National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 1971
Committee Secretary Senate Standing Committees on Community Affairs PO Box 6100 Parliament House Canberra ACT 2600 community.affairs.sen@aph.gov.au
Submission to the Senate Inquiry into the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submitted by: Sydney NSW
Dear Senate Community Affairs Committee,
I respectfully ask the Committee to recommend that the Bill not proceed in its current form, and that the underlying 2026/27 Federal Budget settings on which the Bill relies be reversed or substantially redesigned before locking in legislation to contract the proposed changes to the scheme that have not been justified through co-design with the people who will be most affected by those changes.
While I support genuine integrity measures to resign the NDIS that protect participants from exploitation and holds providers fully accountable for fraud and overcharging….. but this Bill as drafted will cause disproportionate harm to participants - particularly those with cognitive, executive function, psycho- social or communication-related disability.
These kinds of disabilities are well recognised and fully understood by a participant’s medical, allied health and supports team who deal with participants in detail several times a week but may seem ‘invisible’ to the casual glance of unqualified budget conscious administrators and/or particularly vulnerable and convenient to ‘Robodebt’ style automation.
The reforms misidentify the problem. They treat participants and small or independent providers as the primary integrity risk, rather than addressing the unregistered provider market and the systemic complexity that enables large scale exploitation of participant’s plans by ‘clever’ unscupulous providers who find weaknesses and loopholes to exploit.
In my 4 years of funding I have needed to cycle through 22 different providers to find my current 5…. all small independent providers because the agencies I contracted treated my Plan as a ‘free-for-all’ telling me I could ‘always apply for more funding’. I am now very strict with my Plan funds and only contract independents where I have greater control over our agreements.
So, instead of addressing the unscupulous processes of dodgy providers, the Bill would shift the burden of compliance and funding exploitation onto the most vulnerable participants. Longer record retention, shorter claim windows, and stricter documentation requirements impose executive function
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 1971
demands that many people with cognitive, intellectual, neuro-developmental, or psycho-social disability cannot reasonably meet without the support workers that the scheme itself would no longer be funding.
In addition automated decision-making and formula-based planning are inappropriate for complex, fluctuating, or co-occurring disability. These approaches systematically disadvantage participants whose needs do not fit standardised assessment tools and risk morphing into another Robodebt-style debacle where our society’s most vulnerable are reduced to tick-boxes and spreadsheets regardless of consequences to participants.
Considering the wide spread social fallout of the Liberal Party’s Robodebt scheme, I am mortified that the current Labor government would remotely consider automated assessments of another demographic of highly vulnerable people that could devolve into a similarly indifferent, inconsiderate and punitive scheme.
I was affected by Robodebt and I am vehemently opposed to automated processing tools!
Finally, the extended far reaching but not obvious effects of removing a participant’s funding have not been considered in this Bill. To offer an example of my personal circumstances….. my housing will be drastically affected if my support worker funding is reduced or if I end up ejected from the NDIS.
After 4 years of concerted effort by my entire medical care team to secure an extra bedroom for an overnight support worker, from my community housing provider who would not accept my multitude of supporting evidence, I have only 2 months ago secured a new property with the extra bedroom allocation and booked in my first overnight support care.
Should my funding be reduced or I be removed from the NDIS, I will lose 2-3 nights of overnight support AND my hard won property with the extra bedroom. I will not be able to afford my overnight care and be forced to move house again to a much smaller property without an extra bedroom for support workers. In other words….I will lose so much more than just the NDIS funding this Bill is concerned with.
I do not believe the far reaching aspects of this Bill have been fully considered and so I respectfully ask the Committee to recommend that the Bill not proceed in its current form, and that the underlying 2026/27 Federal Budget settings on which it relies be reversed or substantially redesigned with considerable disability community participation.
Kind regards.