National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 2414
To the Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme,
I wish to make a submission to the regarding the NDIS Amendment (Integrity and Safeguarding) Bill 2025.
As an occupational therapist with more than 32 years of experience working alongside people with disability, I am deeply concerned about several aspects of this Bill.
My greatest concern relates to proposed subsection 33(2EA), as outlined on pages 49–50 of the Explanatory Memorandum. This provision states that a determination made under subsection 33(2E) may specify a maximum amount of funding for supports, a maximum intensity of support provision, or a maximum worker-to-participant ratio. These determinations may apply to a particular support or class of supports, either generally across participants or to specific classes of participants.
If these provisions are used to impose limits on support ratios for people with high support needs, they are likely to force many people into group homes and other congregate living arrangements. Such an outcome would increase segregation and expose people with disability to living environments that are often unsafe and contrary to their rights and preferences.
The segregation of people with disability is widely recognised as a form of discrimination and is inconsistent with the principles and obligations set out in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), as well as other international human rights treaties to which Australia is a signatory.
It is essential that Australia take concerted action to end the segregation of people with disability, rather than create policy settings that risk increasing it. The proposed amendments have the potential to undermine progress towards greater inclusion, choice and control, and should be reconsidered.
I have witnessed firsthand the devastating impact that segregated living environments can have on people’s lives. I began my career in the 1990’s working at one of Queensland’s last large institutions, the Challinor Centre, an asylum built in the 19th Century. The dehumanising conditions and isolation from the broader community had profound and lasting effects on the people who lived there. In 1996, I participated in a Four Corners investigation by journalist Chris Masters that exposed the realities of institutional and segregated living.
Since that time, large institutions have closed and people were moved into group homes but these environments saw similar effects on institutionalisation but on a smaller scale. It is only with introduction of the NDIS, where many people with high support needs have had opportunity to choose to live with people of their choosing or alone that has contributed to significant improvements in the lives of many people with disability.
The NDIS has helped advance the recognition that people with disability have the same right as everyone else to live a good life, participate in their communities, and exercise genuine choice and control over where and how they live.
The proposed changes risk reversing many of these hard-won gains. I therefore urge the Committee to carefully reconsider subsection 33(2EA) and any measures that may encourage or entrench segregated living arrangements for people with disability.
Thank you for considering this submission.
Yours sincerely,