NDIA Accountability Project

Autism diagnosis and plan management experience

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Submission 1414

Submission — NDIS Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

SUBMISSION

National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment ( Securing the NDIS for Future Generations ) Bill 2026

Submitted by: Samuel Broadbent NDIS Participant | Brisbane, Queensland Date: May 2026

About this submission I make this submission in my personal capacity as a person with lived experience of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). I am a 28-year-old man with autism and a number of co-occurring psychosocial and neurological diagnoses.

I live in Brisbane, Queensland. I have been an NDIS participant since the Scheme rolled out in Queensland in 2018 and have managed funding in all three of the modes currently provided for under the Act – self-managed, plan-managed, and Agency-managed. My most recent plan (start date 16 November 2025, varied 14 May 2026) have a total funding amount of $158,142.66 over twelve months. My views are informed by the Explanatory Memorandum to the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 (the Bill), by Australia’s obligations under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), by the 2023 NDIS Review (Bonyhady/Paul) and the 2019 Tune Review, and by eight years of navigating the Scheme myself.

I support the broad ambition of the Bill — securing the NDIS for future generations, restoring it to its original intent, and protecting it from fraud. I do not support every mechanism the Bill proposes to get there. The purpose of this submission is to identify the changes I welcome, the changes I am concerned about, and the changes that — without modification — risk causing real harm to participants like me.

Executive Summary

The NDIS is one of the most significant social reforms of the past century. The Explanatory Memorandum itself records that the Scheme is, in the Government’s words, “one of Australia’s most important social support schemes,” and that the first object of the Act is “to give effect to Australia’s obligations under the [CRPD] in conjunction with other laws.” Before the NDIS commenced, support for people with disability in Australia was fragmented, state-by-state, and effectively a lottery — those whose number came up received help, and the rest were left to community organisations subsisting on volunteers and charity. The NDIS, alongside Australia’s 2008 ratification of the CRPD, replaced that lottery with a rights-based scheme founded on dignity, choice, and inclusion. That progress must not be reversed.

I accept the Government’s starting premise in the Explanatory Memorandum: that the Scheme “has deviated from its original intent to support people with significant and permanent disability and has

Submission 1414

Submission — NDIS Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

uncontrolled growth in plans“; that in January 2026 National Cabinet agreed to reduce annual cost growth “to 5 to 6 per cent, or lower”; and that mainstream and community supports have eroded around the NDIS. The right response is to rebuild the ship: re-fund and re-energise mainstream and community supports so the NDIS is one part of a properly designed disability ecosystem, not the whole of it. The wrong response is to throw participants overboard before the rebuild is finished. The Memorandum itself acknowledges that the proposed reforms, if not properly sequenced, “may appear on their face to be retrogressive” in CRPD terms — and they will be, unless the foundational supports the Government has promised actually exist when individualised supports are reduced.

This submission makes the following overarching points:

 1.   I strongly support the Bill’s fraud, integrity and enforcement measures in Schedule 2 (Parts
   1–5 and 7), including the amended NDIS provider definition, the expanded compliance powers
   under the Regulatory Powers (Standard Provisions) Act 2014, the civil penalty regime, record-
    keeping obligations, and the 90-day claim window. Fraud harms participants directly, and
    every dollar lost is a dollar denied to someone who needs it.

 2.   I oppose the design of the proposed single-instrument functional capacity assessment regime
    (Schedule 1, Part 1) if it relies on a one-off test administered by a non-clinician and processed
   by an automated decision-making tool. A single test, on a single day, by a single (often
     unqualified) person cannot capture the fluctuating, contextual and individual nature of
      disability — particularly for people with autism, intellectual disability, ADHD and psychosocial
     conditions. This is the very issue that led to the collapse of the 2021 Independent Assessments
     proposal.

 3.   I oppose any narrowing of access for autistic adults driven by cost containment rather than
    evidence of need. Diagnosis-based culling would breach the original promise of the Scheme
   and CRPD Articles 3 and 5.

 4.   I support better governance of plan management (Schedule 2, Part 6) in principle, but I oppose
    a panel model that consolidates plan management into a small number of very large
     providers. My lived experience is the opposite of the Memorandum’s framing at page 70-71 :
     large providers treated me as a number; a small, locally based plan manager with strong
    technology gave me the best experience by a wide margin.

 5.   I strongly oppose any reform that diminishes the role of support coordinators or folds their
     functions into the Local Area Coordinator (LAC) model. Support coordinators have been the
     single most consequential element of my plan; LACs, in my experience, have not.

 6.   I urge caution on cuts to social and community participation funding. Comparisons against
   2020 baselines are misleading because community life was shut down by COVID-19.
    Reductions here — without parallel investment in mainstream community infrastructure
   under the National Agreement on Foundational Supports — will isolate participants whose
    mental and physical health depend on community engagement and will be inconsistent with
   CRPD Articles 19 and 26.

Submission 1414

Submission — NDIS Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

 7.   I support the principle of restoring foundational and mainstream supports, but I urge the
    Parliament  to sequence  reform  so  that mainstream and community  supports  are
    demonstrably in place before individualised supports are withdrawn. Build the ship before
   you remove the lifeboats.

Summary of Recommendations

The recommendations below align to specific Schedules, Parts and items in the Bill and to the Explanatory Memorandum. They are intended to preserve the Bill’s sustainability and integrity objectives — which I accept — while addressing the participant-level risks the current drafting creates.

Recommendation 1 — Functional capacity assessments (Schedule 1, Part 1)

  • Functional capacity should be assessed using a suite of clinically validated tools used in combination (for example, WHODAS 2.0, the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales, and carer- needs scales), not a single instrument used in isolation. This is consistent with NDIS Review Recommendation 3 (action 3.1), which the Memorandum at Schedule 1, Part 1 says it is implementing, but is inconsistent with the operational design currently being trialled.

  • Assessments should be conducted by appropriately qualified allied health professionals — occupational therapists, psychologists, speech pathologists — over more than one session, not by Agency-trained assessors in a single sitting.

  • Participants should be entitled to be accompanied by a support person, advocate or support coordinator during any assessment. Removing this scaffolding would disadvantage people with autism, intellectual disability, ADHD and psychosocial disability disproportionately, contrary to CRPD Article 5 (equality and non-discrimination).

  • Assessments must be repeatable on a periodic basis, not a single “one-shot” gateway. Need fluctuates; the legislative framework must accept that.

  • The Commonwealth should bear the cost of any functional capacity assessment required for access or plan purposes. Self-funded assessments — in my case over $3,000, met by taking out a loan while on Centrelink — are a regressive barrier and entrench inequity in access.

Recommendation 2 — Automated decision-making (Schedule 3, items 1–3)

  • Automated decisions affecting access, eligibility or funding amounts must be reviewable by a human delegate as of right, not only on internal review request. The Bill’s safeguards should be hard-wired into the primary Act, not left to standard operating procedure instruments.

  • Participants must receive plain-English reasons explaining how an automated outcome was reached, including the inputs relied upon and the weight given to them — consistent with CRPD Article 4(3) (active involvement of persons with disabilities) and Article 22 (privacy).

  • Automated tools should be independently audited annually for bias against autistic participants, participants with intellectual disability, and culturally and linguistically diverse participants.

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Submission — NDIS Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

Recommendation 3 — Eligibility and the permanence test (Schedule 1, Parts 1 and 2)

  • The “all appropriate treatment” concept (introduced under Schedule 1, Part 1 consistent with NDIS Review action 3.9) must not be used to remove access from autistic adults or people with lifelong neurodevelopmental conditions for whom “treatment” in a curative sense is not clinically meaningful.

  • Any narrowing of access must be paired with a binding statutory commitment to the National Agreement on Foundational Supports being operational — not merely “committed to” — before exits commence. The Memorandum acknowledges retrogressive risk under CRPD Article 4(2); a sequencing safeguard is the answer to that risk.

Recommendation 4 — Plan reassessments (Schedule 1, Part 2)

  • I support limiting unscheduled plan reassessments to genuine and ongoing changes in need and restricting requests to participants and their authorised representatives — consistent with the Memorandum’s concern that reassessments have been lodged “without a participant’s knowledge.”

  • However, an exception should be created for circumstances where a participant’s plan no longer reflects clinical evidence (for example, a new functional capacity assessment from a treating clinician). The reassessment door must not be sealed shut. Protections must run both ways: against unwanted reassessment, and against reassessments that override clinical evidence.

Recommendation 5 — Support coordination

  • Support coordination must be preserved as a distinct funded support, separate from LAC functions. This is consistent with the Memorandum’s own recognition (page 20) that participant intermediaries have, in some cases, lodged unscheduled reassessments without participant knowledge — but tightening who can lodge a reassessment is not the same as diminishing the role.

  • The Government should commission an independent review of LAC performance and resourcing before transferring any support coordination functions to LACs.

Recommendation 6 — Plan management (Schedule 2, Part 6)

  • Any panel arrangement for plan managers should explicitly include capacity for small and mid- sized plan managers that meet quality and integrity standards. A panel composed exclusively of large national providers will reduce, not improve, participant outcomes — directly contrary to my lived experience across multiple plan managers.

  • I support the prohibition on plan managers also providing other NDIS supports to the same participant — conflicts of interest in this market are real.

  • Panel selection criteria should include payment turnaround standards, participant communication standards (for example, response within one business day), and real-time invoice visibility for participants.

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Submission — NDIS Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

Recommendation 7 — Social and community participation

  • Reductions in the social and community participation support category should be deferred until mainstream community infrastructure (peer-led mental health hubs, social enterprises, accessible transport) is demonstrably in place. The Memorandum itself ties this category of supports to CRPD Articles 19 (living independently and being included in the community) and 26 (habilitation and rehabilitation) — reductions ahead of replacement infrastructure would put Australia in breach of those obligations in practice.

Recommendation 8 — Fraud, integrity and enforcement (Schedule 2, Parts 1–5 and 7)

  • I support Schedule 2 in substance: the amended definition of NDIS provider, civil penalties, extended information-gathering powers, record-keeping obligations and the 90-day claim window.

  • I urge the Government and the Minister to communicate fraud reform proportionately. Public messaging that disproportionately emphasises fraud stigmatises participants and the good providers who serve them. The headline story should be the lives the NDIS has changed.

Recommendation 9 — Sequencing and the “ship before lifeboats” principle

  • Parliament should attach a statutory sequencing rule to the Bill: individualised supports cannot be reduced for any participant cohort until the Commonwealth, States and Territories have certified that equivalent mainstream and foundational supports are in operation for that cohort under the National Agreement on Foundational Supports. This converts the Government’s CRPD Article 4(2) progressive realisation commitment, recorded at pages 162– 163 of the Memorandum, into an enforceable test.

Submission 1414

Submission — NDIS Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

My Story — Lived Experience of the NDIS

I am 28 years old. I live in Brisbane, with my grandparents, who are now elderly. I have a diagnosis of autism alongside a number of psychosocial and neurological conditions. I have been an NDIS participant since the Scheme rolled out in Queensland in 2018. Before that, support for me was patchy, charitable, and almost entirely contingent on whether kind individuals happened to be in the room.

Life before the NDIS — the “lottery”

In the years before the NDIS, the disability support system in Queensland operated, in my experience, as a lottery. State funding existed; whether it reached you depended on whether your name came out of the draw. While I waited, my family and I leaned on community organisations — churches, not-for-profits, small local services — that ran on the goodwill of volunteers and the dwindling resources of charitable funders. Those organisations did extraordinary work, but they were running on hugs and kisses, as I used to put it. They could not be a system; they could only be people trying their hardest.

Eventually my number was called and I received some state funding, but the person assigned to administer it did very little for me beyond collecting a commission. That was the state of play immediately before the NDIS arrived: a postcode-and-luck system in which getting help depended on who you knew and which side of an arbitrary line you happened to fall. This passage is relevant to the Bill’s mainstream and foundational supports framework (Schedule 1, Part 1 and the human rights statement at Memorandum pages 162–163): any reform that narrows individualised entitlement without parallel investment in mainstream and community supports risks returning participants to that pre-Scheme state.

Australia’s commitment — the CRPD and the Gillard reform

Australia signed the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2007 and was one of its original signatories. We agreed, as a country, to give effect to the rights set out in Article 19 (living independently and being included in the community), Article 28 (an adequate standard of living and social protection), Article 4(3) (active involvement of people with disability in developing law and policy that concerns them), and Article 16 (freedom from exploitation, violence and abuse). The NDIS was the legislative embodiment of those commitments. The early architects of the Scheme — the visionaries who designed it and the Gillard Government that legislated it — took genuine political courage to deliver what remains the most ambitious social reform of this century. The Explanatory Memorandum acknowledges this lineage at page 173, recording that “the idea for a national disability insurance program was recommended through the 2020 summit… held in April 2008” and that the Productivity Commission’s 2011 report on Disability Care and Support became its blueprint. This lineage is directly relevant to the Statement of Compatibility with Human Rights in the Memorandum (pages 152–163), against which every provision of the Bill must be measured.

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Submission 1414

Submission — NDIS Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

Entering the NDIS — minimal funding, real risk

When the NDIS came to Queensland, I was automatically rolled over from state funding. My first plan was minimal. It helped, but I was still leaning heavily on the goodwill of others to live a viable life. Around the same time, tensions at home escalated. Family and domestic violence proceedings were brought, in which I was the person subject to an order, against the background of a household I was forced to remain in. I made many trips to emergency departments. I was admitted to hospital a few times, but discharged sooner than I should have been because the bed was needed. Eventually I was kicked out of home. Living alone, with minimal NDIS funding, I struggled with the daily tasks that other people take for granted — cooking proper meals, keeping the place clean, attending to basic hygiene. Public transport was, and remains, largely inaccessible for me. I had few friends I could call. My therapy supports were helpful, but every support hour I had was consumed in simply getting me to and from appointments. There was nothing left for living. This experience is directly relevant to Schedule 1, Part 1 of the Bill (functional capacity and access): a single-instrument assessment cannot capture the way disability interacts with safety, housing and isolation in real time, and a too-low plan in that context is not merely an administrative outcome — it is a CRPD Article 16 (freedom from exploitation, violence and abuse) and Article 28 (adequate standard of living) issue. The first plan cut — progress undone, and a $3,000 loan In the year that followed I received a slightly larger plan and things stabilised. I was no longer surviving on takeaway pizza in a flat I could not look after. I had a small amount of in-home support and was beginning to function. To consolidate that progress and to give the Agency the clinical evidence it kept asking for, I commissioned a comprehensive functional capacity assessment from a qualified clinician. The assessment cost me over $3,000. I was living on Centrelink payments alone. To pay for it I took out a personal loan, the repayments on which strained my budget for many months afterwards. I describe this in detail because the Bill, as currently drafted, would shift functional capacity assessment to a system run by the Agency — but the assessment cohort being trialled (which I describe below) does not appear to address how the cost of legitimate clinical assessment, where one is needed, will be met. Participants on income support cannot fund their own clinical assessments. Any reform that treats clinical assessment as participant-funded is regressive on its face, and engages CRPD Article 5 (equality and non-discrimination) and Article 28 (social protection). This experience is directly relevant to Schedule 1, Part 1 of the Bill and underpins my Recommendation 1, particularly the sub- recommendation that the Commonwealth bear the cost of any functional capacity assessment required for access or plan purposes.Despite the clinical assessment, the Agency reduced my plan. The progress I had made was abandoned. I was forced to move back home and take whatever support I could get. The Explanatory Memorandum (Schedule 1, Part 2) frames plan reassessment reform as a way to stop unscheduled

Submission — NNDIS Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

reassessments being lodged “without a participant’s knowledge,” often by third parties. I understand that problem. But participants also need protection from the reverse harm — the Agency reassessing a plan downwards in spite of clinical evidence the participant has paid for. Protections must run both ways. This experience is directly relevant to Schedule 1, Part 2 of the Bill (plan reassessments) and supports Recommendation 4, including the proposed exception where a participant’s plan no longer reflects clinical evidence.

Turning the corner — the role of a support coordinator Things only began to improve when I was funded for a support coordinator. My support coordinator pushed back against decisions that did not match my needs, prepared evidence, and helped escalate to the Administrative Review Tribunal when that was the only road left. She has connected me with social groups; liaised with my university to secure the supports I need to study; helped me find allied health professionals who are, for the first time, making real progress with me; and helped me build a small team of support workers I can trust. When I have a problem with a support worker, she is the person I call before anyone else.

I am asked to imagine an NDIS without that role, or one in which it is rolled into the LAC function. I cannot, in good conscience, support that. I have spent hours on hold to my LAC. When I have got through, the advice has often been inconsistent and generic. LACs do not have the time or the proximity to know me. My support coordinator does. This experience is directly relevant to the Bill’s planning provisions in Schedule 1 (which the Memorandum frames as implementing NDIS Review Recommendation 3, including the navigation function) and supports Recommendation 5, which would preserve support coordination as a distinct funded support.

The system as it stands today — fragile, and dependent on others Today my plan, varied on 14 May 2026, totals $158,142.66 for the period 16 November 2025 to 15 November 2026. It funds Core Flexible supports, Relationships, Choice and Control, Behaviour Support, Finding and Keeping a Job, Improved Daily Living, and Support Coordination. My situation is more stable than it was, but it is not secure. I live with my grandparents, who are ageing. NDIS-funded workers take me to appointments, help me develop the household skills I am still learning in my late twenties, and support me through a university degree. My stated goals on my plan are to graduate university and find stable employment, to develop social skills, to develop routines, to obtain independent housing, to strengthen my mental health, and to build a stronger relationship with my support network. Each of those goals is consistent with the CRPD’s Article 19 vision of independent living and inclusion. The current shape of my plan engages most of the provisions amended by this Bill: Schedule 1 (access, functional capacity and planning), Schedule 2 (provider regulation and plan management), and Schedule 3 (automated decision-making used in plan-management and claims contexts).

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Submission 1414

Submission — NDIS Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

I do not pretend the Scheme should fund everything in my life. I am saying the opposite — the Scheme has built something remarkable, and the Government should not tear down the foundations before the replacement structure is built. The question that haunts me is simple: what happens when my great-grandparents are no longer here? If I have to live independently again, will I be supported — or left to squalor away in the way I once was? That question speaks directly to Recommendation 9 of this submission — the proposed statutory sequencing rule that no individualised support reduction can take effect until equivalent mainstream and foundational supports are operational for the relevant cohort, consistent with the Memorandum’s own CRPD Article 4(2) commitment at pages 162–163.

Submission 1414

Submission - NDIS Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

Comments on the Bill

The remainder of this submission addresses specific measures in the Bill against the framework of the Explanatory Memorandum, the CRPD, and the 2023 NDIS Review. I have grouped my comments by theme and, where possible, matched them to the relevant Schedule, Part and item.

  • Fraud, integrity and enforcement (Schedule 2) – strongly supported I begin with what I support, because I support it without reservation. The Explanatory Memorandum is candid about the integrity weaknesses in the Scheme. The Memorandum states at page 1: “The National Disability Insurance Agency (Agency) does not have the necessary powers to regulate and monitor the payment of over $50 billion per year.” It draws on the findings of the Australian National Audit Office’s 2019 Fraud and Control Program report and the Disability Royal Commission, and proposes a coherent package: an amended NDIS provider definition, expanded compliance powers under the Regulatory Powers (Standard Provisions) Act 2014, new civil penalties, mandatory record retention, a 90-day claim window, and a panel arrangement for plan managers with a prohibition on conflicts of interest.

I support all of these in substance. As Minister Butler has said in his second-reading speech on this Bill, every dollar obtained through fraud is a dollar taken from a participant who needs it. Fraud also reaches beyond participants - it damages families, friends, and the wider community of providers who do the work properly. I applaud the Fraud Fusion Taskforce and I support the additional powers and civil penalty deterrents in the Bill. These measures are consistent with the Government’s human rights statement under the Memorandum that the Bill engages CRPD Article 16 (freedom from exploitation, violence and abuse) and that strengthened oversight is “consistent with” Australia’s obligations.

A respectful caution to the Government and the media Fraud is a fraction of the cost pressures on the Scheme, but it commands a disproportionate share of the public conversation. People in my life routinely tell me what they have heard about NDIS fraud. They almost never tell me what they have heard about the lives that the NDIS has changed. The risk of overweighting the fraud narrative is that it stigmatises participants and the very many providers of good faith and good practice - and that, in turn, undermines public consent for the very rights-based scheme the CRPD requires. I would respectfully ask the Government to communicate this reform proportionately: yes, address fraud, but lead with the dignity, inclusion and rights story that the NDIS was built on.

  • Plan management reform (Schedule 2, Part 6) – supported in principle, opposed in design I have managed my NDIS funding in all three modes available under the current Act — self-managed, plan-managed, and Agency-managed — and across multiple plan managers within the plan-managed

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Submission - NDIS Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

category. My experience leads me to a different conclusion to the one set out at page 70-71 of the Explanatory Memorandum, which identifies smaller plan managers as more likely to exhibit risk factors for conflicts of interest, collusion, fraud and poor record-keeping.

Self-management

I self-managed for several years. I valued the control. I knew which providers were being paid, when, and from which budget. As my plan grew, the complexity grew with it. I reached a point where I needed help to keep up with what was reasonable and necessary, what was claimable from which category, and how to keep the books straight. That is the moment I moved to plan management.

Large national plan managers - my worst experience

My first plan manager was a large company that outsourced much of its back-office work overseas. A small Australian-based team handled inquiries, but the dominant experience was sending and resending invoices, sometimes over weeks, and waiting two to six weeks for providers to be paid. That provider had more than 500 participants. To the company’s credit, it ran a strict firewall between its plan management arm and its therapy arm, and that conflict-of-interest discipline did work. Everything else did not.

I moved to a second, larger plan manager, expecting that scale would mean better systems. It did not. Providers chased payments. I chased the plan manager. I switched again after about a year.

A small, local plan manager - my best experience

My current plan manager is a small local company with around 100 participants and a bookkeeping background. They have a named plan manager who is responsible for my account. Invoices submitted on a Monday tend to be paid by Thursday. I can text and get a response within hours. I can see, in real time, where every invoice sits in the workflow. If I want a hold placed on an invoice, I place the hold and the invoice waits until I clear it; once I approve it, it processes the same day. Providers consistently say this plan manager is the most efficient and most communicative they deal with, and that the plan manager raises queries promptly when an invoice looks wrong.

I cannot square my experience with the Memorandum’s framing at page 70-71. With respect, the regulatory response to that observation should be to require small plan managers to meet rigorous standards — not to consolidate the market into a handful of national providers. Good practice in plan management is not a function of size; it is a function of governance, technology and people. CRPD Article 19 expressly contemplates participants having “the opportunity to choose their place of residence and where and with whom they live… and are not obliged to live in a particular living arrangement.” Plan management choice is a corresponding economic-life expression of that autonomy.

Agency management - the most opaque of the three

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Submission - NDIS Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

I have also been Agency-managed. Providers were paid on time, but I had no visibility of what was being claimed against my plan. When I asked for invoices, I was told I did not need them. The only way I knew I had been billed was to check the participant portal. That arrangement, in my view, creates exactly the conditions in which over-claiming and fraud can occur, because nobody who actually knows the participant is checking what is going out the door. The Memorandum’s integrity case for Schedule 2 applies as much to Agency-managed plans as to any other, and reform should not treat Agency management as a low-risk default.

What a panel must look like I support the Bill’s separation of plan management from the provision of other NDIS supports to the same participant. I support a more regulated market. I do not support a panel that, by design or by procurement, hands the market to a small number of very large providers. My recommendation is set out at Recommendation 6: the panel must be inclusive of small and mid-sized plan managers that meet quality, integrity, payment-speed, and participant-communication standards.

  1. Support coordination - oppose any reduction in role The Memorandum, at page 17, frames intermediaries - support coordinators and plan managers - as a source of unscheduled reassessment requests lodged without participants’ knowledge. I accept that this has occurred and I support tightening who can lodge a reassessment. What I cannot accept is any reform that uses that problem as cover to diminish the support coordination role generally.

My support coordinator is the difference between functioning and not functioning. She has helped me find allied health professionals who actually move me forward; built a support worker team I trust; liaised with my university to secure educational supports; connected me with social groups; and, when the Agency reduced my plan against clinical evidence, prepared the case that ended up in the Administrative Review Tribunal. None of this could have been done by a Local Area Coordinator, however well intentioned.

The LAC service, in my experience, is overstretched. Wait times are long, advice is inconsistent, and the case load does not allow for the depth of relationship a participant with complex needs requires. I would not oppose investment in LACs; I do oppose the migration of support coordination functions into a service that is presently under-resourced to perform the functions it already has. Recommendation 3 of the 2023 NDIS Review explicitly envisaged the navigator/coordinator function being strengthened, not absorbed; the Memorandum at Schedule 1, Part 1 cites that Review as the foundation for the Bill, and the planning reforms should be implemented consistently with it.

  1. Functional capacity, the assessment tool, and automated decision-making (Schedules 1 and 3) - strongly opposed in current form The Explanatory Memorandum (Schedule 1, Part 1) explains that the Bill will introduce “a defined meaning of ‘functional capacity’” and a mechanism for assessing thresholds of substantially reduced functional capacity, consistent with NDIS Review Recommendation 3 (action 3.1). The Memorandum

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Submission - NDIS Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

further says these provisions “will make way for the implementation of a standardised, evidence- based assessment of a person’s functional capacity that impacts their day-to-day living, moving away from the current approach which relies on diagnosis.” Schedule 3 separately permits the use of automated decision-making within the NDIS, with protections and standard operating procedure instruments. Read together, these measures point toward a regime in which a single instrument, administered to a participant and processed in part by an automated tool, will determine access and entitlement.

This is the path that was abandoned in 2021 In 2021 the previous Government proposed Independent Assessments — a mandatory standardised functional capacity assessment administered by contracted allied health professionals as the gateway to NDIS access and funding. Following a coordinated submission process to the Joint Standing Committee on the NDIS, corroborating advice from the statutory Independent Advisory Council, and a refusal by State and Territory Disability Reform Ministers to support the proposal, the model was abandoned. On 9 July 2021 Minister Reynolds confirmed that “independent assessments as we currently understand them” were dead. The arguments that produced that reversal were tool-validity arguments (the instruments had not been validated for participants with psychosocial disability, autism, intellectual disability or culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds); process-integrity arguments (substantial contracts had been let before the pilot was evaluated); cohort-harm arguments (children, regional/remote participants, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander participants); and the absence of an independent appeal of the assessment itself.

I urge the Parliament not to re-legislate that same model under a different name. The evidence base that led to the 2021 decision has not changed. Recommendation 3 (action 3.1) of the 2023 NDIS Review, which the Memorandum cites as authority for Schedule 1, Part 1, did not recommend that approach — it recommended a navigator-supported, holistic assessment of need. The Bill should be amended to reflect what the NDIS Review actually said.

What a one-shot, single-tool assessment actually feels like I have recently sat through a trial of a Support Needs Assessment (SNA) which appeared to be something close to the form the Agency proposes. I want to describe that experience honestly, because the policy debate is currently being conducted in the abstract.

The assessment was exhausting. By the end I would have said almost anything to be allowed to leave. It denied me the opportunity to give a complete account of myself, because the format did not permit it. There were moments when the format made my disability worse - sustained attention, social demand, and verbal recall are precisely the domains in which I struggle. The assessment did not measure my function; in places, it measured my endurance.

An occupational therapist completing the same domain of testing would typically spread it over multiple sessions, would triangulate across measures such as the WHODAS, the Vineland Adaptive

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Submission - NDIS Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

Behavior Scales, and carer-needs scales, and would interpret the results in clinical context. The Bill compresses that into one event, completed by a person whose training is, by the Agency’s own description, in administering the instrument - not in disability practice. I do not say this to disparage the people who will be employed to do this work. I say it because they will be asked to do something that the discipline of allied health says cannot be done well in that format.

Why “one person with autism is one person with autism” matters here There is a saying in the autism community: “If you have met one person with autism, you have met one person with autism.” It is true. Even two people with broadly similar presentations will describe themselves differently. One might describe themselves in the language the algorithm understands and get the supports they need. The other will describe themselves in the language they actually use, and be filtered out. Add to that the assessor’s own interpretation - how they choose to translate the participant’s answers into a data field - and a single instrument becomes a series of small judgements masquerading as a number.

Need fluctuates - access cannot be a one-shot gate A second concern is structural. A person’s functional capacity changes over time, sometimes upward, sometimes downward, and almost always non-linearly. That is precisely why the existing framework provides for plan reassessment. A regime that fixes a participant’s entitlement on a single test - on a single day, in a single mood, after a single night of sleep - and then sets a high bar to revisit it, denies the reality of disability and is inconsistent with the Tune Review’s 2019 finding that the language of permanence is poorly suited to psychosocial disability.

Automated decision-making (Schedule 3, items 1-3) I support transparency, audit and clear standard operating procedures, all of which the Memorandum flags. I do not support automated decisions becoming the operational default for access or eligibility. At minimum the Bill should be amended to provide: (i) a right to a human decision-maker reviewing any adverse automated outcome; (ii) plain-English statement of reasons including inputs and weights; and (iii) independent annual audit for bias against cohorts that are predictably disadvantaged by algorithmic decision-making, including autistic people, people with intellectual disability and culturally and linguistically diverse participants. The Memorandum itself recognises at pages 153 –156 that Article 4(3) of the CRPD requires “active involvement” of people with disability in the implementation of legislation that concerns them — automated systems engineered without that involvement cannot satisfy Article 4(3) in substance.

  1. Permanence and “all appropriate treatment” (Schedule 1, Part 1) The Memorandum introduces the concept of “all appropriate treatment” to clarify permanence, consistent with NDIS Review action 3.9. I do not oppose clarification. I do oppose the use of “all equivalent treatment” to remove access from people for whom “treatment” in a curative sense is not clinically appropriate. Autism is not something one is treated out of. Many psychosocial and

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Submission - NDIS Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

neurological conditions follow that pattern too. If “all appropriate treatment” is intended to mean clinically reasonable management consistent with the participant’s goals, the Act should say so. If it is intended to be a cost-containment lever, the Parliament should be honest about that and Parliament should reject it. The Memorandum’s own human rights statement (page 162-163) treats access changes as engaging Article 4(2) CRPD’s progressive realisation duty; a clarification that operates as a removal mechanism is at risk of being retrogressive in fact, even if non-retrogressive in form.

6. Social and community participation - build before you cut

I have heard the Agency cite a tripling of social and community participation spending over the last five years, with 2020 as a frequent reference point. With respect, 2020 is not a baseline. 2020 was a public health emergency in which community life was shut down. People like me — who already find friendship difficult — were locked at home and forgotten. The mental and physical health consequences for participants were severe.

Social and community participation is, in many ways, the most normalising part of my plan. It is what allows me to attend a concert, see a film, join a group, or simply leave the house. That is precisely the kind of inclusion the Scheme was built to deliver, and is the direct domestic expression of CRPD Article 19. I support the broader work the Government is doing on peer-led mental health hubs and social enterprises — these are exactly the kind of community-level infrastructure that should, in time, replace some individualised social participation funding. But the sequencing must be right. Do not cut the individual’s budget before the community infrastructure exists for them to participate in.

7. Mainstream supports, sequencing and the “ship before lifeboats” principle

The Memorandum is right that other service systems - health, education, justice, transport, social services - retreated as the NDIS expanded, and that the NDIS became, by default, the single point of access for many participants. The Memorandum records at pages 162–163 that the Australian Government and all states and territories have committed to a National Agreement on Foundational Supports, and that “in this context, progressive realisation is achieved by extending disability related supports beyond the NDIS.” That is the right architecture. The risk is in the sequencing.

The fix is not to push participants off the lifeboat and back into systems that are not currently in a position to receive them. The fix is to rebuild those systems first. Education, mental health, social housing and accessible transport are stretched. Asking them to absorb participants without commensurate investment will simply transfer the harm - and, in CRPD terms, will be retrogressive in fact.

I therefore urge the Parliament to attach to this Bill a statutory sequencing requirement: that no individualised support reduction can take effect for a participant cohort until the Commonwealth and the relevant State or Territory have certified that mainstream and foundational supports are operational for that cohort under the National Agreement on Foundational Supports. Build the ship. Then — carefully, with participants in the conversation — retire the lifeboats.

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Submission - NDIS Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

Closing

The NDIS was the most ambitious social policy of this century, and it is one of the things I am proudest of as an Australian. I am the kind of person it was built for. I am also the kind of person who, in the system that preceded it, would not have been served. I do not want to go back there, and I do not believe the Parliament does either.

I support a Bill that addresses fraud, restores the Scheme’s original intent, and re-energises the mainstream and community supports that should sit around it. I do not support a Bill that, in the name of sustainability, reduces eligibility, narrows entitlement, and replaces the judgement of clinicians and rusted intermediaries with a single test and an algorithm. The Bill before the Parliament is, in many respects, the right reform. It can be the right reform in every respect with the amendments set out in this submission – amendments that respect the original intent of the Scheme, the Government’s own commitments under the NDIS Review and the National Agreement on Foundational Supports, and Australia’s obligations under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Thank you for the opportunity to make this submission. I am willing to appear before the Committee if that would assist.

Respectfully,

Samuel Broadbent NDIS Participant Brisbane, Queensland

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Submission — NDIS Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

Sources and references

This submission draws on the following primary sources. References to “the Memorandum” in the body are references to the Explanatory Memorandum to the Bill.

  • Explanatory Memorandum to the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026, especially the Overview, the Statement of Compatibility with Human Rights (pages 152–163), Schedule 1 (Access and Planning, including pages 11–12 on the original intent of the Scheme), Schedule 2 Part 6 (Plan Management, page 70-71), and the historical background at page 172-175 .

  • Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), in particular Articles 3 (general principles), 4(2) (progressive realisation), 4(3) (consultation and active involvement), 5 (equality and non-discrimination), 16 (freedom from exploitation, violence and abuse), 19 (living independently and being included in the community), 22 (privacy), 26 (habilitation and rehabilitation) and 28 (adequate standard of living and social protection). Australia signed the CRPD in 2007 and ratified it in 2008.

  • Independent Review into the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS Review), Final Report — Working together to deliver the NDIS (2023), Professor Bruce Bonyhady AM and Ms Lisa Paul AO PSM, especially Recommendation 3 (actions 3.1 and 3.9).

  • Review of the National Disability Insurance Scheme Act 2013 (the Tune Review), Mr David Tune AO PSM (2019).

  • Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability, Final Report (2023).

  • Australian National Audit Office, National Disability Insurance Scheme Fraud and Control Program (2019).

  • NDIS Provider and Worker Registration Taskforce (the Wade Taskforce), Final Report (2024).

  • Productivity Commission, Disability Care and Support Inquiry Report (2011), and the 2017 Productivity Commission review of NDIS costs.

  • Statement of Minister Reynolds, then Minister for the NDIS, 9 July 2021, that “independent assessments as we currently understand them” were dead following the meeting of Disability Reform Ministers; Joint Standing Committee on the NDIS inquiry into Independent Assessments (2021); People with Disability Australia, Supplementary Submission — Critique of NDIA Independent Assessment Submission (April 2021).

  • National Cabinet Statement, January 2026, agreeing to reduce annual cost growth of the NDIS to 5 to 6 per cent or lower, as recorded in the Memorandum at the Overview of the Bill.

  • Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee, Inquiry into the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Getting the NDIS Back on Track No. 1) Bill 2024, First and Second Reports (2024).

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Submission — NDIS Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

  • My NDIS plan letter and varied plan (start date 16 November 2025, varied 14 May 2026), referenced for personal-experience claims in this submission.

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