee that participants retain a genuine choice of provider.
- The Quality and Safeguards Commission — powers must work in practice (Schedule 2)
Schedule 2 strengthens compliance and enforcement, including by triggering the Regulatory Powers Act and inserting civil penalty provisions. Strengthened powers protect participants only if the regulator is resourced and independent enough to use them, and only if penalties are calibrated to deter well-resourced wrongdoers. Powers without capacity produce a regulator that is strong on paper and weak in practice — which leaves participants exposed to the very harms the Bill targets.
Recommendation 6. Pair the new powers with guaranteed resourcing and operational independence for the Commission, civil penalties calibrated to deter, and public, periodic reporting of enforcement activity and outcomes so that effectiveness can be tested.
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National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 115
- Whistleblower protections
Protection for those who report fraud, abuse or neglect is among the most effective integrity safeguards available, and should build on the protections introduced through the recent integrity legislation. Protections are useful only if they reach the people best placed to report — participants, families, support workers and providers — and only if they carry real, enforceable anti-reprisal remedies and a safe, accessible reporting pathway.
Recommendation 7. Ensure whistleblower protections are broad in coverage, accessible, and backed by enforceable anti-reprisal remedies.
- Delegated legislation, drafting coherence, cost transparency and process
A recurring feature of the Bill is the volume of substantive content left to ministerial determinations and rules — including support determinations and key elements of the new planning framework. Decisions about who is eligible and what they receive are core policy choices that belong in primary legislation, where they are subject to full debate and disallowance; the Senate’s own scrutiny principles caution against using delegated instruments for matters of this significance. Key terms, including “directly,” are left undefined. Large projected savings should be accompanied by transparency about where displaced need will fall — on health, mental health, hospitals, housing and the justice system — so that Parliament can weigh the true, whole-of-government cost rather than a single-scheme saving. The compressed inquiry timeframe also limits the ability of the people most affected to participate.
As a measure affecting people with disability, the Bill engages Australia’s obligations under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, including equality and non- discrimination (Article 5), living independently and inclusion in the community (Article 19), an adequate standard of living and social protection (Article 28), and the principle that economic and social rights are to be progressively realised and not subject to unjustified retrogression (Article 4(2)). It also engages the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (Cth) and must be accompanied by a statement of compatibility under the Human Rights (Parliamentary Scrutiny) Act 2011 (Cth).
Recommendation 8. Relocate substantive eligibility and funding rules into the primary Act; ensure any remaining instruments are disallowable and reviewed by the Scrutiny of Bills and Scrutiny of Delegated Legislation committees; define key terms including “directly”; safeguard against standardised or automated assessment displacing individualised merits review; require publication of a whole-of-government cost-shift analysis before the Bill proceeds; refer the Bill to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights; and extend the consultation period to enable meaningful participation by people with disability and their representative organisations.
Conclusion
Sustainability and integrity are achievable without raising the eligibility threshold, narrowing the supports test by a single undefined word, cutting participation and capacity-building budgets by determination, or weakening transition and review protections. I urge the Committee to recommend amendments that hold the line on individual assessment, merits review, continuity of care, and parliamentary scrutiny, so that the scheme is secured for future generations with, not at the expense of, the people it exists to serve.
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National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 115
I would be glad to provide further information or to give evidence if that would assist the Committee.
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