Submission 1583

Submission to the Committee Secretariat NDIS Amendment Bill

27/5/2026

Reason for making this submission

I am writing as a close friend and long-term ally to individuals who rely on the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). I see how vital the scheme is for their independence, safety, and community participation. While I support ensuring the NDIS remains sustainable for future generations, I am deeply concerned about the profound, compounding pressure these changes will place on people with disabilities, and their support networks of family and friends.

Key Areas of Concerns​

Narrowing the definition of functional capacity

The issue: Stricter criteria for assessing functional capacity risk excluding people with complex, fluctuating, or psychosocial conditions.

The impact on participants, friends, and family: When institutional support is taken away, families and friends must step in as unpaid carers. This shifts the financial and emotional burden onto informal networks, leading to relationship strain, caregiver burnout, and the erosion of mutual friendship. The inevitable strain on family and friends will also increase demand for formal carer support services and mainstream mental health care.

A friend with a psychosocial and fluctuating condition may appear highly functional on their good days, but on difficult days cannot leave the house or manage basic tasks. If NDIS assessments are narrowed to reflect only their best days, support hours will be cut. Friends and family will then have to constantly drop their own work and family commitments to provide emergency welfare checks and basic care which is emotionally exhausting and unsustainable. Additionally, I worry about people who do not have family and friend support networks that they can rely on.

Changes to available supports and budgeting restrictions

The issue: Tighter restrictions on “approved supports” reduce flexibility and autonomy for participants.

The impact on participants, friends, and family: Families and friends will have to spend hours navigating increased bureaucracy, managing appeals, and filling structural gaps. This reduces our capacity to work, impacts our own mental health, and changes our roles from loving friends and family members into exhausted administrative managers.

A friend who currently uses their budget flexibly to hire support workers specialising in community transport and social inclusion would lose this option under strict approved-support lists. Their family or friends would then have to provide transport to essential appointments and social activities, forcing them into a lowered capacity for work and wellbeing. Worse yet, my friend may no longer be able to access social events which would impact their mental health and connection.

Submission 1583

Erosion of independence and community inclusion

The issue: Reduced funding limits a participant’s ability to access the community independently.

The impact on participants, friends and family: Instead of engaging with our friends as peers in social and equal settings, we are forced into logistical care roles. True inclusion means participants have the structural support to live autonomously. When funding cuts reduce this autonomy, it shrinks the participant’s world and forces their social circle to become a crisis-management network rather than a community of peers.

The introduction of automated assessment systems

The issue: The potential transition toward algorithmic or automated decision-making processes for determining support needs is deeply alarming.

The impact on participants and loved ones: Stripping away the human element creates a high risk of systemic errors. If an incorrect or flawed system abruptly cuts off funding, the real-world consequences will be catastrophic. A clinical, detached approach could trigger vulnerable individuals into severe physical and mental health crises, and may result in suicide.The financial impact of this surely outweighs the current financial impact of the NDIS.We do not want a repeat of robodebt suicides.

The gendered nature of these reforms

These concerns are not evenly distributed across the population. Women With Disabilities Australia (WWDA) has identified that the Bill risks deepening existing inequalities for women, girls, and gender-diverse people with disability. Their submission notes that the reforms could particularly exclude people with fluctuating, psychosocial, chronic, pain-related, and trauma-related disabilities - conditions that disproportionately affect women and girls, and which already face delayed diagnosis, clinical dismissal, and barriers to evidence within health systems.

WWDA has identified three compounding risks that the Committee must consider:

• People may lose access to supports before any genuine alternatives exist.
• The costs and labour of care will shift onto families - and within families, this burden falls disproportionately on women.
• Future rules, assessment tools, and evidence frameworks risk reproducing existing gender bias if designed without proper co-design.

I agree that the Bill must not proceed until a comprehensive gender impact analysis has been completed and made public, and until gender-responsive reforms have been co-designed with women, girls, and gender diverse people with disability.

Women With Disabilities Australia (WWDA), “Gendered Risks of the NDIS Amendment Bill 2026,” May 2026. Available at wwda.org.au

Thriving Kids: welcome but not yet a safe substitute

Submission 1583

I want to acknowledge the Thriving Kids program as a genuinely encouraging and well-intentioned investment. The joint $4 billion commitment from Australian, state and territory governments to build earlier identification and support for children aged 8 and under with developmental delay and/or autism is long needed.

Several of my 6-year-old child’s school friends have NDIS support for mild to moderate assessed neurodivergence. Watching these families, I have seen genuine relief - financial and practical - from being able to access supports like occupational therapy. These children are thriving in ways they may not have otherwise. Equally, their parents feel less alone. They have an expert to collaborate with on how best to support their child, both at school and at home.

However, I am deeply concerned about the sequencing of these reforms. Thriving Kids is scheduled to begin its rollout on 1 October 2026, with full national scale not expected until 1 January 2028. The government has stated that changes to NDIS access arrangements are timed to coincide with the program reaching scale - but “expected to be at scale” is not the same as proven, tested, or shown to be effective.

Tightening NDIS eligibility before Thriving Kids has demonstrated it can reliably catch and support the children and families who would otherwise fall through the gap is dangerous. A program that is still rolling out, still settling its service design, and still engaging communities cannot be treated as an adequate safety net for removing existing, hard-won NDIS supports.My cousin took 2 years to access the NDS for her child, losing that now would be devastating to all that effort and time during the process.

I urge the Committee to ensure that no changes to NDIS access arrangements take effect until Thriving Kids has been independently evaluated and shown to be successfully meeting the needs of the children and families it is designed to serve. The NDIS must remain a reliable backstop until there is clear evidence that the alternative is genuinely functioning.

Australian Government Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, Thriving Kids. Available at health.gov.au/our-work/thriving-kids

Conclusion and recommendations

Reducing participant funding or restricting access does not eliminate the basic human need for support. Instead, any false “budget savings” achieved by tightening eligibility will simply be redirected to crisis intervention services, emergency departments, and acute mental health facilities when participants fracture under the strain.

I urge the Committee to:

• Halt any moves to automate funding assessments and mandate that all decisions retain comprehensive, empathetic human oversight.
• Acknowledge the real limits of informal support: ensure that sustainability assessments explicitly account for the limited capacity of friends and family to absorb extra care hours without facing burnout.
• Retain flexible definitions of functional capacity that accurately capture fluctuating and psychosocial conditions and real-world environments.

Submission 1583

• Maintain flexibility in funding budgets so participants can choose the supports that genuinely work for them.

• Co-design all implementation: mandate that any new rules or lists of approved supports are developed directly with people with disabilities and their advocates.

• Explicitly factor in flow-on costs: account for the economic and mental health impacts of these amendments on informal carers and state-funded crisis services.

Thank you for considering this submission. I urge the Committee to ensure that sustainability measures do not come at the cost of the rights, dignity, and wellbeing of NDIS participants and their loved ones.