National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 2264
MOB4MOB LTD Queensland’s peak body for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples with disability
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Position
Mob4Mob does not support this Bill proceeding to passage in its current form. The Bill legislates cuts to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander participants on a timeline that removes support years before any First Nations-led alternative exists, against participation numbers that understate real need in our communities, and without funding the commitments already owed to our people. Sustainability built on an unfunded safety net and undercounted need is not sustainability it is exposure.
Mob4Mob does not oppose reform of the Scheme, and we recognise the Committee’s own interim report (23 June 2026) already found the Bill needs significant conditions before it should proceed. Our submission sets out why, for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with disability specifically, those conditions are not yet met and won’t be met by the amendments agreed so far between the Government and the Senate crossbench.
About Mob4Mob
Mob4Mob is Queensland’s first community-controlled peak body for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples with disability. We work alongside communities across Queensland to advocate for culturally safe, rights-based, community-controlled supports consistent with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). This submission draws on that advocacy work.
- The Bill’s own timeline removes support before any alternative exists
Under the Government’s current implementation schedule, reductions to social, civic and community participation supports begin from October 2026. The functional capacity assessment framework does not commence until 2028. Neither Thriving Kids nor Foundational Supports the programs intended to catch people leaving or diverted from the Scheme currently has a confirmed delivery pathway through Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations (ACCOs).
For our communities this sequencing gap is not theoretical., there is no mainstream service system standing ready to absorb people who lose NDIS supports in October 2026. The community-controlled alternative the Government points to does not yet have funding, design, or a workforce. A person can be removed from the Scheme under this Bill more than a year before the systems meant to replace it are designed, let alone operating.
Mob4Mob calls for a statutory guarantee, not a policy assurance:
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 2264
• No Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander participant should be transitioned off the NDIS, or have their plan reduced, before a culturally safe, locally available replacement service is confirmed and operational in their region.
• This guarantee should be legislated, not left to Ministerial discretion or a future Rule consistent with the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights’ own finding that the Bill’s changes are retrogressive under international human rights law and require stronger legislative safeguards, not administrative ones.
- Participation numbers understate true need in our communities
Nationally, approximately 63,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people currently access the NDIS. Roughly one quarter of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people live with disability a proportion of these participants residing in regional, remote and very remote communities where access to diagnostic services, assessments and specialist supports remains limited.
Current participant numbers reflect who has successfully navigated diagnosis, access requests and planning not who needs support. They exclude people who cannot obtain formal diagnosis in remote communities, people who disengage after culturally unsafe experiences, and people whose disability has never been recognised by mainstream clinical frameworks. A Bill that calibrates ‘sustainability’ against these numbers is calibrating against undercounted need and will read as success in Canberra while support gaps widen on the ground.
- Commitments to our people remain unfunded
Alongside the reforms proposed in this Bill, four critical commitments remain unrealised each fundamental to achieving equitable outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with disability.
First, dedicated and protected funding for Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations to deliver disability supports is not included in either Thriving Kids or Foundational Supports. Both are significant reforms, yet neither recognises nor resources Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations as a distinct part of the disability support landscape. This is a missed opportunity to strengthen community-led responses that are trusted, culturally safe, and grounded in self-determination.
Second, more than two years after the Disability Royal Commission recommended establishing a First Nations Disability Forum, no funding has been committed and no Forum exists. At a time when the NDIS is undergoing its most significant reforms in years, there is still no permanent national mechanism through which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with disability can collectively inform implementation, monitor impacts, and shape future policy.
Third, there is still no national First Nations disability outcomes framework aligned with the Closing the Gap Agreement. Without agreed measures of success, governments cannot meaningfully assess whether these reforms improve equity or simply reduce expenditure. Participant numbers alone cannot show whether Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with disability are experiencing better access, improved outcomes, or greater inclusion.
Fourth, there is no commitment to protecting funding for social and cultural participation, and no recognition that connection to culture is not separate from disability support it is part of it. For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with disability, culture and disability are not two different things to be funded and measured apart from one another; they are one and the same lived experience. Reductions in funding that limit a person’s ability to take part in cultural life, ceremony,
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 2264
community and Country do not just affect wellbeing on the side they strike at the core of what good disability support is meant to protect. Any future framework, assessment tool or funding model must treat cultural participation as a core disability support need for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, not an optional extra sitting outside the scheme.
These are not peripheral issues they are foundational enablers of equitable reform. Each was well understood, clearly identified, and capable of being progressed while this legislation was being developed. Their continued absence reflects policy choices made alongside the Bill and the Budget that supports it.
As the Committee considers whether these reforms will secure the NDIS for future generations, it must also consider whether they will secure equitable outcomes for First Nations people with disability — outcomes that cannot be separated from their right to culture, community and identity. At present, the legislative and policy framework offers no such assurance.
- What Mob4Mob is asking the Committee to do
Mob4Mob asks the Committee to recommend that the Bill not proceed to passage until the following conditions are met:
• A legislated “no exit without alternative” guarantee for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander participants, tied to confirmed, operational, culturally safe local services not a policy statement able to be varied administratively. • Dedicated, confirmed funding for Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations within both Thriving Kids and Foundational Supports, published before either program is rolled out. • Immediate funding and establishment of the First Nations Disability Forum, in line with the Disability Royal Commission’s recommendation. • Development of a First Nations disability outcomes framework linked to Closing the Gap, co- designed with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander disability organisations. • Protected funding for social and cultural participation, with cultural connection recognised as a core disability support need for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people not an optional extra sitting outside the Scheme. • Public reporting, disaggregated by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander status and by remoteness, of access outcomes, plan reductions and Scheme exits following any implementation of this Bill.
Conclusion
Mob4Mob supports a Scheme that is well-governed, culturally responsive and fit for the future. We do not accept that sustainability requires our communities to carry the risk of a support gap with no funded end, and commitments the Government has chosen not to fund.
The Committee’s own process has already found this Bill needs significant conditions attached before it proceeds. For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with disability, those conditions are not optional extras they are the difference between a Scheme that is sustainable and one that quietly stops serving the people who were already hardest to reach.
Behind every clause in this Bill are our people, our families, our communities and our culture. Disability support that is truly fit for the future is support that holds all of this together, not apart. Mob4Mob asks the Committee to
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 2264
recommend the Bill not proceed until the safeguards set out above are legislated, funded and confirmed so that our people are not asked to wait, again, for a system to catch up to what we have always known: that culture, community and disability are one.
Mob4Mob Ltd Submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee inquiry into the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026.