Submission 2429
10 July 2026
Committee Secretary
Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs
PO Box 6100, Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600
Dear Committee Secretary,
Submission to the inquiry into the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Thank you for the opportunity to make a submission to the committee’s inquiry. Vertaview Group supports the Bill and the broader reform program.
This submission sets out our view on why reform is necessary, what the not-for-profit provider sector needs to do, and how government and providers can work together to ensure the reforms succeed.
About Vertaview Group
Vertaview Group is a not-for-profit group of entities supporting more than 8,000 people across Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania with a workforce of around 2,400 and approximately 4.4 million hours of support delivered last financial year. The Group includes:
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Multicap, a large provider of disability supports with a focus on complex needs, community access through hubs, employment and accommodation
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Open Minds, a community-based multidisciplinary mental health and psychosocial supports provider
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Allinto, a provider of support coordination, psychosocial recovery coaching and hospital-to- community transition
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All About Living, an aged care and in-home support provider for older Australians
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Elvara Behaviour Support, a specialist positive behaviour support services provider
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Arbourwell, a provider of specialist disability and mental health housing and tenancy support services.
The Scheme must change
The NDIS is one of Australia’s great social policy achievements, however without change it risks losing its social licence. Public support for a scheme costing more than $50 billion a year rests on community confidence that money is flowing to the people for whom the Scheme was originally intended. Bringing annual cost growth down is necessary and achievable, and Vertaview Group supports the structural changes in this Bill.
The changes proposed can deliver a sustainable NDIS if they are accompanied by addressing fragmentation in the provider sector through consolidation and market stewardship.
Submission 2429
Provider viability is a question of scale
The committee has heard evidence about financial pressures in the provider market. Our view is that the viability challenge is largely driven by a lack of scale. Providers operating subscale carry their material human resources, payroll, IT, finance, compliance and quality functions without the required scaled revenue base to support these growing costs. Our experience is that financial viability relies on the efficiencies that come from consolidating back-office functions through shared services; investing in systems and data; and merging providers to grow the revenue base to sustain these investments. This delivers confidence in quality and consistency of service provider to the consumer.
Vertaview Group has proven this model by bringing providers together under a single group structure with centralised shared services. This approach has moved the Group from a deficit position to modest surplus that is then reinvested in quality and efficiency improvements.
In an environment where costs are increasing at a greater rate than revenues the lack of scale, and thereby the ability to invest in efficiencies and quality, will lead to provider stress and likely failures causing disruption to the consumer.
Reform will require service re-engineering
The announced reductions to social, community and civic participation funding will require providers to re-engineer how those supports are delivered. This includes moving from predominantly one-to-one models to higher support ratios. This will require us to re-imagine services, for example potentially reinvigorating community hubs where people come together as a group rather than using individual hours of one-to-one support. Providers will need to be creative and adapt quickly, and Vertaview Group offers our assistance in shaping government thinking about what is possible based on extensive consultation with our clients.
Transition risks can be managed in partnership
Any significant change to the NDIS will include risks and unintended consequences. By working with the provider sector, government can quickly identify and manage risks as they arise. For example, an
anticipated risk is for participants with psychosocial disabilities. In many cases, the social andcommunity participation supports for these participants currently provide a level of regular contact and monitoring of their treatment and consistency with medication. Funding reductions may see regular contact reduce and with this the risk of a participant coming off medication increases. In this example, the participant may place greater demands on other parts of the health system, for example presenting to hospital and other social services and in extreme cases posing a safety risk to the community.
Risks like this are identifiable and manageable. Large providers with clinical governance capability, multidisciplinary mental health expertise and visibility across thousands of participants are well placed to work with the Agency and the Department to identify at-risk cohorts, design mitigations and monitor outcomes through transition.
A market design is needed for a sustainable Scheme
Vertaview Group recommends that a process is undertaken to design the optimal market for the NDIS. A Scheme in which around 300,000 providers serve 750,000 participants is fragmented, opaque and delivers uneven quality.
Our view is that a successful NDIS provider market is one that delivers value and high-quality services consistently to clients and provides a professional career path for staff. The market could be anchored by a number of large national providers, each operating at material scale, playing a comparable role to the four pillars of the Australian banking system. These anchor providers would give the Scheme stable
Submission 2429
capacity in thin markets; collect and share better data with government; be better able to invest in quality, systems, research and workforce development; and pilot new approaches so they can be tested and refined before broader rollout. It remains important that clients continue to have choice in the provider market and therefore small and specialist providers would continue to play an important role, and would themselves benefit from the infrastructure, evidence and piloting that anchor providers can carry on behalf of the sector.
To achieve this vision, we see a role for government in market design and stewardship. Developing a clear view of the market structure that would best serve participants and taxpayers, would support government to take an active stewardship role in shaping a sustainable market.
Government is already signalling future market directions through recent changes like mandatory registration, which we strongly support. Other levers to improve the market could include encouraging mergers between larger providers to accelerate the scale required for sustainability, and commissioning approaches.
Recommendations
1. The committee support passage of the Bill, recognising it as necessary structural reform tosecure the Scheme’s sustainability and social licence.
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Government task the appropriate agency to develop a NDIS market design and adopt an active market stewardship role in shaping a more consolidated, efficient provider market.
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Government considers targeted incentives, alongside mandatory registration, to encourage consolidation, investment and efficiency among not-for-profit providers, including support for mergers between larger providers.
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The Agency and Department to work with providers to manage emerging risks arising from unintended consequences of the reforms.
Vertaview Group welcomes this Bill and the broader reform program. We recognise the sector’s future success will only happen if providers step up to the efficiency, scale and adaptability the new system requires.
We are keen to work with government on these reforms and would welcome the opportunity to assist the committee’s deliberations further.
Yours sincerely,