Submission 1732

Disability Services

SDA Housing Provider

Warrah Specialist School

Warrah Biodynamic Farm & Farm Shop

9 June 2026

Senate Submission

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

Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs | June 2026

Executive Summary

Warrah Society welcomes the opportunity to make this submission to the Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs inquiry into the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 (the Bill).

Warrah is a not-for-profit organisation with more than 60 years of service to people with disability in the Hills District of New South Wales. We support 54 residents in Specialist Disability Accommodation (SDA) and Supported Independent Living (SIL), 90 people attending day programs, and 42 students at Warrah Specialist School. Every person we support has profound intellectual disability, accompanied by complex, high-intensity needs. None of them is a candidate for reduced services.

We do not oppose all aspects of this Bill. Measures to address fraud (Schedule 2) and strengthen provider integrity are necessary and overdue. We support a scheme that is properly targeted and financially sustainable.

However, we hold deep concerns about provisions in Schedule 1 that, taken together, will reduce funding for the most vulnerable participants in the scheme, restrict the ability to request plan reassessment when needs change, introduce ministerial instruments to cut support categories by percentage across the scheme with no individual review, and automate high-stakes decisions affecting people’s safety and daily lives.

We are also compelled to raise a concern the Bill does not address at all: the imminent risk of cascading provider failure across the disability sector. The Bill’s reforms, combined with existing funding pressures and the proposed 50 per cent reduction to Social, Community and

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Participation funding from October 2026, will push a significant number of providers to the point of insolvency simultaneously. The Government has no credible plan to manage this. The consequences for participants and their families would be severe and, in some cases, irreversible.

Our key recommendations are set out below. They are elaborated in the body of this submission with specific reference to the Bill’s provisions.

Summary of Recommendations

• Amend Schedule 1, Part 4 (section 34A) to require individual safety assessments before any support determination takes effect for participants with high and complex support needs, and to provide a right of merits review for affected individuals.
• Amend Schedule 1, Part 2 (section 48A) to explicitly protect the right of SIL residents and participants with communication impairments to request plan reassessment through supported decision making, and to clarify that documented changes in health status, including increased seizure activity requiring an increased number of carers for safe transfers, constitute a qualifying change of circumstances.
• Remove or substantially amend Schedule 3, Part 2 (sections 59B-59E) to prohibit automated decision making for high-risk decisions affecting safety-critical supports without mandatory skilled human review by people with appropriate expertise in profound intellectual disability.
• Establish a mandatory transition risk framework for the disability sector, including minimum notice periods, provider viability monitoring, and a managed transition protocol to protect continuity of care for residents and participants.
• Commit to an immediate, independently conducted review of the impact of current and proposed NDIS funding changes on people with complex and high support needs before the Bill’s support determination provisions take effect.
• Suspend implementation of any administrative decisions that anticipate the effect of the Bill’s support determination provisions pending the Bill’s passage through Parliament. Warrah and other providers are already absorbing the financial impact of decisions that mirror what the Bill would authorise, before Parliament has had the opportunity to consider whether those powers should be granted.

About Warrah Society

1. Warrah Society was founded in 1965 by families of people with profound intellectual disability who chose to create a highly enabling, purposeful and supported way of life for their loved ones. We operate from a 12-hectare campus at Harris Road, Dural, NSW, and provide specialist disability services, supported accommodation, a specialist school, and social enterprises including a biodynamic farm and farm shop.

2. Our participants, residents and students are adults and young people with profound intellectual disability, often accompanied by complex physical, behavioural, communication and medical support needs. Many have lived with Warrah for decades. Some have been part of our community since childhood. The relationships, consistency

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and deep familiarity of our service model are not incidental to good care: they are the care. Participation in our community is a matter of genuine choice for participants and their families. Independent surveys consistently record high satisfaction among participants and their advocates, reflecting a model of care built on decades of trust and deep personal knowledge.

3. We employ approximately 300 staff. We are a registered NDIS provider, a registered SDA provider and an approved provider under the Education Act (NSW). We are not a for-profit entity. Every dollar of revenue we receive is directed to the people we support.

4. We are currently navigating an acute financial crisis driven directly by NDIS funding decisions. We have absorbed significant unfunded care costs because our duty of care and our values demand it. We cannot continue to do so. The Bill’s provisions, as currently drafted, will compound this crisis and place our organisation, and the people who depend on it, at serious risk.

Schedule 1, Part 4: Support Determinations (Section 34A)

What the Bill Does

5. New section 34A empowers the Minister to make a legislative instrument that reduces, by a specified percentage, the funding component amount for a group of supports across all affected old framework plans. The reduction applies whenever a plan is next renewed or reassessed. It operates by force of law without individual review. The only constraint on the Minister is that they must ‘have regard to the safety of participants’ (s34A(3)).

6. The second reading amendment moved by Mrs McIntosh correctly notes that the government has repeatedly failed to meet its own NDIS growth targets and raises the adequacy of fraud and integrity controls. We support this observation. However, The mechanism in section 34A does not target fraud or misuse. It reduces funding for all participants in a support category, including those with the highest and most legitimate needs, by a blunt percentage instrument.

Our Concerns

7. The explanatory memorandum identifies Assistance with Social, Community and Civic Participation as an example category for support determinations. This is the support category most directly at risk from the parallel administrative decision to reduce SCCP funding by approximately 50 per cent from October 2026. Warrah has already witnessed the human impact of this in advance of the Bill’s passage.

The following cases represent the lived experience of this policy in practice. They are drawn from our current participant cohort.

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David David has been part of Warrah since he was 11 years old. He recently received a 53 per cent reduction in his Social and Community Participation funding following an unrequested plan reassessment. David has significant physical support needs and requires one-to-one support for safe mobility, transfers and behaviour management. His previous funding allowed him to participate safely in his day program and community activities. Under his new plan, that support has been cut to a level that cannot safely meet his needs. David risks losing access to the community he has belonged to for decades, not because his needs have changed, but because the funding available to support him has been reduced.

Natasha Natasha requested a change of circumstances review because she required overnight active support following a significant increase in seizure activity and a decline in her mobility. That request was not approved, and her community participation funding was also then substantially reduced. She previously had support that enabled her to visit her elderly parents regularly. The reason given for the reduction was a lack of evidence that she requires one-to-one support. The absence of incidents is not evidence that support is unnecessary. It is evidence that the right support is in place and working. Warrah has been funding Natasha’s additional supports on an unfunded basis because of our duty of care. We cannot continue to absorb these costs.

Nicholas Nicholas received increased SIL funding he did not require due to a poor NDIS planning decision, while his community participation funding was reduced to keep the overall budget unchanged. As an ethical provider, Warrah did not draw down the excess SIL funding. However, his community participation budget is now insufficient. Nicholas may no longer have the support he needs to travel to visit his frail mother. His quality of life has diminished despite there being no change in his disability-related support needs.

Stuart Stuart has experienced an $80,000 reduction in his SIL funding. He requires around-the-clock support and one-to-one assistance whenever he is in the community. His support coordinator is now exploring whether funding from other areas of his plan can be redirected simply to maintain essential daily care. No person with disability should have to choose between being safe and being included.

8. Section 34A(5) explicitly provides that a support determination has effect even if the result is that funding for a reasonable and necessary support is less than the total cost of that support. This is a significant departure from the principle that reasonable and necessary supports will be funded to the level required to meet a participant’s assessed needs. For participants with high and complex needs, this is not a theoretical concern. It is the difference between safety and harm.

9. The statement in section 34A(3) that the Minister ‘must have regard to the safety of participants’ provides no effective safeguard. There is no requirement for individual assessment, no minimum floor, and no right of merits review. A legislative instrument reducing SCCP by 50 per cent can be made, and according to the explanatory

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memorandum is intended to be made, without engaging the individual circumstances of any participant.

Warrah’s submission on Section 34A

Warrah’s submission is that for participants with complex support needs, any reduction in safety-critical supports must be preceded by an individual assessment and must be subject to merits review. The current framing of section 34A does not meet that standard.

Recommendation

Amend section 34A to require an individual safety assessment for any participant whose supports in the affected category are safety-critical, and to provide a right of merits review for those participants. Establish a minimum floor below which funding for safety-critical supports cannot be reduced by determination.

Schedule 1, Part 2: Limiting Plan Reassessments (Section 48A)

What the Bill Does

New section 48A sets conditions that must be met before the CEO can conduct a participant-requested plan reassessment. A reassessment can only proceed if there has been a ‘significant change’ to the participant’s ongoing support needs arising from eligible impairments, and that change meets additional conditions relating to functional capacity or personal and environmental circumstances.

Our Concerns

The conditions in section 48A are structured around changes to functional capacity in relation to activities such as mobility, communication, and self-care. For participants with progressive conditions, acquired neurological impairments, or fluctuating support needs, these conditions may be difficult to satisfy in ways that are legible to the NDIS even when genuine and urgent need exists.

Natasha’s case is directly relevant here. She requested a change of circumstances review because of a significant increase in seizure activity and a decline in her mobility. Her request was denied on the grounds that there was insufficient evidence of one-to-one need. Under section 48A as drafted, a recurrence of that denial pattern would be embedded in primary legislation. Seizure activity that increases overnight care needs would need to be characterised as a ‘significant and ongoing alteration in functional capacity that directly relates to a change in an existing impairment’ and results in ‘a substantial reduction in the participant’s ability to perform daily activities.’ These are interpretive thresholds that may not be met in the absence of clinical evidence that takes time to generate. The effect is that participants are left in underfunded and unsafe circumstances while evidence is accumulated. There is a further consequence that is not adequately recognised in the Bill’s design: where appropriate staffing ratios cannot be maintained because funding is insufficient to support them, providers face an increased

Submission 1732

risk of workplace injury to support workers, with consequent workers compensation liability. Underfunding does not eliminate the duty of care obligation; it simply transfers the cost elsewhere.

• The Bill also limits who can request a reassessment to the participant, their plan nominee, or a child’s representative. This is a legitimate integrity measure. However, for participants with significant communication impairments or cognitive disability, the ability to exercise this right may depend on support that is not always available. The Bill should explicitly provide for supported decision making in the exercise of the reassessment request right.

• We note the second reading amendment moved by Dr M Ryan, expresses concern about the inadequate consultation timeframe for this inquiry. Warrah endorses that concern. The conditions in section 48A will materially affect the ability of our participants to seek changes to plans that no longer meet their needs. That is a significant curtailment of rights that deserves deeper consideration than a two-week consultation window allows.

Recommendation

Amend section 48A to explicitly include documented changes in health status, including changes in seizure frequency or severity, as a qualifying change of circumstances. Amend section 48(2) to provide that a plan reassessment request may be made through a supported decision making arrangement. Clarify in the NDIS rules that the absence of incidents where supports are in place is not evidence that those supports are unnecessary.

Schedule 3, Part 2: Automated Decision Making (Sections

59B-59E)

What the Bill Does

• New Division 5 of Part 1 of Chapter 4 authorises the CEO to use computer programs to take administrative action under designated provisions of the Act, including plan approvals (section 33), payment decisions (sections 45, 45A, 45C), and such other provisions as the Minister specifies by legislative instrument. Actions taken by the computer program are treated as actions taken by the CEO. While section 59B(7) allows the CEO to take a ‘substituted action’ where the automated output is ‘not correct or preferable’, the CEO is not required to do so.

Our Concerns

• The second reading amendment moved by Ms Chaney, identifies the core concern precisely: automated decision-making is being introduced for high-risk decisions affecting NDIS participants without the legislative safeguards recommended following the Robodebt Royal Commission. The Robodebt scheme inflicted profound harm on vulnerable Australians through automated systems that generated incorrect outcomes at scale with inadequate human oversight. The Government has not implemented the recommendations of the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme on this subject.

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is introducing automated decision making for another population of highly vulnerable people before that failure is remedied.

18. For Warrah’s participants, the stakes of automated errors are immediate and serious. These are people who cannot easily self-advocate, whose families are often elderly or geographically distant, and some of whom have no family member in a position to advocate on their behalf at all. Their support needs are not captured by standard assessment tools. An automated system, or even an unskilled or inexperienced planner, that mischaracterises a participant’s functional capacity or misapplies a support category rule is unable to be counterargued by the participant. Changes will be imposed that are almost impossible to reverse, and the harm will be felt before any correction is possible. This population has a particular vulnerability to systemic error that is not shared by participants with the literacy, executive function, and independent advocacy capacity to identify and challenge automated decisions on their own behalf. The Bill does not acknowledge or address that vulnerability.

19. Section 59E(3) provides that a failure to ensure automated actions are valid ‘does not affect the validity of the administrative action.’ This means an unlawful automated decision remains valid until set aside. For a participant who has had their SIL funding cut by an automated system, the harm occurs immediately. Rectification may take months if at all.

20. We submit that automated decision making should not be used for decisions affecting safety-critical supports without mandatory skilled human review. For participants with profound intellectual disability, that review must be conducted by people with appropriate expertise in this population. The complexity and individuality of their support needs are not legible to generic assessment tools or to reviewers without specialist knowledge. The provision in section 59D requiring a standard operating procedure instrument for evaluative determinations is insufficient to address this. The content of that instrument is not subject to parliamentary scrutiny, and its adequacy cannot be assessed by the participants it affects.

Recommendation

Amend Schedule 3, Part 2 to prohibit automated decision making for decisions affecting SIL, SDA, or supports designated as safety-critical without mandatory skilled human review by a person with appropriate expertise in the participant’s disability profile. Implement the recommendations of the Robodebt Royal Commission on automated decision making before extending this mechanism to NDIS decisions.

The Risk of Cascading Sector Failure A Systemic Risk the Bill Does Not Address

Submission 1732

This submission would be incomplete if it did not address a risk that extends beyond the provisions of the Bill itself but is directly relevant to the Bill’s likely consequences in the sector: the risk of simultaneous, cascading provider failure.

Warrah is not alone in facing an acute financial crisis. The combination of the following pressures is pushing providers across the disability sector toward insolvency simultaneously:

• The proposed 50 per cent reduction to Social, Community and Participation funding from October 2026, now foreshadowed by the support determination mechanism in section 34A. For Warrah alone, applying a 50 per cent reduction across the SCCP funding of all 90 day program participants would reduce our revenue by approximately $3.85 million. This is not a theoretical modelling exercise. It represents the actual funding that supports a highly trained, stable workforce of 300 staff, with no agency use and very low turnover. A reduction of this magnitude cannot be absorbed through efficiency savings alone. The sector has been warning of exactly this scenario since at least 2024.
• Unilateral reductions to SIL and SDA funding during plan reviews and reassessments, which are already occurring and are not addressed by the Bill.
• The removal of SDA legacy stock funding arrangements for existing residents, at a time when new SDA supply remains severely constrained. Warrah has been actively working to develop additional SDA capacity for three years and expects it will take at least a further three years before new stock is available. Removing legacy funding before replacement supply exists leaves residents with nowhere to go.
• Inflation in employment costs, insurance, utilities and capital works that is not being matched by indexation in support prices.
• Increased compliance and regulatory costs arising from provider registration requirements, including costs specific to the NSW context such as workers compensation premiums and portable long service leave obligations.
• The administrative cost of navigating an increasingly complex and unpredictable NDIS decision making environment, which has intensified as plan reviews and reassessments have become more frequent and more adversarial.

These pressures are not being experienced sequentially. They are accumulating simultaneously across an entire sector of small and medium not-for-profit providers who operate on thin margins and hold no meaningful capital buffer. Many of these organisations, like Warrah, provide housing, care and community to the same individuals across multiple decades. They are not interchangeable with other providers. Their failure is not an ordinary commercial event.

When a provider fails, the consequences for the people they support are immediate and severe. Participants in SDA and SIL cannot be rehoused overnight. Support workers employed by a closing provider cannot be absorbed by other providers who are also under financial stress. The families of residents, many of them elderly parents, face a crisis they have no capacity to manage. Some of those residents have no family at all.

The Government has, to our knowledge, no credible plan for managing a scenario in which multiple medium-to-large disability providers fail in close succession. There is no managed

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transition protocol. There is no provider of last resort mechanism for residential disability services equivalent to the protections that exist in the aged care sector. There is no early warning system that would allow the NDIA or the Department to identify financially distressed providers before they reach the point of collapse. National Disability Services has documented this risk across a number of years, and that documentation has not generated an adequate policy response.

26.

The Bill’s provisions, particularly section 34A’s support determination mechanism, will accelerate the financial deterioration of providers in exactly the support categories that are most at risk. A ministerial determination reducing SCCP funding by 50 per cent will, for some providers, be the final event that makes continued operation financially impossible.

27.

Warrah does not raise this to be alarmist. We raise it because we believe the Committee should understand what the failure of the disability sector at scale would actually mean in practice. It would mean elderly parents receiving phone calls to say their son or daughter’s home is closing. It would mean participants with the most complex needs being placed in emergency settings where no one knows them, or more likely being admitted to hospital because there is no available provider with the capacity and specialist knowledge to take them. It would mean the destruction of relationships, care knowledge and behavioural understanding built over decades, which are not incidental features of care for our participants but are central to their health and wellbeing.

28.

We call on the Committee to recommend that the Government develop and publish, before the Bill’s support determination provisions take effect:

• A sector viability impact assessment modelling the effect of current and proposed funding changes on the financial position of registered NDIS providers, with particular attention to SIL and SDA providers;
• A managed transition protocol for participant continuity of care in the event of provider failure, including housing continuity for both SDA and non-SDA residential participants;
• A provider financial distress early warning system to allow the NDIA to identify and respond to failing providers before the point of collapse;
• A minimum notice period of not less than 12 months for any ministerial determination that reduces a support category by more than 20 per cent.

Schedule 2: Fraud and Integrity Measures

29.

Warrah supports the intent of the fraud and integrity provisions in Schedule 2. Fraud in the NDIS harms participants and depletes resources that should reach people with genuine need. The introduction of civil penalty provisions, enhanced information gathering powers, mandatory record keeping, claim time limits, and stronger plan management arrangements are appropriate responses to documented integrity failures.

30.

We note the observation in the second reading amendment moved by Mrs McIntosh that these measures may do little to remove bad actors who are already defrauding the

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scheme. That may be true. However, the measures are necessary as a foundation for better system integrity, and we do not oppose them.

• We ask the Committee to ensure that the compliance burden placed on providers by Schedule 2’s record keeping and information gathering requirements does not fall disproportionately on small and medium not-for-profit providers. Over the past five years, providers such as Warrah have been required to absorb successive efficiency measures while maintaining full compliance with quality and safeguards standards. Administrative capacity has been reduced to the minimum consistent with safe service delivery. The seven-year record retention requirement in section 45B and the enhanced information gathering powers in new Part 3C should be accompanied by clear guidance, proportionate enforcement, and adequate transition periods.

Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Participants

• The second reading amendment moved by Ms Le raises the additional barriers faced by culturally and linguistically diverse communities in accessing and engaging with the NDIS, and calls on the Government to ensure the Bill’s implementation does not impose additional burdens on or further disadvantage CALD participants.

• Warrah endorses this concern. Our experience is that the complexity of the NDIS administrative environment is itself a barrier to equitable outcomes. The restrictions on plan reassessment requests in section 48A, the automated decision-making provisions in sections 59B–59E, and the bureaucratic weight of compliance requirements across the scheme all land more heavily on families who face language barriers, lower digital literacy, or cultural unfamiliarity with Australian administrative processes. The Government should be required to publish a CALD impact assessment before the Bill’s access and planning provisions take effect.

Conclusion

• Warrah Society has served some of the most vulnerable people in our community for more than 60 years. We have navigated policy changes, funding reforms and sector restructuring across that time. We have never raised concerns of this gravity before.

• The people we support cannot absorb further reductions to their funding. They have profound intellectual disability. They do not recover. Their impairments are permanent. Their dependency on consistent, skilled, relationship-based support is profound. The argument that the NDIS needs to be sustainable is correct. But a scheme that funds people with high and complex needs at levels that cannot safely meet those needs

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Sustainable in any meaningful sense. It has simply transferred the cost and the risk onto providers, families and, ultimately, onto the people themselves.

We respectfully urge the Committee to recommend amendments that protect the safety and dignity of participants with the highest support needs, introduce meaningful safeguards for automated decision making, and compel the Government to address the looming risk of sector failure before the most vulnerable Australians pay the price.

Yours faithfully,

Delia Gray Chief Executive Officer warrah@warrah.org.au

Appendix: Summary of Bill Provisions Addressed

This submission directly addresses the following provisions of the Bill, as required by the Committee:

Provision	Subject Matter	Addressed in Submission
Sched 1, Part 2 (s48A)	Conditions for plan reassessment	Section 3 — paragraphs 11-15
Sched 1, Part 4 (s34A)	Support determinations (funding reduction by instrument)	Section 2 — paragraphs 5-10
Sched 1, Part 6 (s34, 17B)	Reasonable and necessary supports; sustainability principles	Sections 2 and 4
Sched 2 (Parts 1-4)	Fraud, civil penalties, records, information gathering	Section 5 — paragraphs 29-31
Sched 3, Part 2 (s59B-59E)	Automated decision making	Section 4 — paragraphs 16-20

• 2R Amendment — Government failure to meet growth targets; fraud response - Sections 2, 5
• 2R Amendment — Le CALD community barriers - Section 6 — paragraphs 32-33
• 2R Amendment — Chaney Robodebt-type risks in automated decision making - Section 4 — paragraphs 17-20
• 2R Amendment — M Ryan Inadequate consultation timeframe - Executive summary and paragraph 15