Submission 2209
Attention: Committee Secretary, Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs
Submitted by email: community.affairs.sen@aph.gov.au
Date: Saturday 30th May, 2026
I welcome the chance to make this submission about the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026.
I am in my seventies. I am an elderly family member and carer to my grandchild who is an NDIS participant. I worked past retirement age. I paid my taxes my whole life. I did that because I believed it meant my family would be looked after, that we lived in a country that looks after its own people. The Bill and everything I have heard in the news about the current government has made me doubt that.
I want to explain the harm this Amendment Bill will cause to me and my family if it passes Parliament. I believe the Bill needs proper scrutiny and amendment before it goes through.
Parliamentary Scrutiny and Transparency
The consultation period was two weeks, with three extra days. That is not enough for anyone, and not for people with accessibility and communication needs who need more time, not less. The Australian Government Guide to Policy Impact Analysis says consultation should occur for a minimum of 30 days where possible. You gave us half that for the biggest changes to a social scheme in Australian history.
This has been rushed. I think it has been rushed because the Scheme has become political, and that is the worst possible reason to hurry something that decides whether people can live their lives. This will affect so many people. We deserve more thought than this.
Key decisions left to ministerial instruments, not law
The issue:
The Bill lets Ministers to change who gets NDIS support (Schedule 1 Parts 8 and 9) and how much funding people receive (Schedule 1 Part 4; Schedule 3) by signing an instrument, without going back to Parliament. The rules that will determine critical eligibility thresholds (Schedule 1 Parts 1, 8 and 9) have not yet been written.
These decisions should not be made by Ministers in the first place. And how can you ask Parliament to pass this when the rules don’t exist yet? When the people it will harm have no idea what is actually coming? Write the details first. Be honest about what you are doing. You should know what you are doing before you ask for the power to do it. I have no trust in this government anymore. You have said you want to do this to make people trust the Scheme, what about our trust in you?
Submission 2209
Recommendation:
Require that all decisions affecting NDIS eligibility and funding levels be made through primary legislation subject to full parliamentary scrutiny, with mandatory advance notice to affected participants before any changes take effect. The people who make these decisions need to be experts, know what these changes will do, and not be overpaid jockeys who can count.
Existing participants face narrower criteria and fewer rights to challenge decisions
The issue: The Bill changes the rules for existing NDIS participants and makes it harder to challenge some decisions about supports and funding. It restricts when you can request a reassessment, removes review rights for automatic plan renewals, and makes funding reductions unreviewable (Schedule 1 Parts 1 and 8). Combined with restrictions on reassessment requests (Part 2), automatic plan renewals without review rights (Part 5), and unreviewable funding reductions (Part 4), existing participants face narrower criteria with significantly fewer avenues to challenge decisions about their supports.
Taking away a person’s right to challenge a decision about their own life is not right, and I don’t believe it is lawful. It assumes the system you have set up never makes mistakes. I can tell you it does. Where in the Bill does it mention how much money you have spent fighting people on your own administrative mistakes? Appeals lodged with the Administrative Review Tribunal have increased sometimes up to 95% in recent years and nearly 70% of all cases have overturned NDIS decisions. How much has the Australian taxpayer had to pay for these mistakes? It is embarrassing and shameful that you would rather take away this right than fix the problem with how you run things.
Recommendation:
Require a “no harm” safeguard ensuring no current participant loses access to supports unless equivalent supports are in place, with independent review rights before any exit decision and access to unscheduled reassessments preserved.
Unreviewable ministerial power to cut funding across all support categories
The issue: The Minister can cut funding for any support or group of supports by a specified percentage through an instrument that cannot be challenged (Schedule 1 Part 4). This applies across all budget categories. Unspent funds will no longer carry over at plan renewal (Schedule 1 Part 5).
A participant’s community participation, capacity building or assistive technology funding could be cut without warning and without any right to appeal. Participants who save unspent funds across plan periods for high-cost items will lose that ability entirely.
Every cut you make will go back on Australians, on hospitals and doctors that are already falling apart. The transport, the gap payments, the things funding should cover
Submission 2209
will come out of the pockets of families who cannot afford it in this climate. I cannot afford it. And I do not believe for a second that this is about anything but saving money. I would put money on Ministers getting a pay rise before this Bill even passes. They save the money, they keep their salaries, and the people who actually need it are the ones who go without and get screwed. Most of the time I don’t even understand how the funding even works, and I think because you don’t either.
Recommendation:
Require independent review rights before any funding reduction takes effect.
Requirement to exhaust treatment options before eligibility
The issue:
A person with disability will need to exhaust treatment options before they can be eligible for the Scheme (Schedule 1 Part 8). There will also be a removal of whole-of-person assessment, replaced by single eligible impairment consideration (Schedule 1 Part 3). The note that previously acknowledged environmental factors and other ineligible impairments could affect support needs will be removed (Schedule 1 Part 3).
People with disability will need to prove their impairment cannot be treated before they access the NDIS. Once in the scheme, their supports will only be assessed against a single eligible impairment rather than their whole experience. A person’s individual circumstances will not be considered, including ability to pay for treatment, where they live or whether treatment is actually available to them.
I care for my grandchild to the best of my ability. Their disability is not something that cannot be treated away and forcing people to exhaust every treatment is cruel and it is pointless. Treatment is not a cure. I have learnt this the hard way in my own health as I’ve aged. This change only delays the support people need while they get worse. The cost of things nowadays means barely anyone has the safety net to do this while they wait.
When waiting for access to NDIS funding, we spent upwards of tens of thousands of dollars between us for tests, reports, and specialists. We lost our safety net then. I could not carry the load years ago, and I certainly cannot now.
Recommendation:
do not proceed with a requirement to exhaust “appropriate treatment” options – there are no safeguarding measures around participant harm due to side effects or complications, a participant’s financial ability to pay, or their geographic capacity to access treatments.
Unvalidated functional capacity assessment tool risks misidentifying need
Submission 2209
The Issue:
The Bill shifts assessment from whole-of-person consideration to a single eligible impairment (Schedule 1 Part 3). Read together with the eligibility thresholds in Parts 8 and 9, the tool used to conduct functional capacity assessments must be capable of sufficiently identifying whether a person meets the threshold for that single impairment.
The named assessment tool is the Instrument for Classification and Assessment of Support Needs (I-CAN). I-CAN requires validation to ensure it will sufficiently identify the needs of all people with disability. It needs the people who use the tool to be trained health professionals who can use it properly. If the assessment tool does not accurately capture the full extent of a person’s disability, including needs that fluctuate or vary over time, a participant may be found ineligible or have their supports undercounted, with no guarantee the result reflects their actual experience.
My grandchild’s needs are not the same from one day to the next. On a good day they can manage things that are impossible on a bad one. A single assessment, on a single day, without understanding everything else that makes up someone’s life, will never capture that. And if someone is assessed on a better day, they will be marked as needing less than they do, and left to cope without it. That is not an honest assessment of anyone’s life, and is the difference between my grandchild’s ability to live their life.
I do not trust the NDIS staff I have dealt with so far. Some have had to use google to understand my grandchild’s disability because they could not read the reports we submitted properly enough to understand it. Even though I could and I’m not a doctor. That is a failure on the NDIS and we should not be punished for that. How are we supposed to trust that even with this tool, that the people running it will have the brains and the training to use it as a tool for disability?
Recommendation:
Do not proceed with I-CAN as the functional capacity assessment tool unless it has been demonstrably validated to identify the needs of all people with disability, and there is assurance that the people using the tool are capable of it.
Supports cut before replacement system is ready
The issue:
The government has announced funding for social, civic and community participation supports will be cut by 50 per cent and capacity building daily activities by 10 per cent for all participants, reductions that will be implemented through the ministerial instrument power in Schedule 1 Part 4. The Foundational Supports system intended to fill that gap has no confirmed implementation date and is not yet operational.
Supports that help participants connect with their community, build skills and maintain independence may be cut before anything exists to replace them, leaving carers and
Submission 2209
families with greater responsibilities and no additional support. These supports are often what help people stay visible, connected and safe.
When you cut these supports, the gap comes back to families who won’t be able to fill it. My greatest fear is that my grandchild loses this support, needs me more, and I am not able to be there.
Recommendation: Require that no reductions to community participation or capacity building supports take effect until Foundational Supports are fully operational, adequately funded and demonstrably able to meet the needs of those who will lose NDIS supports.
The rules for the NDIS have changed more times in the past few years my grandchild has been a participant than they have been for tax in my lifetime. My grandchild’s plan has changed our lives and anything stripped away would crush our family.
I am not a political person. I am a grandparent who worked hard, paid into this country, and trusted it to do right by all of us. I am asking you to honour that trust.
I do not want my grandchild’s life to be decided behind closed doors, by a tool no one has proven works, or by cuts before anything is built to replace it. I want my grandchild to be assessed as a whole person, by people who understand disability, with the right to be heard if a decision is wrong. That is not too much to ask of a Scheme meant to look after people like my grandchild.
Do not pass this Bill as it stands. Give it the time, the scrutiny and the honesty it should have had from the start. Get the details right before you ask for the power to change lives. My grandchild’s plan changed our lives for the better and anything stripped away now would crush our family in ways we will never recover from.
Thank you for taking the time to read my submission.