Submission 2069 — Name Withheld — NDIS Future Generations Bill | External submission

National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 2069

Introduction

I make this submission as the parent of three children with disability. I am not writing from a theoretical position. I am writing from the daily reality of parenting children with complex support needs, while also trying to keep a household functioning, remain employed, manage appointments, therapy, school communication, emotional regulation, family stress, cost-of-living pressures, and the never-ending administrative burden that comes with disability systems.

Parenting is already a complex task. Parenting disabled tweens and teens is another level again. These are not small children who can be easily carried into appointments, redirected with a sticker chart, or slotted into a generic playgroup. They are growing humans with emerging identities, complex social worlds, increasing educational demands, puberty, mental health vulnerabilities, sensory needs, exhaustion, masking, anxiety, and very real support needs that change quickly and sometimes unpredictably.

The NDIS is not an optional extra for families like mine. It is the diƯerence between early support and crisis. It is the diƯerence between children developing skills in a way that is safe, individualised and meaningful, or families being told to wait until things deteriorate enough to meet a more restrictive threshold. It is the diƯerence between children being genuinely supported to participate, and parents being handed a worksheet or invited to a group program that does not meet the child’s needs.

I understand the importance of sustainability, fraud prevention and public accountability. Families who rely on the NDIS also want the Scheme to be sustainable. We do not want fraud. We do not want exploitation. We do not want poor-quality providers taking funds away from participants. However, sustainability cannot be achieved by shifting administrative risk, ﬁnancial stress and service gaps onto families who are already stretched beyond capacity.

The Bill proposes signiﬁcant changes to access, reassessment, funding, plan suspension, automation and functional capacity. These changes must be amended to ensure they do not cause foreseeable harm to disabled children and their families.

The amendments I seek are:

That proposed section 34A be withdrawn from the Bill.
That proposed Item 19 – subsection 48(3) retain the current 21-day timeframe, with allowances made for clearly non-urgent requests.
That proposed subsection 30(1A) not allow a person’s participant status to be revoked for being “not contactable”; this should relate only to suspension, with clear safeguards.
That strict safeguards be placed on any use of automation or AI, including a prohibition on fully automated eligibility or funding decisions.
That proposed subsection 9B(1) be removed, and that functional capacity continue to be assessed in a holistic, contextual and disability-informed way.

National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment Bill 2026 Submission Page 1 of 11

National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 2069

Proposed section 34A should be withdrawn

Proposed section 34A would allow the Minister, by legislative instrument, to reduce funding for speciﬁed groups of supports in old framework plans for the purpose of Scheme sustainability. The Bill states that the Minister may determine a percentage lower than 100 per cent by which a funding component amount is reduced, and that this can apply to speciﬁed groups of supports. It also expressly states that the determination can have eƯect even if the funding provided is less than the total cost of a reasonable and necessary support, or less than the total cost of all reasonable and necessary supports in the plan.

This is deeply concerning.

The NDIS was established around individualised planning, reasonable and necessary supports, and choice and control. Proposed section 34A appears to create a mechanism where a participant may be assessed as needing a support, and the support may still be considered reasonable and necessary, but the funding available to actually obtain that support can be reduced at a category level. That is not genuine individualised planning. That is a budget cut applied through a legislative mechanism.

The Explanatory Memorandum conﬁrms that the support determination does not change the text of the participant’s plan or the original decision about what supports are reasonable and necessary; it simply reduces the funding available to the participant for that group of supports. This creates a troubling disconnect: a child’s needs may be recognised on paper, but the family may be left without enough funding to obtain the support.

For families, this is not an abstract legal concern. This is the reality of having to decide which child misses therapy this month, whether to pause occupational therapy to aƯord psychology, whether to delay an assistive technology trial, whether to cancel parent coaching, or whether to wait until a child is in crisis before seeking additional help.

This provision also undermines trust. Families are already being asked to manage NDIS budgets carefully, often in increasingly restrictive funding periods or categories. Where there has been no misuse, no fraud, no overspending, and no evidence of irresponsible use, families should not be subjected to blanket reductions that treat them as a Scheme cost rather than as people using supports responsibly.

I am particularly concerned about the likely impact on capacity building and community participation. The government’s own materials identify reductions to social, civic and community participation and capacity building daily activity budgets. The Explanatory Memorandum gives an example of a 50 per cent reduction to assistance with social, economic and community participation. These are not “luxury” supports. For disabled children and young people, participation is where identity, conﬁdence, friendships, emotional regulation, motor skills, independence and community belonging are built.

For my children, and many children like them, participation does not happen by simply dropping them at a group. It often requires skilled, individualised, relational support. It requires someone

National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment Bill 2026 Submission Page 2 of 11

National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 2069

who understands the child’s sensory proﬁle, communication style, anxiety, executive functioning, motor planning, social safety and regulation needs. Cutting these supports does not make the child less disabled. It makes the family more isolated and increases the risk of crisis.

Requested amendment: Proposed section 34A should be withdrawn. If government wishes to alter funding rules for support categories, this should occur through transparent, co-designed, participant-centred processes with individual review rights, not through broad ministerial determinations that can leave reasonable and necessary supports underfunded.

Item 19 – subsection 48(3) should retain the 21-day timeframe

The Bill proposes to amend subsection 48(3) so that, where a participant-requested reassessment is made in accordance with the new requirements and the conditions in proposed section 48A are satisﬁed, the CEO must respond within 90 days, rather than the current 21 days.

I strongly oppose this change.

The current 21-day timeframe is often not met in practice. Extending the statutory timeframe to 90 days does not solve that problem; it normalises delay. Families already wait too long for decisions, and children do not pause their development, distress, school refusal, unsafe behaviours, equipment needs or family breakdown while the Agency processes paperwork.

For families with disabled children, the need for a reassessment often arises because something has already gone wrong. A child’s functioning has deteriorated. A carer has become unwell. A school placement is breaking down. A child has entered puberty and their regulation, safety or personal care needs have changed. A family can no longer sustain the informal support load. A therapy plan has identiﬁed urgent unmet needs. A child’s assistive technology is no longer ﬁt for purpose. These are not minor administrative matters.

Proposed section 48A already narrows the circumstances in which a participant-requested reassessment can occur. It requires a signiﬁcant change to ongoing support needs arising from an eligible impairment, linked to a signiﬁcant and ongoing alteration in functional capacity or an unanticipated, signiﬁcant and ongoing alteration in living, education, work or informal support arrangements. If the threshold for requesting reassessment is already being tightened, there is even less justiﬁcation for allowing the Agency 90 days to respond.

For a family in genuine need, 90 days is a very long time. It is a school term. It is enough time for a child to disengage from school, for parent burnout to become clinical burnout, for a sibling relationship to deteriorate, for a young person’s mental health to decline, or for a family to stop using support altogether because the process feels impossible.

I accept that not every reassessment request is urgent. Some requests may relate to planning improvements or non-urgent adjustments. There may be a place for triage. But the baseline legal timeframe should not be extended to 90 days for all valid requests.

National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment Bill 2026 Submission Page 3 of 11

National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 2069

Requested amendment: Retain the 21-day timeframe in subsection 48(3). If necessary, allow a separate pathway for clearly non-urgent requests, but preserve a timely response for families facing deterioration, crisis, safety concerns, carer breakdown or urgent developmental need.

Proposed subsection 30(1A) should not allow revocation of participant status for being “not contactable”

The Bill proposes to insert subsection 30(1A), allowing the CEO to revoke a person’s status as an NDIS participant if the CEO is satisﬁed that reasonable attempts have been made to contact the participant for information or reports and the participant is not contactable, or if the participant’s plan has been suspended under section 40A for at least 90 days.

I strongly oppose the use of the word “revoke” in this context.

There is a signiﬁcant diƯerence between suspending a plan while contact is re-established and revoking a person’s status as a participant. Revocation is a severe consequence. It risks removing a person from the Scheme not because they no longer have a disability, not because they no longer meet access, and not because their support needs have resolved, but because the system has failed to make contact.

This is particularly dangerous for disabled people and families experiencing precisely the kinds of circumstances that make communication diƯicult: psychosocial disability, cognitive disability, family violence, homelessness, hospitalisation, grief, carer burnout, digital exclusion, language barriers, poverty, natural disasters, unstable housing, executive functioning diƯiculties, or simply the administrative overload that comes with disability and parenting.

The Bill’s proposed section 40A allows suspension where the CEO has made reasonable attempts to contact the participant and the participant is not contactable. It also states that a suspension decision is reviewable. Suspension is already a serious step. Revocation after 90 days is disproportionate.

As a parent, I ﬁnd this frightening. Families caring for disabled children are often drowning in communication: school emails, therapy reports, medical referrals, plan managers, NDIS portals, invoices, reviews, consent forms, specialist appointments and crisis management. Missing a call, failing to see an email, losing access to an old phone number, or not understanding the signiﬁcance of a letter should not put a child’s participant status at risk.

For tweens and teens, the consequences may be severe. Adolescence is often when disability- related needs become more complex, not less. If a family becomes overwhelmed and misses contact, that is often a sign they need more support, not a reason to revoke access.

Requested amendment: Proposed subsection 30(1A) should be amended so that failure to contact a participant can only result in suspension, not revocation of participant status. At minimum, the legislation should require:

 90 days’ notice of intent to suspend;

National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment Bill 2026 Submission Page 4 of 11

National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 2069

 secondary warnings at 60 days and 30 days;

 contact through multiple methods, including phone, email, post, portal, nominee, plan nominee, child representative, support coordinator, plan manager and known providers where consent allows;

 accessible communication formats;

 clear appeal and reinstatement pathways;

 safeguards for children, people with psychosocial disability, people with cognitive disability, families in crisis, and people without advocacy support.

No participant should lose Scheme access because they were diƯicult to contact.

Strict safeguards are required for automation and AI

The Bill proposes new provisions allowing the CEO to arrange for computer programs to take administrative action under designated provisions. The Bill also includes safeguards, such as requiring notice to state that administrative action was taken by a computer program and requiring publication of designated provisions on the Agency website. However, it also states that failure to comply with some safeguard provisions does not aƯect the validity of the administrative action taken by the computer program.

This is not strong enough.

The NDIS deals with some of the most consequential administrative decisions in a disabled person’s life: access, funding, supports, reviews, suspensions, and the practical ability to live safely and participate in community. These decisions are too important to be made, or functionally determined, by automated systems without strict limits and meaningful human accountability.

Automation may have a place in simple administrative processing. It should not be used to make fully automated eligibility decisions, funding decisions, reassessment decisions, plan reduction decisions, suspension decisions, or decisions that materially aƯect a participant’s supports.

The risk is not only that an algorithm makes a wrong decision. The risk is that families will be unable to understand why a decision was made, unable to correct incorrect assumptions, and unable to meaningfully challenge the process. Families already struggle to navigate NDIS language and systems. Automation could make that worse if it hides decision-making behind internal rules, risk ﬂags, scoring systems or opaque data-matching.

For children, this is especially dangerous. A child’s presentation cannot be reduced to data points. Children mask. Children ﬂuctuate. Children may function well in one setting and collapse in another. Families provide invisible scaƯolding that automated systems may not see. A child may appear “low support” because a parent has quietly given up paid work, sleep, social connection and ﬁnancial security to hold everything together.

National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment Bill 2026 Submission Page 5 of 11

National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 2069

Any use of AI or automation must be designed around the people most likely to be harmed by error: children, people with cognitive disability, people with psychosocial disability, First Nations participants, culturally and linguistically diverse families, rural and remote families, people without advocates, and families already in crisis.

Requested amendment: The Bill should include strict safeguards for automation, including:

 a prohibition on fully automated eligibility decisions;

 a prohibition on fully automated funding or plan reduction decisions;

 a prohibition on fully automated suspension or revocation decisions;

 strict limits on automation to low-risk administrative tasks only;

 mandatory notice where automation has contributed to a decision;

 a clear right to human review of any automated or automation-assisted decision;

 transparency regarding the algorithms, rules, data sources and risk indicators used;

 independent oversight and regular public reporting;

 mandatory bias, disability rights and human rights impact assessments;

 accessible explanations of automated decisions;

 safeguards for participants without advocacy, digital literacy or stable support networks.

Automation must never become a way to process disabled people more eƯiciently at the cost of fairness, humanity and safety.

Proposed subsection 9B(1) should be removed

Proposed subsection 9B(1) deﬁnes functional capacity as a person’s ability to undertake an activity without assistance from other people, assistive technology or modiﬁcations, and in a context that excludes, as far as possible, the impact of the person’s environmental and personal circumstances.

I am deeply concerned by this deﬁnition.

Disability does not exist in a vacuum. Functional capacity is not an abstract measure of what a person can do in an imaginary neutral environment, stripped of their context, supports, relationships, safety needs, sensory environment, developmental stage, trauma history, family capacity, school demands, or community barriers.

For children and young people, this is particularly problematic. Children do not function independently from their environment. Their capacity is relational, developmental and contextual. A child may be able to complete a task with a trusted adult, in a regulated environment, with familiar routines and appropriate sensory supports, but be unable to do so in a busy classroom, unfamiliar clinic, shopping centre, playground, bus, school camp or community activity.

National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment Bill 2026 Submission Page 6 of 11

National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 2069

Similarly, assistive technology and modiﬁcations are not artiﬁcial extras. They are often the very tools that allow disabled people to participate. Deﬁning functional capacity by excluding assistive technology and modiﬁcations risks framing support as something that masks “true” capacity, rather than as an essential part of access and participation.

The Explanatory Memorandum says the intent is to conﬁne assessment to a person’s intrinsic ability and avoid reliance on personal and external factors such as ﬁnancial means or living arrangements. I understand the desire for consistency. However, consistency should not be achieved by removing the reality of disability from the assessment. A standardised assessment that ignores context may be consistent, but still wrong.

This deﬁnition also risks punishing families who provide high levels of invisible support. Many children look more capable because their parents have built their entire lives around preventing collapse. We prepare food in speciﬁc ways, manage transitions, avoid environments, pre-teach social expectations, regulate sensory input, advocate at school, supervise hygiene, scaƯold friendships, interpret communication, reduce demands, and absorb meltdowns privately. If functional capacity is assessed without properly accounting for this support, children may be incorrectly judged as less disabled than they are.

Requested amendment: Proposed subsection 9B(1) should be removed. Functional capacity should be assessed holistically and contextually, with explicit recognition of:

 developmental stage;

 ﬂuctuating and episodic capacity;

 masking and internalised distress;

 the diƯerence between capacity and performance;

 the role of informal supports;

 the sustainability of participation;

 the impact of sensory, social, cognitive, physical and environmental demands;

 the role of assistive technology and modiﬁcations in enabling participation;

 carer capacity and family system strain.

A child’s functional capacity cannot be fairly understood by pretending the child exists without their environment.

The “all appropriate treatment” test is unrealistic and risks ableist outcomes

Although not one of the ﬁve speciﬁc amendments listed above, I also ask the Committee to consider the direct impact of the proposed permanence changes on children and families.

The Bill proposes that an impairment is not permanent, or likely to be permanent, unless the person has undertaken all appropriate treatment, any other treatment is unlikely to materially

National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment Bill 2026 Submission Page 7 of 11

National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 2069

improve, reverse or alleviate the impact of the impairment, and the impairment is likely to persist for the person’s lifetime. The Bill deﬁnes appropriate treatment as treatment that is evidence- based, can reliably be expected to materially improve, reverse or alleviate the impact of the impairment, and is regularly undertaken or performed in Australia.

This sounds reasonable on paper, but it is dangerous in practice.

Many disabilities, particularly neurodevelopmental disabilities, developmental disabilities, psychosocial disabilities, chronic conditions and complex childhood presentations, do not have a clean treatment pathway that can be “exhausted”. Children may be oƯered endless interventions, therapies, programs, medications, diets, parenting courses, behavioural approaches, social skills groups, school adjustments, sensory programs, mental health supports, and experimental or poorly evidenced approaches. Families are already under immense pressure to try everything.

The phrase “all appropriate treatment” risks becoming another burden placed on families: prove that you have done enough. Prove that you tried enough. Prove that your child is disabled enough despite intervention. Prove that you did not fail to access something. Prove that you refused treatment for a valid enough reason.

This is ableist because it assumes disability is something that should be treated away before support is justiﬁed. For many children, the goal is not cure. The goal is safety, participation, communication, autonomy, dignity, regulation, belonging, skill development and a life that is not deﬁned by constant remediation.

The Bill does include an exception where a person cannot undertake medical treatment for medical reasons, and allows rules to specify other circumstances. However, this is too narrow. Families may be unable to access treatment because of cost, geography, waitlists, child distress, trauma, cultural unsuitability, lack of local providers, parent work demands, sibling needs, school refusal, or the simple reality that a child cannot tolerate another appointment.

The Bill even states that treatment may be appropriate regardless of whether a person’s individual circumstances restrict access to it, including ﬁnancial circumstances and geographical location. This is profoundly unfair. A treatment that a family cannot realistically access is not meaningfully available to that child.

Requested amendment: Any permanence test must not require families to exhaust every possible treatment pathway before disability support is recognised. At minimum, the legislation must recognise practical access barriers, child wellbeing, trauma, family capacity, evidence quality, proportionality, and the distinction between treatment and lifelong disability support.

Loss of genuine early intervention

I am extremely concerned about the direction of early intervention reform, particularly for children with developmental delay and autism who may be redirected away from the NDIS and toward Thriving Kids or other foundational supports.

National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment Bill 2026 Submission Page 8 of 11

National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 2069

The Explanatory Memorandum states that Thriving Kids is intended to support children aged 8 and under with developmental delay and/or autism with low to moderate support needs, and that access changes for children aged 0–8 eligible for Thriving Kids are intended to begin from 1 January 2028. The government’s broader rationale is that the NDIS has become an “oasis in a desert” because of limited supports outside the Scheme, and that foundational supports are intended to address this gap.

I agree that families need supports outside the NDIS. But foundational supports must not become a cheaper substitute for genuine early intervention.

There is a world of diƯerence between:

 individualised, one-to-one therapy;

 skilled assessment;

 targeted parent coaching based on a speciﬁc child;

 assistive technology;

 functional communication support;

 sensory and motor intervention;

 home and school strategies;

 and a generic group program, playgroup, online module or parent education session.

Families like mine do not need to be told again how to parent. We need supports that ﬁt the child in front of us. We need skilled professionals who can observe, assess, adapt and respond to the child’s real functional needs. We need support that is timely, practical, relational and individualised.

Group programs may be useful for some families. They are not a replacement for individualised early intervention. For many neurodivergent children, group programs are inaccessible, dysregulating or too generic to be meaningful. For children with motor, sensory, communication, medical or complex developmental needs, a group program may not even address the primary functional barriers.

If children are diverted from the NDIS before high-quality, individualised, accessible foundational supports exist in every community, families will be left with less support, more waiting, and more crisis.

Requested amendment: No child should lose access to individualised early intervention until there is clear evidence that alternative supports are available, accessible, timely, individualised, developmentally appropriate, and capable of meeting that child’s functional needs. Foundational supports must supplement, not replace, NDIS early intervention where a child requires targeted one-to-one support.

National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment Bill 2026 Submission Page 9 of 11

National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 2069

The cumulative burden on families must be recognised

Each proposed change may be described as administrative, technical or sustainability-focused. But families experience these changes cumulatively.

A parent may be required to:

 manage reduced funding;

 justify every support more tightly;

 track budgets across shorter funding periods;

 respond to NDIA requests quickly;

 avoid missing contact;

 gather evidence of signiﬁcant change;

 prove functional decline;

 prove treatment history;

 navigate new functional capacity assessments;

 challenge automated or unclear decisions;

 change providers due to market reforms;

 and keep children regulated, attending school, accessing therapy and participating in family life.

This is not a small burden. It is administrative labour layered on top of care labour, emotional labour, ﬁnancial stress and parenting.

Families are already managing cost-of-living pressure. Food, rent, mortgages, fuel, utilities, school costs, therapy gap fees, medical appointments, medications and transport have all increased. Many parents of disabled children reduce work hours or leave the workforce entirely because the support burden is too high. When the NDIS becomes harder to navigate, the cost is not absorbed by the system. It is absorbed by families, usually mothers.

Choice and control cannot be reduced to a slogan. True choice and control means families can choose supports that ﬁt their child, their household, their culture, their location and their actual daily life. It means children are not forced into group programs because they are cheaper. It means families are not punished for being overwhelmed. It means decisions are not made by opaque automated systems. It means support is not reduced through category-level determinations that ignore individual need.

The NDIS Act’s objectives include supporting independence and social and economic participation, providing reasonable and necessary supports including early intervention, and enabling people with disability to exercise choice and control in pursuit of their goals and the planning and delivery of supports. These proposed amendments must be tested against those objectives, not only against budget targets.

National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment Bill 2026 Submission Page 10 of 11

National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 2069

Conclusion

I support a sustainable NDIS. I support action against fraud. I support better provider accountability and clearer processes. But I do not support reforms that make disabled children and their families carry the cost of system failure.

The Bill, in its current form, risks reducing individualised support, delaying urgent reassessments, narrowing functional capacity in ways that ignore real life, allowing participant status to be revoked because a family is overwhelmed or unreachable, and introducing automation without suƯicient safeguards.

As a parent of three children with disability, I ask that the Committee recommend the following amendments:

Withdraw proposed section 34A.
Retain the 21-day timeframe in subsection 48(3), with triage for non-urgent requests rather than a blanket 90-day period.
Remove the power to revoke participant status under proposed subsection 30(1A) for being “not contactable”; allow suspension only, with strong notice and contact safeguards.
Insert strict safeguards for automation and AI, including no fully automated eligibility, funding, suspension or revocation decisions.
Remove proposed subsection 9B(1) and retain a holistic, contextual approach to functional capacity.
Amend the “all appropriate treatment” provisions so families are not required to exhaust unrealistic, inaccessible or inappropriate treatment pathways before disability support is recognised.
Protect genuine individualised early intervention and ensure foundational supports do not become a low-cost substitute for targeted one-to-one support.

Children with disability deserve more than a system designed around scarcity. Families deserve more than suspicion, delay and administrative burden. Sustainability must be achieved through fairness, co-design, evidence and safeguards — not by making already exhausted families prove, again and again, that their children need support.

Thank you for considering my submission

National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment Bill 2026 Submission Page 11 of 11