National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 118
Submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee-
Submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee Inquiry into the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submissions close 29 May 2026
From a family with young people with disability
Personal Statement
I am the parent of two young people with NDIS plans.
Through the NDIS, both of my children have become part of their community. They participate in therapies, programs, and groups. They are contributing through volunteer work and paid employment. They now have goals and aspirations for their future that simply did not exist before they had this support.
For us as parents, the NDIS gave us something we had not had before: a sense of security about their future. We were able to believe that even when we are no longer here, there would be supports in place to help them live safe, meaningful, and ordinary lives.
This Bill has taken that sense of security away.
The supports we believed would help our children build independence, or continue to support them if they cannot be fully independent, now feel uncertain. Every day, we find ourselves asking the same question: what will happen to them when we are no longer here.
That fear is constant, and it is very real.
Core Position
We oppose the proposed changes in their current form.
These reforms risk removing essential supports before alternative systems are designed, funded, and implemented. For families like ours, this creates a foreseeable and preventable gap in care.
This is not reform. It is withdrawal of support without a functioning alternative.
- Risk of a Support Cliff
The proposed reforms create a real risk of supports being reduced or removed without replacement. This creates:
• an immediate gap in care • loss of continuity of essential supports • reliance on crisis systems
The consequences are predictable and consistent with known system failures when disability supports are withdrawn without replacement:
• increased hospitalisation • increased interaction with the justice system • family breakdown and carer burnout
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National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 118
Submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee-
• increased relinquishment of children, where families can no longer meet support needs without assistance • deterioration in mental and physical health
- Tighter Eligibility Will Delay Support
The requirement to undertake “all appropriate treatment” before accessing the NDIS introduces delay and uncertainty.
For young people:
• development is ongoing • needs change rapidly • early support is critical
This approach risks delaying support until a person deteriorates enough to qualify. Delaying support does not reduce need. It increases long-term harm and cost.
- Loss of Individualised Funding and Return to Block Funding
The shift toward block funding undermines the core design of the NDIS.
Under this model:
• funding is allocated to providers, not individuals • support becomes something to negotiate, not based on need • decisions are made about participants, not with them
This creates inconsistent access, reduced choice and control, and inequity based on location. The NDIS was designed to replace this model. Returning to it is a step backwards.
Critically, under block funding, support is no longer sized to meet a person’s actual needs. It becomes whatever a provider has available within their contract. A person must negotiate for what they need rather than receive what their circumstances genuinely require. This is a fundamental shift in the nature of the scheme, from a needs-based human rights framework to a rationed service model. Support is not an entitlement under this approach. It is what remains after the contract has been allocated.
Our children do not fit into standardised service models. Their needs are specific, changing, and deeply personal.
- Mischaracterisation of Supports and Workforce
There is a concerning narrative that these reforms are needed due to fraud or underperforming support workers. This does not reflect our lived experience.
What may appear to an outsider as a worker “on their phone” may in reality be:
• communicating with the participant in their preferred way, for example via text • supporting social interaction through shared digital content or games • engaging in activities the participant has chosen
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National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 118
Submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee-
• providing quiet, low-demand support as requested
For young people, particularly those aged 19 to 26, phones are a primary social tool. Sitting together, sharing content, and engaging digitally is how connection happens. This is not passive support. It is active, relational, and appropriate.
Reducing funding for social and community participation will not improve workforce quality. It will remove the supports that allow young people to engage with the world in ways that are meaningful to them. This narrative risks dismissing both the professionalism of support workers and the lived reality of people with disability.
- Misalignment with Fraud Reduction
If these reforms were genuinely aimed at reducing fraud, the measures would look very different. They would target:
• system oversight and provider regulation • auditing and compliance mechanisms • weaknesses within the National Disability Insurance Agency
Instead, the proposed changes tighten participant eligibility, reduce access to supports, and limit funding for essential services. These are not anti-fraud measures. They are reductions in support.
Social and community participation supports are not lifestyle extras. They are what enable people to go to work, access education, participate in their community, and live independently.
The NDIS is a government-designed system. If there are weaknesses, they should be addressed at the system level, not by removing support from participants.
- Impact on Families and Informal Carers
Reducing funded supports shifts responsibility onto families. This results in:
• increased unpaid care • reduced workforce participation • financial strain • long-term burnout
Women are disproportionately affected as primary carers. For families like ours, reduced supports do not remove need. They transfer it onto us without the capacity to meet it safely.
- Disproportionate Impact on Young People
Young people rely heavily on social and community participation supports to access employment, education, independence, and social connection. Around 80% of participants aged 19 to 24 currently receive funding in this category.
Without these supports:
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National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 118
Submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee-
• young people become isolated • pathways into work and education collapse • mental health deteriorates
This is not a temporary impact. It shapes entire life trajectories at a critical developmental stage.
- Risk of Re-institutionalisation
Restrictions on supports and increased use of provider-controlled funding risk:
• reduced choice in living arrangements • increased use of congregate settings • reduced autonomy over daily life
These outcomes are consistent with institutional models that have been widely criticised, including through the Disability Royal Commission. The NDIS was intended to move away from these models, not return to them.
- Weakening of Appeal Rights
The proposed changes limit the ability of participants to challenge decisions effectively.
Where a Support Needs Assessment is disputed, review bodies will no longer be able to substitute their own decision. Matters will only be returned to the National Disability Insurance Agency for reconsideration.
This weakens independent oversight. Given that a significant proportion of appeals have historically been decided in favour of participants, limiting these rights removes an important safeguard against incorrect or unfair decisions.
- Ministerial Powers and Reduced Parliamentary Oversight
The Bill introduces significant discretionary powers, including:
• the ability under section 34A to reduce funding categories by a set percentage without full parliamentary approval • a Henry VIII clause allowing temporary changes to the Act without standard legislative process
These provisions reduce transparency, weaken accountability, and create uncertainty for participants and families. Such powers are rarely used due to the level of risk they introduce and their concentration of decision-making away from democratic oversight.
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National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 118
Submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee-
- Human Rights Implications
The NDIS is not only a funding system. It is a key mechanism through which people with disability exercise rights recognised under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, including:
• the right to live independently • the right to participate in the community • the right to dignity and autonomy
For our family, these are not abstract principles. They are everyday realities made possible through support. Reducing supports reduces these rights in practice.
- Lack of Co-design and Implementation Planning
There is insufficient evidence that replacement systems have been co-designed with people with disability, are fully developed, or are ready to operate.
Removing supports before alternatives exist creates avoidable harm at scale. The phrase “nothing about us without us” is not a slogan. It is a condition for reform that is both effective and ethical.
Closing Statement
We are not asking for more than what is reasonable.
We are asking for the supports that allow our children to live safely, participate in their community, and build a future.
These are not lifestyle supports. They are what make an ordinary life possible.
The NDIS did not make our children dependent on support workers. It gave them the opportunity to build independence. These reforms risk undoing that progress.
Removing these supports without safe and effective alternatives will cause avoidable harm and long-term consequences.
Reform must be careful, evidence-based, and grounded in the lived reality of the people it affects.
A Final Word to the Committee
We ask the Committee, and those in Parliament who will vote on this Bill, to consider something personal.
Anyone, at any point in their life, can become part of our community. Disability is not something that happens to other people. It can arrive through illness, accident, or age. It can arrive at birth or in later life. No one is exempt.
So we ask you to consider: if you needed support, how would you want to be supported?
Would you want to be able to work? To leave your house when you chose? To go shopping when you wanted to? To spend time with people you actually like?
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National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 118
Submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee-
Or would you want your life dictated by organisations and companies with rosters and KPIs?
The people affected by this Bill want the same things you do. They want a life, not a service schedule.
Please vote accordingly.
Recommendations
We recommend that the Senate:
- Delay any reduction in supports until equivalent, co-designed alternatives are fully operational
- Retain individualised funding as the foundation of the NDIS
- Remove or significantly limit provisions allowing funding reductions without full parliamentary scrutiny
- Remove or limit the Henry VIII clause
- Maintain strong, independent appeal rights with the power to substitute decisions
- Ensure all reforms are co-designed with people with disability and their families
- Prioritise early and consistent support, particularly for children and young people
- Address fraud and misuse at the system level through provider oversight, not by reducing participant supports
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