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

Submission 2004

I am a disabled participant on the NDIS and a tertiary educator. I recently completed my PhD in History at the University of Sydney. I am very concerned about the content of this bill, the broad overreach of ministerial powers, and the impact it will have on disabled Australians.

The planned cuts are arbitrary and extremely cruel. Australia spends less on disability supports than many OECD countries. When disability supports are withdrawn, they don’t go away, they just get pushed onto hospitals, families, employers, and crisis services. The NDIS creates jobs and allows disabled people to live full lives. When the scheme was first introduced, we were told the goal was to get disabled people out of institutions and back into the community. Now we are being told this is too expensive.

This legislation will make it harder for many participants to choose our own support workers and live in independent accommodation. Pushing people back into group homes costs more, not less. The average group home resident requires an annual plan of $400,000. If people go without necessary supports, they deteriorate, leave the workforce, and end up trapped at home. Again, this will lead to a greater burden on the health system and other areas of the budget. Cutting supports doesn’t save money, it costs lives.

There are certainly structural problems with the NDIS, but none of these problems will be addressed by this legislation. Issues of fraud are also not addressed by this legislation. Fraud is overwhelmingly perpetrated by providers, but this bill targets participants.

Regarding some of the key interventions of the bill:

• Automated decision making cannot account for the complexity and specificity of disabled lives. The government has apparently learnt nothing from the Robodebt scandal. No one should go without necessary supports just because their needs don’t fit into a template.
• Limiting unscheduled plan reassessments will remove a crucial avenue for participants to apply for necessary supports when our needs change. In the past I have had to apply for an unscheduled review due to needing urgent wheelchair repairs. I am now funded for a 5 year plan, but my wheelchair is 4 years old and won’t last for another 5 years. On average wheelchairs need replacing every 3-5 years. Some funding categories are not automatically indexed for inflation, which is also a major issue for rolling plans when costs can rise dramatically from year to year.
• The bill does not account for the specific needs of particular communities, including First Nations disabled participants, for whom there are still great barriers in accessing both the scheme itself and funded supports. There is no First Nations cultural strategy.
• The category of “social, economic and community participation” covers support work funding for anything that requires leaving the home. Without these supports, disabled people will be trapped in our homes and many people will lose the ability to live independently, work, study and contribute to our communities. These aren’t luxuries, they are the basic features of lives worth living.

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

Submission 2004

• The category of “capacity building daily activities” covers essential supports like exercise physiology and physiotherapy. Many disabled people require these supports to maintain current function and prevent deterioration. For me and many others, losing funding in this category would be devastating and could lead to hospitalisation. These are not “safe” categories to target. These categories are funded in the first place because they are essential, reasonable and necessary supports.

• Plans should absolutely not be suspended or revoked if “reasonable attempts to contact the participant” have failed. A few years ago my support worker got a phone call from a planner regarding an NDIS participant who she hadn’t seen in years. That participant was a nonspeaking disabled woman with a full time job and a degree from the University of Sydney. The planner called her former support worker instead of emailing the participant directly. If the agency cannot establish contact with a participant, or a participant cannot gather expensive medical reports at short notice, it should not be assumed that the participant is at fault. NDIA staff rarely communicate via the times and methods that suit participants. The agency’s failures of communication should never lead to funding being suspended or removed.

• Requiring participants to have completed “all appropriate treatment” to access the scheme is highly fraught. Disabled people should not have to undergo expensive, unnecessary medical treatment just to access supports to live a decent life. The scheme is not means tested, but not everyone can afford or access “all appropriate treatment”. Equally, treatment that is considered “appropriate” for a certain condition is not necessarily appropriate for everyone. I have heard cases of people being told they did not meet the access criteria because they had not attempted dangerous surgeries with low success rates. Nobody would refuse medical treatment that might improve their functional capacity if that treatment is safe, affordable and accessible. Effectively this will be used as a technicality to gatekeep supports from people in genuine need, ie those who have otherwise satisfied the permanency and functional impact requirements.

It is appalling that after the Disability Royal Commission revealed so much abuse and neglect in institutional settings, the government’s response is to enact a bill that will erode disabled people’s autonomy and flexibility of supports.

If passed, this bill will have devastating consequences. Future generations of disabled Australians will suffer greatly. I hope that the parliamentary committee will consider that there are many disabled Australians who oppose the bill, but have been unable to make a submission given the tight timeframe. Not everyone has the necessary skillset to read, understand, and respond to parliamentary legislation at short notice and without support. For every submission that you are reading, there are many more voices going unheard.