National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 2402
CONFIDENTIAL
Submission to the National
Disability Insurance Scheme
Amendment (Securing the NDIS
for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Attention: Committee Secretary, Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs
Submitted by email: community.affairs.sen@aph.gov.au
Date: 29/05/2026
I welcome the opportunity to make a submission to the Senate Standing Committee
on Community Affairs about the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment
(Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026.
I am an NDIS participant and I am also the parent carer of an adolescent who is an
NDIS participant.
I want to outline the harm this Amendment Bill will cause if it passes Parliament. This
Bill is too far-reaching to pass as it stands. I believe the Bill requires further scrutiny
and amendment before it proceeds.
Parliamentary Scrutiny and Transparency
The consultation period for the Amendment Bill is two weeks, which is insufficient to
allow for appropriate consultation, considering accessibility and communication
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National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 2402
needs. The Australian Government Guide to Policy Impact Analysis says
consultation should occur for a minimum of 30 days where possible.
The short timeline impacts me because I am deafblind and access to written
documentation is challenging. The short time frame means there has been
insufficient time to have these documents converted into Braille for me to read. I
must therefore rely on other people to assist me to access and respond to these
documents.
Recommendation: Amend the consultation period for a best practice minimum of 30
days.
Key decisions left to ministerial instruments, not law
The issue: The Bill allows Ministers to change who gets NDIS support (Schedule 1
Parts 8 and 9) and how much funding people receive (Schedule 1 Part 4; Schedule
- 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.
How this affects participants: The decisions that shape the lives of participants,
whether they qualify for the NDIS and what supports they can access, could be
changed without parliamentary debate or public scrutiny. Participants may not know
supports or eligibility rules have changed until their plan is affected.
Wholesale changes made across the board in a uniform manner do not consider the
individual support needs disabled people have. This is especially true for rare
conditions like deafblindness. I have no confidence that sweeping decision would
adequately consider the needs of deafblind participants, as even among health
professionals it is a poorly understood condition. Eligibility thresholds cannot
consider hearing impairment and vision impairment separately, but must instead
consider the combined impact of these impairments on a person’s functional
capacity.
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Submission to the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the
NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 2402
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.
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 also 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.
How this affects participants: This does not protect participants already on the
NDIS, who could be reassessed under stricter rules. If someone’s funding is reduced
or their plan renewed automatically, they may have limited or no ability to challenge
that decision. This could make it harder for people to get extra support when their
circumstances or disability change.
The automated decision making does not consider true clinical impacts and
functional capacity of people with multiple disabilities. In a real human body, these
impacts cannot be separated. An automated package for ‘blindness’ may include
supports that rely on audio based approaches, while an automated package for
‘deafness’ may include supports that rely on visual approaches. Neither of these are
suitable for a deafblind person, who will continue to fall through the cracks, despite
having significant impairment of their functional capacity for even the most basic
daily tasks.
A person funded for a guide dog still needs human support, for example for
transport, as the dog can’t drive. These types of gaps in support can happen due to
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Submission to the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the
NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 2402
the people, or algorithms, making the decisions having no medical training. The
appeal process is absolutely necessary to have these kind of errors corrected,
enabling the true support needs of participants to be met. Automated decision
making with no appeal process is a significant safety issue, putting already very
vulnerable people in real danger.
Plan renewals may be needed for valid clinical reasons prior to the planned renewal
date. This is particularly true for people with degenerative conditions whose
functional capacity deteriorates over time. It is also true where initial plans focus
primarily on funding further assessments, rather than providing actual supports. This
means that once these assessments are complete they need to be submitted for
review.
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 Minister can reduce 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).
How this affects participants: 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.
Again, deafblind people are particularly vulnerable to this sort of universal
percentage cut. If you cannot drive, you are stuck at home until someone helps you.
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Submission to the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the
NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 2402
Even if you have a guide dog, the dog cannot drive. Maximum transport funding
currently only allows participants to leave their homes about once a fortnight. Cutting
this by half would mean only leaving the house once per month. This is not
reasonable in any way. How will participants attend multiple medical appointments
each month? How will participants take their children to medical or therapy
appointments? NDIS will say this is ‘parental responsibility’ but what happens when
the parent has disabilities also and cannot drive. This is just the basics, without any
sort of social activity or community engagement. Real lives are simply not
considered in a sweeping and unconsidered generic cut.
Assistive technologies for vision loss, such as Braille technology, are essential for
people with deafblindness. This is highly specialised equipment which is very
expensive for the individual, but also a one-off purchase. If funds are not allocated in
a single period, or carried over from a previous period, how will those who need such
specialised equipment access it? From the government’s point of view, the provision
of a small on-off amount for assistive technology will have an enormous positive
economic impact through that person’s continued participation in daily life, including
work and volunteering in the community.
Recommendation: Require that unspent funds carry over at plan renewal for
participants saving for high-cost items and 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).
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Submission to the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the
NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 2402
How this affects participants: 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.
Some conditions are untreatable and especially for degenerative conditions, they get
worse over time, not better. ‘Treatment’ does not equal ‘cure’. Currently if NDIS
claims are denied on the basis that ‘not all treatments have been exhausted’ no
information is provided to participants on what these further treatments might be.
This lack of transparency is not only cruel, it is a breach of basic human rights and
the government’s obligations to provide universal health care. If there is some
miracle treatment that the NDIS is keeping secret, that is not acceptable in any way.
If there are indeed evidence based treatments, then a list of these needs to be made
available to current or prospective participants. This list should not include fictional
treatments hallucinated by AI. These potential treatments need to be verified by
qualified medical specialists. It is not appropriate for unqualified NDIS staff, or an
automated system, to override highly qualified medical specialists. People have
spent thousands of dollars and usually many years accessing every available
treatment option recommended by medical specialists. It’s unlikely the NDIS knows
about a secret treatment that these specialists are unaware of.
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.
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Submission to the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the
NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 2402
Unvalidated functional capacity assessment tool risks misidentifying need
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, including those whose needs may be
fluctuating or episodic and may not be captured through a point-in-time assessment,
and to ensure it is culturally appropriate for First Peoples with disability.
How this affects participants: If the assessment tool does not accurately capture
the full extent of a person’s disability, a participant may be found ineligible or have
their supports undercounted, with no guarantee the result reflects their actual
experience.
Again, this is an issue of the people writing and administering this bill having no
medical training. Many people have multiple impairments. They may come from the
same cause. For example, congenital deafblindness caused by a genetic condition
and present from birth. Does the parent of a deafblind child have to choose whether
their vision impairment or their hearing impairment is the one that will be supported?
How could anyone make this choice? This makes no practical sense. It remains the
case that the supports for one impairment may be made inappropriate or ineffective
by the other impairment. How will the proposed changes be effective in actual
human beings? It needs to be remembered that we are not robots and human bodies
don’t fit neatly into computerised check boxes.
Raw thresholds for individual impairments do not work in practice. The threshold for
hearing impairment is currently lower if you also have a vision impairment and this is
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Submission to the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the
NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 2402
for good reason. Because if you are deaf you may use captions or visual Auslan but
if you are blind as well, you can’t access these and you need tactile signing and
access to Braille. As a blind person, if visual impairment alone is considered, you
won’t be allowed an Auslan interpreter to access tactile Auslan. If you can’t drive due
to your visual impairment you need transport supports, but if only your deafness is
supported, you won’t have access to that. How does this reconcile with real life?
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, including those with episodic or fluctuating disability, and
demonstrated to be culturally appropriate for First Peoples with disability.
Supports cut before replacement system is ready
The issue: From 1 October 2026, 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.
How this affects participants: 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 families with greater responsibilities and
no additional support. These supports are often what help people stay visible,
connected and safe.
Capacity building and community supports are key to a healthy and thriving life. We
know that dementia is one of the biggest killers of Australians. Primary prevention of
dementia involves remaining socially and cognitively active. If a person loses their
vision and their hearing, this does not mean they lose cognitive capacity, as long as
they remain connected to community and socially active. If they don’t have these,
their risk of dementia escalates. This will create a larger burden on society and the
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Submission to the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the
NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 2402
government’s budget than providing adequate supports up front. None of this bigger
picture seems to have been considered when making generic cuts across the board.
Supports required may include human support, technology support or animal support
– such as a guide dog. It remains the case that the guide dog cannot drive. Social
and community engagement relies heavily on access to communication, which can
include Auslan and Braille. A person who can continue to socialise through Auslan,
or continue to read using Braille can remain mentally and socially engaged, reducing
the whole of lifetime health risks.
There is currently no pathway, other than the NDIS, for blind and deafblind people to
access assistive technology, orientation and mobility training and devices (such as
white canes), Braille training, Braille devices, magnifiers and other home equipment
to make kitchens and other household areas safe. Where will this support come from
and who will provide it? How will it be funded? All of these questions remain
unanswered.
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.
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Submission to the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the
NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026