Submission 1497

Senate Submission

National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee June 2026

About the Submitter

This submission is made in a personal capacity. It does not represent the views of my employer or the organisation within which I work. All observations and conclusions expressed here are my own, drawn from my individual professional experience. I am currently on an extended period of leave from my substantive role and am submitting independently.

I have worked in the out-of-home care and youth justice systems in Australia for ten years. For the last several years I have held a Team Leader position in a Better Futures program in a regional area in Victoria, supporting young people transitioning from the statutory care system. In this capacity I have held direct oversight responsibility for over 200 young people at any given time as they move through this critical transition period.

The young people I work with are among the most vulnerable NDS participants. Many have acquired diagnoses later than they should have. Many have experienced instability and trauma across multiple service systems simultaneously. The vast majority have a disability of some kind, and many have intersecting and complex presentations that do not map neatly onto standard assessment frameworks.

I make this submission because I believe the Bill before the Committee, while addressing some legitimate concerns about scheme integrity, will in its current form disproportionately harm the young people who have been most consistently failed by existing systems. I also believe the Bill does not adequately address the structural causes of the exploitation I have personally and repeatedly observed throughout my career.

I am not a legal practitioner or policy analyst. What I bring to this inquiry is a decade of frontline, relationship-based practice with a highly vulnerable cohort, direct experience of the NDIS as it operates in the real world, and first-hand observation of both the promise of the scheme and the ways in which its current design has been systematically exploited.

1. The Research Context: Disability, Out-of-Home Care and Youth Justice

The cohort I work with does not exist in isolation from the broader research literature. The intersection of disability, out-of-home care, and youth justice in Australia is well-documented, and the findings are directly relevant to how this Bill will operate in practice.

Research published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence examining children with statutory child protection involvement who also appeared before Australian children’s courts found that nearly half (48%) of those young people had a neuro-disability. That same group experienced greater cumulative maltreatment and adversity, earlier entry into out-of-home care, and a greater volume of charges than peers without disability.

Baidawi and Piquero (2021), ‘Neurodisability among Children at the Nexus of the Child Welfare and Youth Justice System’, Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 50(4), 803–819.

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A 2024 scoping review of the experiences of children with disability in out-of-home care in Australia noted that children with disabilities in out-of-home care are an overrepresented group, and highlighted the particular vulnerability of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, who face elevated rates of intellectual disability and mental health disorders alongside overrepresentation in both child protection and youth justice systems.

Gatwiri et al. (2024), ‘Experiences of Children and Young People with a Disability in Out-of-Home Care in Australia: A Scoping Review’, Health and Social Care in the Community. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare data shows that young people placed in out-of-home care are 16 times more likely than the equivalent general population to be under youth justice supervision in the same year. The care-to-justice pipeline is not a marginal phenomenon. It is a systemic one, and disability sits at its centre.

AIHW, ‘Young People in Child Protection and under Youth Justice Supervision 2014-15’ (2016), cited in ALRC Report 133. These findings describe the population I have worked with directly for a decade. They are not abstract statistics. They are the young people I have worked with. And they are a cohort the Bill before this Committee does not name, does not design for, and in several of its provisions will actively harm.

2. Young People Leaving Care: An Invisible Cohort in This Bill

2.1 Late Diagnosis and Delayed NDIS Access

A significant proportion of the young people I support were not assessed for disability while they were in the statutory care system, despite displaying clear indicators of complex and significant need throughout their childhood. In several cases, young people received no NDIS access until they were 19 or 20 years of age. When assessments eventually occurred – often hastily and without adequate knowledge of the individual – they produced plans that were either very large due to the accumulated weight of unmet need, or dramatically insufficient because the assessor lacked genuine understanding of the young person’s situation.

This inconsistency is not a participant behaviour problem. It is a systemic failure in the gatekeeping and assessment functions that precede NDIS entry. The Bill does not acknowledge this dynamic, and several of its provisions will make it worse.

2.2 The Parental Responsibility Provisions Are Harmful for Care Leavers (Schedule 1, Part 6)

Schedule 1, Part 6 of the Bill strengthens the requirement for the decision-maker to consider what families, parents and informal supports can reasonably be expected to provide before approving funded supports. The intent is to ensure the NDIS does not duplicate what informal networks can already deliver.

For young people leaving the statutory care system, this provision operates in a vacuum. There is no family safety net. There are no parents available to provide supervision, personal care, transport, emotional support, or assistance with daily activities. The informal support network the provision assumes exists simply does not exist for this cohort. The young person’s legal guardian was the State, and when they leave care, that guardianship ends.

The Bill contains no carve-out, no acknowledgement of this reality, and no alternative framework for young people whose family structures cannot be called upon. Applying a parental or informal-support lens to a 19-year-old care leaver does not reduce their costs to the NDIS. It removes their funded supports and shifts those costs to emergency housing services, hospital emergency departments, the justice system, and Centrelink. I have watched this sequence occur. It does not save money. It moves money, at enormous human cost.

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Plan Auto-Renewal Without Review (Schedule 1, Part 5)

Schedule 1, Part 5 introduces automatic plan renewal, replacing the existing practice of plan continuation with a process where a plan rolls over as an identical copy at its end date, with unspent funds removed.

For young people transitioning out of care, this provision is particularly concerning. The transition from the structured environment of statutory care into independent living represents one of the most significant functional changes a young person can experience. Support needs that were appropriate while a young person was in a supported placement may be wholly inadequate the moment that placement ends. A plan designed around one set of circumstances should not automatically continue unchanged into a fundamentally different life situation.

The removal of unspent funds is also significant for this cohort. For young people navigating unstable housing, fluctuating health, and the absence of family support, unspent funds often serve as the only buffer available to respond to unexpected events. Removing that buffer without replacing it with a meaningful review mechanism leaves young people with no capacity to respond when their circumstances change suddenly, as they frequently do.

Plan Suspension and Revocation for Non-Contact (Schedule 1, Part 7)

Schedule 1, Part 7 expands the circumstances in which a participant’s plan can be suspended if they are not contactable after ‘reasonable attempts’ by the NDIA. If the suspension continues for 90 days, participant status can be revoked entirely, without a hearing or formal determination.

The term ‘reasonable attempts’ is not defined in the Bill. There is no minimum number of contact attempts specified, no requirement to use multiple communication channels, and no obligation to contact known providers, support coordinators, or other workers who may be able to reach the participant.

Young people leaving care are precisely the cohort most likely to become temporarily unreachable. They move frequently, often without notice. They change phone numbers. They experience acute mental health episodes, hospitalisations, and periods of crisis in which managing administrative correspondence is not possible. They frequently have no family member who can manage their affairs on their behalf.

This provision could strip a young person of their NDIS participant status at the exact moment they are most vulnerable – not because they have done anything wrong, but because nobody answered a phone call. The downstream consequences of losing NDIS status during a crisis are severe, and the process for regaining it is lengthy and burdensome.

Planning Inconsistency: A Systemic Problem the Bill Does Not Fix

Over the course of my career, I have directly observed substantial and unexplained inconsistency in NDIS plan outcomes for young people with very similar presentations and support needs. I have seen young people with relatively modest functional impairments receive plans with very significant funding, while others with severe, complex, and well- documented disabilities received plans clearly insufficient to meet their daily needs. I have observed two young people with near-identical clinical evidence and diagnoses receive plans bearing no resemblance to each other.

This inconsistency is not caused by participants requesting too much or gaming the system. It is caused by a planning and assessment process with inadequate accountability, insufficient

Submission 1497

training requirements, and in many instances a clear disconnection between the evidence provided and the outcome produced. It reflects a system in which the quality of the plan depends heavily on which planner or assessor happens to be assigned – a lottery that has enormous consequences for vulnerable people.

I have also observed professionals conducting assessments of, and writing formal recommendations about, young people they have never met, spoken to, or read beyond a referral summary. I have seen near-identical generic language and identical recommendations appearing across reports for individuals with entirely different presentations, histories, and needs. These assessments form the basis of plans that may then govern the supports available to a young person for years.

Schedule 1, Part 2 of the Bill tightens the threshold for requesting an unscheduled plan reassessment, limiting it to situations where there have been significant and ongoing changes to a participant’s functional capacity. Schedule 3, Part 2 introduces a framework for automated administrative decision-making in the planning process.

Neither of these measures addresses the root cause of the inconsistency I have described. Raising the reassessment threshold means an inadequate plan, once in place, is harder to correct through the internal process. Automating decision-making that depends on the quality of inputs does not improve those inputs – it scales whatever errors or inconsistencies already exist in the assessment process.

The Bill should address planner accountability; mandate demonstrated competency in specific disability presentations and require documented engagement with clinical evidence. It does none of these things. The people I have watched conduct generic assessments of young people they have never met will continue to do so under this legislation. Their outputs will simply carry greater weight, be harder to challenge, and feed into an automated process that produces plan outcomes at speed and at scale.

4. Lack of Transparency and Support Coordination Failures

I have regularly supported young people who had no meaningful understanding of their NDIS plan: what it contained, what they were entitled to, how their funding was being used, or who was responsible for what. In several instances, I have been present when a young person discovered that a significant portion of their plan budget had been spent without their knowledge or meaningful involvement in decisions about how it was used.

Support coordinators have a central role in ensuring participants understand and can exercise their entitlements. In my experience, the quality of support coordination for this cohort has been deeply variable. I have observed support coordinators who provide genuine, engaged, participant-centred support. I have also observed support coordinators who function primarily as administrative intermediaries for providers, do not maintain meaningful relationships with the young people on their caseloads, and do not ensure those young people understand what their plans contain or how their funding is being directed.

The Bill does not substantively address the quality, accountability, or transparency obligations of support coordinators. For the most vulnerable participants – those without family advocates, without the literacy or capacity to self-manage their plans, and without other professionals actively monitoring their situation – this is a critical gap.

5. Provider Exploitation of Vulnerable Young People

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Patterns I Have Observed Directly

Over my decade of work in this field, I have observed a consistent pattern of provider behaviour targeting young people with large NDIS plans, particularly those leaving the statutory care system, that in my assessment is systematic and has caused serious harm to individuals I have worked with and sought to protect.

I have directly observed or had reported to me by young people I support:

• SIL, SDA and STA providers moving young people between properties without consent, without adequate notice, and without regard for the participant’s expressed preferences or their rights under residential tenancy legislation. Young people are repositioned within provider properties in ways that appear designed to maximise provider income rather than to meet participant need or preference.
• Providers making explicit commitments to young people about accommodation permanency, support arrangements and household composition, which are then broken repeatedly and without consequence. The young person has no practical recourse because they do not understand their rights, often have no independent advocate, and have learned that making complaints produces no change.
• Support coordinators failing to provide basic transparency about plan contents, budget usage, and participant entitlements. Young people I have worked with have discovered significant portions of their funding had been spent without their knowledge or involvement in any decision about its use.
• Workers and assessors writing formal reports and recommendations about young people they have never met, have not spoken with, and know only from a referral summary. I have seen near-identical language and recommendations appear in reports for individuals with entirely different presentations and circumstances. These reports directly influence plan outcomes.
• NDIS pay rates drawing experienced workers away from state-funded services including child protection, youth justice, and community support, hollowing out the services this cohort simultaneously depends on and reducing the quality and continuity of their broader care.

Provider Cycling Through Business Structures

I have observed, on multiple occasions, providers and individuals operating within the NDIS space who, upon coming to the attention of regulators or receiving adverse media coverage, close their business and relaunch under a new entity name – often within a matter of weeks – continuing to deliver the same services to the same participant cohort. I have seen this cycle occur more than once with the same individuals.

I have made complaints through the proper NDIS protocols in relation to provider conduct I have personally witnessed or that has been reported to me by young people I support. In the substantial majority of instances, I am not aware of any enforcement action having followed from those complaints.

Schedule 2 of the Bill introduces new civil penalties, expanded mandatory registration requirements, and enhanced compliance and enforcement powers for the NDIA (Schedule 2, Parts 1 and 2). I do not oppose these measures in principle. However, I have serious reservations about whether providing additional powers to the same regulatory framework that demonstrably failed to act on the powers it already held will produce materially different outcomes for participants.

The NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission already held broad powers to investigate registered and unregistered providers throughout the period I have been working in this field. Publicly available data suggests that the rate of enforcement action relative to complaints lodged has been a small fraction of one percent. The cycling of provider businesses I have

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described occurred within that regulatory environment. The Bill does not explain why the same enforcement culture, with additional powers, will respond differently.

A further dimension of this problem, observed from my work alongside child protection practitioners, is that the shortage of suitable housing options for young people leaving care has at times left child protection with little practical choice but to place young people with providers known to have integrity concerns, simply because those providers have vacancies when others do not. The consequence is that the most problematic providers — those most likely to have availability precisely because reputable providers are at capacity — gain access to the most vulnerable young people through a housing shortage rather than through any assessment of suitability. This is not a criticism of individual child protection workers, who are navigating impossible circumstances. It is an observation about a structural failure that no amount of provider registration or civil penalty reform will address while the underlying housing shortage remains.

5.3 The For-Profit Delivery Model Creates Structural Incentives That Rules Cannot Fully Address

The most significant observation I wish to place before the Committee is one the Bill does not address: the exploitation I have described is not the result of isolated bad actors who can be removed from an otherwise well-functioning market. It is the predictable output of a for-profit delivery model operating in a context where:

• The people receiving services are among the most vulnerable in the country and the least equipped to enforce their consumer rights;
• Funding flows from a government agency rather than from the direct, informed purchasing decisions of the participant;
• Regulatory oversight has been under-resourced and inconsistently applied;
• Entry barriers to the market have been low enough to allow rapid proliferation of providers, including those with no prior disability services experience; and
• The profit available has been sufficient to attract significant capital from operators with limited or no genuine commitment to participant welfare.

In this environment, every new rule creates a new constraint to be worked around. I have observed this pattern in practice. When one business model attracts regulatory attention, operators identify the next available angle. Mandatory registration is not a barrier to people who have demonstrated willingness to cycle through business structures. Civil penalties are not a deterrent to operators who have extracted substantial profit before any penalty is imposed.

I want to be clear that there are good providers operating in this space. I have worked alongside them. They are doing important work, often in difficult circumstances. But they are competing in a market structure that systematically rewards the behaviour I have described, and many of them are demoralised by that reality.

The Committee should ask the Government to provide evidence that a regulated for-profit delivery model in this space produces better outcomes for the most vulnerable participants than alternative models — including not-for-profit, community-controlled, and publicly delivered options — and to explain why structural reform of the delivery model is not part of this Bill.

6. The Bill’s Structural Limitations

The Government’s stated purpose is to put the NDIS on a sustainable footing. The scheme does face serious sustainability challenges, and I do not dispute that. What I question is the accuracy of the diagnosis and the adequacy of the proposed response.

Submission 1497

From my perspective working directly in this space for a decade, the primary drivers of scheme cost and participant harm are:

• A for-profit market structure that rewards volume and billing over participant outcomes;
• A planning and assessment system that is inconsistent, insufficiently accountable, and frequently disconnected from genuine knowledge of the individual participant;
• A regulatory framework that has chronically under-enforced the powers it already held;
• A failure to adequately fund the mainstream services - health, mental health, housing, child protection, youth justice - that the NDIS was drawn into substituting for; and
• The near-complete absence of a specific funded framework for young people leaving the statutory care system, who sit at the intersection of disability, complex trauma, and systemic failure across multiple services simultaneously.

The Bill’s response to these drivers is to restrict participant access (Schedule 1, Parts 1, 2, 7, 8 and 9), raise barriers to reassessment (Schedule 1, Part 2), automate planning decisions (Schedule 3, Part 2), and expand the powers of the same regulator whose enforcement performance generated many of the problems being addressed. None of this touches the structural causes.

The Bill projects $37.8 billion in savings over four years. These are savings from the NDIS budget line only. There is no whole-of-government cost accounting I have been able to identify in the publicly available material accompanying the Bill. The young people I work with do not disappear when their NDIS funding is reduced or removed. They present to emergency departments. They cycle through the justice system. They access crisis housing. Their unmet needs do not cease to exist; they migrate to other government budgets that are not part of this calculation.

The Productivity Commission’s original case for the NDIS was built on whole-of-government cost modelling: invest in disability supports, reduce the catastrophic downstream costs of unmet need and informal carer breakdown. The Committee should ask whether this Bill has been subjected to equivalent analysis, and if so, request that analysis be made publicly available.

Requests to the Committee

On the basis of the observations and concerns set out above, I respectfully ask the Committee to consider the following:

1. That the Bill be amended to include an explicit framework recognising the specific circumstances of young people transitioning from the statutory care system, including an appropriate carve-out from or modification to the informal support provisions in Schedule 1, Part 6 for individuals whose legal guardian was the State.
2. That the Committee examine whether Schedule 1, Part 7 (plan suspension and revocation for non-contact) should include mandatory minimum safeguards requiring the NDIA to attempt contact through known providers and support coordinators before suspending a plan and prohibiting revocation of participant status for complex-needs participants without independent review.
3. That the Committee examine whether Schedule 1, Part 5 (automatic plan renewal) should include a mandatory review trigger for young people undergoing significant life transitions, including the transition from statutory care to independent living.

Submission 1497

That the Committee examine whether Schedule 2’s expanded enforcement powers are accompanied by adequate resourcing, a clear account of why the same regulatory body will now use new powers differently from the existing powers it has held, and accountability mechanisms with meaningful public reporting.

That the Government be asked to provide a full whole-of-government cost analysis of the Bill’s projected impact, specifically including projected downstream costs to Centrelink, state mental health, hospital emergency, justice, and housing services for the participant cohort whose plans will be reduced or whose access is removed.

That the Government be asked to provide evidence that a regulated for-profit delivery model produces better outcomes for the most vulnerable NDIS participants than not-for-profit, community-controlled, or publicly delivered alternatives, and to explain why structural reform of the delivery model is not part of this legislation.

That the Bill not be passed in its current form until the operational detail of the automated decision-making framework (Schedule 3, Part 2) is publicly available in sufficient detail to allow the disability community and the Parliament to assess how decisions will be made, what data will be used, and how participants can meaningfully seek review of automated outcomes.

Conclusion

I have spent ten years working alongside young Australians who have been consistently failed by the systems that were supposed to protect them. Young people who spent their childhoods in statutory care, whose disabilities were not identified or supported, who arrived at the NDIS late and found a scheme that was simultaneously a genuine lifeline and an environment in which they were at serious risk of exploitation.

The research literature confirms what I have observed at the frontline: children and young people at the intersection of disability, out-of-home care, and youth justice are among the most vulnerable people in Australia, and they have been chronically underserved by every system they have encountered. The NDIS was supposed to be different.

In my assessment, this Bill will restrict access for people who needed the scheme most and were failed the longest. It will shift the costs of their unmet needs into other government budgets where they will be invisible in the savings calculation. It will give new powers to a regulator without addressing the enforcement culture and resourcing that produced the outcomes it is now being asked to correct. And it will automate, at scale, a planning process whose fundamental problem has never been a lack of speed.

I respectfully urge the Committee to examine these issues thoroughly, to hear from others with direct frontline experience of this system and this cohort, and to recommend amendments that genuinely protect the young people transitioning from the care system from the foreseeable harms this Bill, in its current form, would cause.

I am willing to provide further evidence to the Committee if that would be of assistance.

Submitted by:

Team Leader, Better Futures Program (currently on extended leave) Ten years’ experience in out-of-home care and youth justice June 2026

Submission 1497

Note: This submission is made in a personal capacity and does not represent the views of my employer or the organisation within which I work.