Submission 151
Submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submitted by a carer and NDIS participant family member
Introduction and Personal Context
The NDIS, as it stands today, is essential to our survival. For my husband, who lives with confirmed psychosocial disability and autism, it has been nothing short of a lifeline. Before accessing the NDIS, his mental health was unmanaged and he was deeply depressed. He would not leave the house for weeks at a time. Every day felt hopeless, and there was no meaningful support available to us.
At that time, I was his full-time carer. I was navigating complex systems alone, trying to keep him safe while also trying to hold our lives together. The strain was relentless. The lack of support, combined with the constant pressure and fear, resulted in me developing PTSD. This is the reality for many families when adequate supports are not in place.
The NDIS changed that trajectory. With access to support workers and appropriate therapies, my husband is now able to leave the house, engage with the community, and build capacity and resilience in ways that were previously unimaginable. These supports are not luxuries—they are the foundation of his stability and progress. Because of this, I am now able to work full-time to support us. That shift alone demonstrates the broader economic and social value of properly funded disability support.
Concerns About the Proposed Bill
I am deeply concerned about the proposed changes to the NDIS Act. They reflect a pattern of decision-making that prioritises budget considerations and political agendas over human wellbeing. At a time of acute cost-of-living pressure, the government continues to allocate significant funding to other priorities, including defence, while tightening access to supports that are essential for people with disabilities to live with dignity and safety.
The changes have not been explained clearly. Participants and families are left uncertain about what will be taken away, how decisions will be made, and how they will survive if supports are reduced. This uncertainty is not abstract—it directly impacts mental health and stability.
Specific Concerns with the Bill’s Provisions
Schedule 1, Part 1: New Definition of Functional Capacity
The Bill introduces a legal definition of “functional capacity” that assesses a person’s ability to undertake activities without assistance from support workers, assistive
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technology, or consideration of their environmental or personal circumstances. For my husband, this approach is deeply problematic.
His current level of function exists because of his NDIS supports. Stripped of those supports, his baseline capacity would reflect the crisis state we were in before the NDIS—unable to leave the house, disengaged from life, in acute distress. Assessing functional capacity in isolation of the supports that enable it does not reflect the reality of psychosocial disability. It risks penalising participants for the very progress the Scheme has helped them make.
Schedule 1, Part 2: Restrictions on Plan Reassessments
The Bill will restrict unscheduled plan reassessments, allowing them only where there is a “significant, ongoing change” in support needs. Only participants, plan nominees, or children’s representatives will be able to request reassessments—not support coordinators.
While I understand the intent to reduce unnecessary reassessments, this rigidity is dangerous for people with psychosocial disability, whose support needs can fluctuate significantly and unpredictably. A change that does not meet the threshold of “significant and ongoing” may nonetheless represent a genuine and urgent shift in need. Removing the ability to respond flexibly to those changes risks leaving participants without adequate support during periods of vulnerability.
Schedule 1, Part 3: Narrowing of ‘Reasonable and Necessary’ Supports
The Bill requires that supports must now directly arise from an eligible impairment— a contributory or indirect link will no longer be sufficient. For my husband, who lives with both psychosocial disability and autism, the interaction between these conditions is complex. His social and community participation supports are essential to managing both, and it is not always clinically straightforward to attribute a specific need to one impairment in isolation.
This change risks excluding supports that are genuinely necessary for his stability and wellbeing, simply because they do not map neatly onto a single “eligible” impairedment. The result would be a reduction in funded support with no clinical justification.
Schedule 1, Part 4: Ministerial Power to Reduce Support Funding
The Bill introduces a mechanism allowing the Minister to reduce funding across entire categories of supports by a set percentage, via legislative instrument, without requiring individual review of how that reduction affects specific participants. This is a significant and troubling power.
Applied to my husband’s situation, a blanket percentage reduction to community participation or capacity-building supports could strip away the very funding that enables him to function. This is not a theoretical risk—it is a foreseeable outcome. There are clear and troubling parallels to the Robodebt scheme, where a rigid administrative system caused widespread, measurable harm because it failed to account for individual circumstances. When governments implement blunt policy tools that ignore lived experience, the consequences are real.
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Schedule 1, Part 8: Changes to the Definition of Permanence
The proposed changes to the definition of “permanence” introduce the concept of “all appropriate treatment.” Under this framework, a person’s impairment may not be considered permanent unless they have tried all treatments deemed appropriate. Critically, what constitutes “all appropriate treatment” will be defined through NDIS Rules, which have not yet been developed.
This is deeply concerning for people with psychosocial disability. Many treatments for mental health conditions are inaccessible, unaffordable, geographically unavailable, or clinically contraindicated for a particular individual. Requiring people to attempt all “available” treatments before their disability is recognised as permanent ignores these realities entirely. It places an impossible and inequitable burden on those whose disability is nonetheless real, ongoing, and severe.
The fact that the criteria remain undefined means Parliament is being asked to approve this mechanism without knowing how it will be applied. This lack of transparency is unacceptable in legislation with such significant consequences for vulnerable people.
Schedule 1, Part 9: Eligibility Restricted Where Other Service Systems Exist
The Bill would allow eligibility to be restricted where a person could potentially access supports through another service system. For people with psychosocial disability, this raises a fundamental concern: the mainstream mental health system was the system that failed my husband before the NDIS. It did not provide adequate support. It did not prevent his deterioration. It was the absence of meaningful support in that system that led to his crisis—and my own.
Many community-based services were dismantled when the NDIS was introduced, on the promise that the Scheme would replace them. Restricting NDIS access by pointing people back toward those same depleted systems, without meaningful alternatives in place, is not a solution. It is abandonment.
The Human Consequences of These Changes
If my husband’s social and community supports were reduced or removed, he would likely return to isolation. For him, that means not leaving the house, disengaging from life, and experiencing a rapid decline in mental health. Isolation is not a minor issue for people with psychosocial disability—it is a known pathway to crisis and suicide.
If his capacity-building supports were reduced or removed, the progress he has made would not simply pause—it would reverse. Without ongoing support, the resilience and skills he has built would deteriorate. The long-term outcome would be increased reliance on crisis services, not independence. There are already serious concerns about increased distress and suicides linked to reductions in disability and mental health supports. These warnings must be taken seriously.
The proposed changes to automated decision-making (Schedule 3) compound these concerns. The introduction of automated processes within a system that already struggles with consistency and equity—combined with the narrowed criteria outlined
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above—creates serious risk that individual circumstances like my husband’s will not be adequately considered.
Conclusion
At its core, this issue is about whether people with disabilities are treated as full members of society. When supports are removed without alternatives, and eligibility is restricted through unrealistic criteria, it sends a message that our lives and wellbeing are secondary considerations.
The NDIS has already demonstrated what is possible when people are properly supported. It has allowed my husband to participate in life and has allowed me to return to work. Weakening it risks undoing that progress—not just for us, but for thousands of Australians.
Parliament must ensure that any reforms strengthen the system, rather than creating barriers that push people back into crisis. I urge the Committee to reject or substantially amend the provisions outlined above, and to centre the lived experience of participants and their families in any future reform process.