Submission 2054

Good Morning,

I would like the opportunity to respond to the NDIS Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 to the Community Affairs Legislation Committee for inquiry and report.

There are many concerning aspects of this new legislation that will place participants at significant risk and harm, and essentially undermines the underlying purpose of the NDIS of allowing people to live an ordinary life.

I am particularly concerned about the proposed funding cuts to participants’ budgets, from 1 October 2026, including:

• 10% reduction to capacity building daily activity supports. These supports help people to build their skills, capacity, and improve their independence with daily living skills, essentially allowing them to reduce their reliance on formal paid supports. By reducing funding in this area, NDIS is essentially spending more funding for people to rely on formal support worker assistance for a longer period of time, instead of investing funds into capacity and skills building supports.

• 50% reduction to social, civic and community participation supports. These supports help people build skills, maintain routines, stay connected to the community and participate in everyday life. Cutting these supports impacts a person’s ability to access the community for essential daily living tasks such as banking, grocery shopping, haircuts, consequently isolating them further from society.

• The Bill limits unscheduled plan reassessments to “exceptional circumstances,” which no longer includes if a participant will run out of funding prior to their plan review date. This disadvantages participants whose NDIS plans do not meet their needs in the first place and who may not have a support coordinator or advocate who can alert them of the fact that their funding will not last the duration of their NDIS plan. This will result in people having to go without essential daily care support, placing them at risk of harm and injury, reduced independence, and social isolation for potentially months at a time.

• Using the I-CAN tool for plan assessments and to determine funding allocations. The I-CAN was developed as a structured instrument to classify and describe support needs - it was not designed as a budget-setting mechanism. Converting classification data into funding ceilings or automated allocations represents a fundamental shift in purpose. This essentially affects the reliability and validity of this assessment tool and creates concern that planners/delegates may effectively be required to accept automated outputs without meaningful discretion. Without clear methodological transparency, this creates significant risk. There is concern that the proposed NDIA implementation of the I-CAN assessment tool, may materially alter the conditions of how the I-CAN is administered, interpreted, and contextualised in ways that undermine the integrity of the tool. I propose the following recommendations to mitigate risk associated with use of the I-CAN tool: o Clear articulation of how I-CAN and PECQ outputs are translated into funding amounts. o Release of worked examples across low, medium and high-complexity scenarios (including 24/7 supports). o Independent validation demonstrating that the budgeting methodology accurately reflects real-world cost of support delivery. o Confirmation that planners retain genuine discretion to depart from tool-generated budgets where complexity, risk or evidence warrants adjustment.

• The proposed Bill moves away from diagnosis-based access to the scheme and instead focuses on functional capacity impact to determine access. However, the way functional capacity is assessed will be different, and will not consider a person’s environment, context, or assistive technology/home modifications they use. Not considering these aspects is not an accurate measure of functional

Submission 2054

capacity and you cannot remove these factors from a person’s daily life to determine their level of functioning, as these factors are always present in their lives and subsequently affect their daily functioning. This new definition of functional capacity will result in incorrect assessments of a person’s disability, functional impairment, and daily support needs, resulting in increased reliance on family/informal supports, greater pressure on hospitals, incorrect support ratios, and increased safety risks.

• I am concerned that the proposed increase in automated decision-making within the legislation could reduce the ability to identify and respond to individual needs, resulting in participants receiving supports that do not appropriately reflect their circumstances, functional capacity, or lived experience.

• There is a lack of clarity regarding assessor qualifications, independence, professional standards and governance arrangements under the proposed Support Needs Assessment model. Indications that assessments may be conducted by NDIA-employed assessors rather than independent allied health professionals, raise significant concerns regarding expertise, professional accountability and perceived or actual bias. If NDIA-employed assessors are not registered professionals, it is unclear what code of ethics they are bound by, what professional standards govern their conduct, what independent complaint or disciplinary mechanisms exist, what ongoing competency requirements are mandated. If NDIA employees without equivalent allied health qualifications are undertaking these assessments, there is a risk that:

  • Assessments may rely predominantly on structured data entry rather than clinical reasoning;
  • Nuanced complexity may not be adequately identified or articulated;
  • High-risk indicators may be missed;
  • Functional needs may be under-classified due to lack of probing or contextual analysis.

• If assessors are employed directly by the NDIA, the same agency responsible for funding decisions, this creates a structural conflict of interest. The assessment outcome directly influences the budget determination.

• If a participant’s budget is determined by an assessment tool output and the only pathway for challenge is to re-run or review that same assessment, this creates a closed-loop system. Participants may be left in a position where they cannot challenge the funding outcome directly, the only remedy is to repeat the same structured assessment, the same tool produces the same outcome, the Tribunal may be confined to reviewing whether the process was followed rather than interrogating the underlying methodology. This is not a meaningful review at all, it is structured repetition and frankly a waste of NDIS time. A legitimate review pathway must involve consideration of additional evidence, allow for the interpretation of evidence to be challenged, depart from tool-generated ceilings, and scrutiny of whether the funding amount meets reasonable and necessary criteria. Having a closed-loop reassessment pathway strips participants of fundamental human rights for review and appeals of funding decisions, which has a significant impact upon their daily lives.

• Concern that increased automation and standardisation within the proposed New Framework Planning model may undermine the individualised, rights-based foundations of the NDIS. Any reform that shifts decision-making toward algorithmic or tool-driven outputs must be carefully scrutinised to ensure these foundational principles are not eroded.

• Concern that the proposed assessment model does not sufficiently recognise or utilise the existing skilled workforce within the disability sector. Within the Occupational Therapy profession alone, there is already a well-trained and experienced workforce with expertise in functional assessment, disability support planning, environmental analysis and risk assessment. Occupational Therapists routinely undertake complex functional capacity assessments across Australia and are highly experienced in evaluating the interaction between impairment, environment and support needs. Rather than

Submission 2054

developing a new workforce model within the NDIA, there is a significant opportunity to leverage this existing capability.

These proposed changes to the Bill are likely to result in the following unwanted consequences:

• Shift pressure onto unpaid carers and mainstream systems, disproportionately impacting working women and increasing stress and strain on families.

• Increase workforce instability, as small providers will no longer remain viable in this system due to funding cuts.

• Make rural/regional service delivery more difficult and essentially alienate rural/regional NDIS participants so they are unable to access essential services, placing them at significant risk of harm.

• Place NDIS participants at harm and shift risk to participants, families, and communities.

These proposed changes impact me as a small business owner by affecting my future planning and sustainability, increasing stress and uncertainty, and impacting the clients I work with on a daily basis by having to explain that their funding will be significantly reduced and they may not be able to access the supports they require.

NDIS sustainability cannot be achieved through measures that reduce access, weaken safeguards, increase hardship, and transfer costs onto disabled people, families, and other systems. Many of these changes carry profound human rights implications.

I want Parliament to change the Bill to ensure that there are no reductions to participants’ access to occupational therapy, capacity building supports or community participation supports. I urge the Committee to ensure that reforms:

• strengthen the evidentiary foundations of decision-making;

• preserve a whole-of-person understanding of disability;

• protect the role of allied health evidence;

• maintain procedural fairness and safeguarding protections; and

• avoid repeating failures that have already contributed to participant harm, inequitable outcomes, and increased exploitation risk.

I urge the Committee to recommend:

1. Delaying implementation pending meaningful consultation and impact assessment.

2. Removing or substantially limiting Ministerial powers to impose broad funding cuts.

3. Retaining environmental and personal factors within functional capacity assessments.

4. Protecting the right to refuse treatment without losing Scheme access.

5. Strengthening safeguards around plan suspension and participant contact.

6. Prohibiting fully, and safeguarding partially, automated eligibility and planning decisions.

7. Protecting community participation and capacity building supports.

8. Requiring Category A Rule status for key definitions and funding powers.

9. Conducting comprehensive human rights, gender, First Nations, and socioeconomic impact assessments.

Submission 2054

10. Ensuring foundational supports exist and are adequately funded before restricting NDIS access.

I would also encourage the Committee to adopt Occupational Therapy Australia’s recommendations and express support for the No OT, No NDIS campaign.

Thank you for your time in reading my submission.

Kind regards,