Submission 1915

Attn. Legislative Affairs Committee

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

I make this submission in strong opposition to the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026. While I support the long-term sustainability of the NDIS and recognise the need for effective reform, I do not support reform achieved by weakening participant protections, reducing individualisation, limiting review rights, or expanding executive power at the expense of disabled people.

The changes to the NDIS being proposed in this Bill (as a whole) are enabling the scheme to be dramatically altered from the NDIS that was initially legislated in 2013 and even departs significantly from the 2024 legislation. This Bill rewrites the scheme so far away from the original intent, principles and promise of the scheme that was rolled out between 2016 – 2020, that it will be barely recognisable. I fear this Bill will return us to the Australia of 20 years ago in terms of disability supports (and potentially even worse because those systems no longer exist).

I have been a self-managed NDIS participant since 2016, when it commenced in my area. I have lived with Multiple Sclerosis for 35 years and now have Secondary Progressive MS, a condition characterised by ongoing neurological deterioration and the accumulation of disability over time. Over the last decade, my mobility, spasticity, fatigue, capacity to undertake activities of daily living, and ability to participate socially and in the community have all declined significantly. I now rely on support for personal care, continence management, meal preparation, domestic tasks, and safe mobility within and outside the home. I use a walker, mobility scooter or wheelchair depending on circumstances. My support needs are substantial and will likely increase over time.

My concerns arise not only from my disability and support needs, but also from many years of direct experience engaging with the NDIS and the NDIA. During that time, I have repeatedly encountered inadequate planning outcomes, inconsistent decision-making, adversarial processes, and unnecessary bureaucracy, requiring participants to fight for supports that should have been assessed fairly and lawfully in the first place. In my experience the agency approaches interactions from a defensive and oppositional position, rather than as a partner in supporting participants. Against this background, I am deeply concerned that the Bill would entrench and expand powers within a system that already fails many participants.

This Bill does not secure the future of the NDIS by improving fairness, efficiency or integrity. Instead, it disproportionately shifts risk onto participants, families and carers, weakens safeguards, and enables critical matters affecting access to essential supports to be determined through broad delegated powers with limited accountability. Reform should instead focus on systemic inefficiencies, waste and fraud within the marketplace, the scheme, and the NDIA itself.

I am particularly concerned that the Bill will move the scheme away from genuine choice and control and toward more standardised, rationed, and congregated models of support.

Submission 1915

Reasonable and necessary supports are constrained by generic functional capacity assessments, arbitrary thresholds, or decision-makers without sufficient understanding of complex conditions, participants will be denied support that reflects their actual circumstances. In my case, this includes the complexity of Secondary Progressive MS and the reality that support needs evolve over time despite appropriate treatment.

The Bill raises serious concerns about the erosion of individualised planning, increased reliance on standardised assessments, narrowing of review rights, expansion of delegated executive power, and the shifting of costs onto participants, families, carers, and other systems. The Bill should not be passed in its current form.

My principal concerns are outlined below.

Broad Ministerial Powers and Reduced Parliamentary Oversight

The Bill concentrates excessive power in the Minister and allows significant matters to be determined through delegated legislation. This reduces transparency and weakens democratic accountability. Powers affecting funding, support categories and participant rights must be narrowly confined and subject to full parliamentary scrutiny. The interoperability of these powers and other parts of the legislation will have dramatic implications for existing participants.

Recommendation: Introduce guardrails, transparency, and retain parliamentary oversight

Individualised Planning and Reasonable and Necessary Supports

This Bill changes the underpinning Objects and Principles of the act in alarming ways.

Section 31 currently contains XXX principles recognising participants as individuals with unique goals, aspirations and support needs. These principles guide the NDIA, reviewing bodies and courts in interpreting and applying the scheme consistently with its purpose and protective intent. The Bill repeals most of these principles. Although some may be relocated, important protections supporting genuinely individualised planning are weakened or removed.

The Bill would allow the Minister, by legislative instrument, to reduce funding under s 34A and cap categories of support for cohorts of participants under s 33(2EA), without adequate individual safeguards or review rights.

These powers would enable across-the-board reductions or caps to supports already assessed as reasonable and necessary, regardless of individual circumstances. The initial categories identified—social, community and civic participation and capacity-building supports—are not discretionary in my case. They are essential to enable my everyday activities, including attending medical appointments, accessing therapy, travelling safely, and participating in community life. They also provide physiotherapy to help me maintain what function I do have and slow decline, as well as occupational therapy and assistive technology assessments required for home modifications and capital supports.

Submission 1915

If these powers are used to reduce ANY category of my supports, I would be placed at risk, forced to go without essential assistance, and likely to experience further decline in functional capacity, independence and mental health. This would increase pressure on informal supports, crisis services and the health system. My informal supports already provide substantial care; additional strain could force them to reduce or leave paid employment, shifting costs to other Commonwealth systems rather than delivering genuine savings.

Recommendation: Section 31 should be retained in full to preserve recognition of participants as individuals and ensure planning decisions are guided by principles that support genuine individualisation. The legislation must include a clear mechanism for exemption or appeal where a participant would be placed at risk by reductions to supports already deemed reasonable and necessary. Section 34A and section 33(2EA) must require mandatory co-design—or, at minimum, c onsultation with the disability community—and publication of an impact statement before any reduction is made. Affected participants must retain full merits review rights.

Functional Capacity Assessments and Reassessment from 2028

The proposed functional capacity assessments, and large-scale reassessment of existing participants from 2028, risks reducing participants to standardised categories that fail to capture the real impact of disability. Generic assessment tools may not adequately account for fluctuating conditions, progressive illness, fatigue, cumulative impairment, or interactions between physical, cognitive and social barriers.

For participants with conditions such as Secondary Progressive MS, a poorly applied assessment could result in underfunding, inappropriate supports, and repeated stress from continually proving established needs.

Recommendation: Any functional capacity framework must be co-designed with disabled people and relevant experts, allow proper consideration of condition-specific evidence, and not replace individualised assessment of reasonable and necessary supports. Participants must retain full review rights where assessments result in reduced supports or altered eligibility.

The “All Appropriate Treatment” Test for Permanence

The proposed “all appropriate treatment” requirement in s25A(3) raises serious concerns because it is vague, open to interpretation, and may create unfair barriers for people with chronic, progressive, or complex conditions. What counts as “appropriate” treatment can vary depending on decision-makers, access to services, affordability, and changing medical guidelines.

It risks pressuring participants into burdensome, low-value or clinically inappropriate treatments to meet administrative requirements, undermining informed consent and patient autonomy. It may disadvantage people with long-standing conditions who have spent years pursuing treatment options and cannot reasonably be expected to continually re-document every intervention.

For existing participants being reassessed, these issues are further compounded by concerns about NDIA record-keeping and data integrity. Missing historical medical records or treatment

Submission 1915

evidence could unfairly affect participants’ ability to demonstrate they have pursued appropriate treatment, placing an unreasonable burden of proof on individuals with well-established and progressive conditions such as MS.

• Recommendation: Amend s 25A so that permanence may be established where appropriately qualified clinical evidence demonstrates that an impairment is enduring, stable or deteriorating, even if not all possible or theoretical treatments have been undertaken. The legislation must make clear that participants are not required to pursue unreasonable, inaccessible, experimental, low-value, or clinically inappropriate treatments. It should also explicitly recognise that treatment is not required where it would not materially alter functional capacity or long-term outcomes.

5. Automated Decision-Making and Lack of Individual Review

The increasing use of automated processes and algorithmic decision-making is particularly concerning in a scheme that already struggles to accurately reflect individual circumstances. Decisions about disability supports directly affect safety, health, independence and dignity; they should not be reduced to opaque systems that participants cannot understand, interrogate or effectively challenge.

A fundamental issue underpinning any move toward automation is the reliability and completeness of the data on which these systems rely. Serious questions must be asked about the accuracy of participant records as they currently exist within the NDIA. Data integrity and records management have long been identified as areas of concern. Participant files may be incomplete, inconsistently categorised, or missing critical documentation. For example, it is unclear whether reports and clinical evidence provided over many years of plan reviews have been properly captured, indexed, and retained in an accessible and usable form. Where evidence has been misfiled, duplicated, or not linked to the correct decision-making processes, there is a real risk that automated systems will operate on an incomplete or distorted understanding of a participant’s circumstances.

There are also broader concerns about the use of artificial intelligence systems that operate outside their original or “native” contexts. Tools trained on generalised datasets, or adapted from other administrative domains, may not adequately capture the complexity, variability and nuance of disability. Without careful design, validation and oversight, such systems risk embedding inappropriate assumptions, oversimplifying lived experience, and producing outputs that appear consistent but are fundamentally unsound.

• Recommendation: If automation is to be used at all, it must be strictly limited, transparent and subject to robust safeguards. At a minimum, this must include clear disclosure when automated tools are used in decision-making; accessible explanations of how decisions are reached; regular independent auditing of system performance; and rigorous data governance to ensure accuracy, completeness and proper record linkage. Participants must have a clear, accessible right to review and correct their records before those records are relied upon, and all automated decisions must be subject to timely human review and override where necessary, and full merits appeal rights.

Submission 1915

Automatically Renewed Plans and Non-Rollover of One-Off Funding

Where plans automatically renew, one-off funding—such as for assistive technology or home modifications—will not carry over. This creates a problem where supports have been quoted, ordered, or are still in progress at plan end.

A plan renewal is not a reviewable decision. According to the Explanatory Memorandum, this is because renewed plans repeat earlier planning decisions. However, these automatically renewed plans (Section 50A successor plans) will have new features automatically incorporated in them, such as funding periods, support determinations, maximum funding etc. Consequently, these auto renewed plans might substantially affect participants’ supports and should properly be treated as new decisions, with participants having the right to review.

Recommendation: Amend s 50A to ensure that one-off funding that has been quoted, ordered, or otherwise actioned before plan expiry carries over until the support is delivered and claimed. Include safeguards around 50A renewals to ensure there is a clear, accessible mechanism for review where a participant would be placed at risk by reductions to supports already deemed reasonable and necessary.

Review and Appeal Rights

The Bill raises significant concerns about the erosion of review and appeal rights, which are fundamental safeguards within the NDIS. Participants must not be left without a meaningful, accessible and effective avenue to challenge decisions that directly affect their daily living, safety, hhealth, independence and capacity to participate in society.

Merits review is a critical protection in a system where participants depend on lawful, evidence-based decisions to access essential supports. Without robust review rights, incorrect, unsafe or unfair decisions may persist uncorrected, with serious and sometimes irreversible consequences.

Of particular concern is the cumulative effect of several proposed changes—especially the weakening of section 31 principles, together with powers to reduce or cap supports under provisions such as section 34A and section 33(2EA). These changes risk constraining not only initial decision-making, but also the scope and effectiveness of review. If the legislative framework itself is narrowed—so that decision-makers are no longer clearly required to give full effect to individualised need—then reviewing bodies, including the Administrative Review Tribunal (ART), are similarly constrained.

In practical terms, this raises the risk that the ART will be “reviewing within limits” set by a diminished legislative framework, rather than conducting a genuinely independent reassessment of what is reasonable and necessary for the individual. If categories of support can be capped or reduced at a cohort level, or if decision-making is guided by weakened principles, the ability of the Tribunal to fully remedy unfair or inadequate decisions may be significantly undermined.

This is particularly troubling considering the existing operation of the scheme. There is a well-established pattern of participants succeeding on merits review. The fact that a substantial

Submission 1915

The proportion of ART (and previously AAT) decisions have found in favour of participants strongly suggests that the agency has, in many cases, failed to apply the legislation correctly at first instance. It also indicates that independent review is not only necessary but functioning as an essential corrective mechanism within the system.

Against that background, any reform that limits access to review, narrows the legal framework within which review occurs, or reduces the matters that can be meaningfully challenged, risks entrenching existing problems rather than resolving them. There is also a legitimate concern that the agency is, in some instances, already operating in ways that do not fully align with the current legislative framework. Weakening that framework further may effectively legitimise poor decision-making practices, rather than requiring them to be corrected.

Recommendation: Participants must retain the ability to challenge not only individual decisions, but also the underlying application of policy, categorisation of supports, and interpretation of what is “reasonable and necessary.” Strengthen review rights by ensuring full access to merits review, preserving strong legislative principles that guide decision-making, and maintaining the ability of independent bodies to assess each case on individual merits without being constrained.

8. Unscheduled Reassessments and Delayed Decision-Making

The Bill introduces stricter thresholds for unscheduled reassessments and extends decision timeframes from 21 to 90 days without a deemed refusal safeguard. Ninety days is unacceptably long for participants to go without necessary supports.

For individuals with degenerative conditions, increasing needs may be predictable, but still require timely reassessment.

Recommendation: Retain the 21-day timeframe, restore the deemed decision safeguard, and remove the “unanticipated” requirement for degenerative conditions or where increased reliance on informal supports necessitates reassessment.

9. Transitional Rule-Making Power

Schedule 5 introduces a broad transitional rule-making power allowing the Minister to modify how the Act operates for 12 months. This is effectively a Henry VIII clause that raises serious rule-of-law concerns by bypassing parliamentary scrutiny and creating regulatory uncertainty.

Recommendation: This power must be significantly narrowed by limiting its scope to defined transitional issues, reducing its duration, requiring mandatory consultation, and mandating publication of impact statements before use.

Conclusion

For the reasons outlined above, the Bill in its current form would undermine core features of the NDIS, including individualised support, meaningful review rights, participant safeguards and accountability. It exposes current and future participants to significant risk while shifting costs onto families, carers and other systems.

I urge the Committee to recommend that the Bill not be passed unless it is substantially amended to restore participant protections, preserve genuine individualisation, and ensure reform is developed transparently and in genuine partnership with disabled people.

Yours sincerely