Submission 2449
PWDA Template: 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: 01.06.2026
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 Art Therapist providing support to NDIS participants.
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
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 as a person with a disability it did not grant
me sufficient time to gather my thoughts, organise my thoughts, organise and
receive supports to submit a submission, read the Bill thoroughly or understand the
Bill thoroughly.
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Submission 2449
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.
It is unjust, unethical and inappropriate for NDIS participants, their families and
professionals working in the sector to be engaged in consultation on matters that are
not yet fully defined or articulated. Furthermore, such legislative processes should be
co-designed with the disabled community, their loved ones and professionals
working in the sector. The form of consultation that is currently being engaged in is
tokenistic at best and appears deliberately obtuse to discourage people with
disability from advocating for themselves. The government is engaging in executive
powers un-inkeeping with the spirit and values of the NDIS. NDIS participants should
not be punished for the Government’s mismanagement of systemic issues in the
NDIS. Preventing disabled people from accessing the NDIS is not an appropriate
means of reducing NDIS ballooning costs which are largely caused by double
handling, poor legislative monitoring or providers and the NDIA’s lack of safe-guards
for NDIS participants being taken advantage of by bad-faith actors. Preventing NDIS
participants from accessing the support they need will not address these systemic
failings by the NDIA.
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Submission 2449
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.
Removing the legislative processes that enable NDIS participants to appeal
decisions made by the NDIA is antithetical to the the values and goals of the NDIS,
is an extreme overstretch of constitutional powers un-inkeeping with Australian
democracy and is contrary to the rights of disabled people recognised globally, of
which Australia is signatures to a ratifiers of such rights-based documents.
No decision about the lives of disabled people should be made without the disabled
people in question being involved. It is unconstitutional for the government to have
such far reaching and wide-sweeping powers to determine the lives of its citizens.
Any such efforts to bring in similar procedures for other Australian citizens would be
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met with widespread uproar. But the Australian government has deliberately made
the NDIS a scapegoat for other areas of poor policy, creating a hostile environment
where everyday Australians do not realise they are being complicit in the destruction
of the quality of life and erosion of the rights and dignity of their fellow Australians.
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.
This is a punitive process that does not account for the multitude of reasons an NDIS
participant may not utilise designated funds in a funding period. These reasons
include worsening of condition that makes it difficult to access community,
administrative burden, systemic issues in the utilisation of NDIS funds such as
frequent changes in Support Coordinators and Plan Managers, changes in providers
caused by high turnover in Support Work sector (due to poor working conditions and
worker’s rights and instability of work) and many more. Punishing participants for
what is usually an indication that things in their life are going worse, not better, is
cruel and contributes to further deterioration and distress for NDIS participants. I
have on several occasions witnessed NDIS participants deeply distressed in
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anticipation of lost funding based on their current capacity meaning that they can’t
utilise their funding. Currently, there are means to communicate these challenges
and for them to be taken into account. An automatic roll over process is
dehumanising and is not remotely person-centred.
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).
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.
There are many reasons a prospective NDIS participant may not be able to access
all avenues of possible treatment prior to applying for NDIS. These include cost, cost
of travel (both time and monetary), lack of means of adequate transport, accessibility
of the services, suitability of the services for their competing access needs, long
waitlists for these treatments and readiness to engage with these treatments.
The current NDIS assessment system takes the above factors into consideration and
is thus fit for purpose for the everyday realities of the lives of disabled Australians.
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Not taking into account the factors surrounding an individual’s disability and how
their disability may impact their ability to access treatment is ill-advised, reductive
and will be actively detrimental to the lives of many who would greatly benefit from
access to the NDIS.
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
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, 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.
The I-CAN tool lacks validity and reliability across assessment of all disability types.
The I-CAN was never designed to be used a single-session assessment in isolation
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and is supposed to be used in conjunction with other assessment tools. The I-CAN
tool has only been shown to be effective in assessing the needs of those with
intellectual disability and does not adequately address the differing access needs of
the wide variety of individuals accessing the NDIS.
The I-CAN has not been validated for the use that the NDIS is proposing and its use
for NDIS plan design is beyond inappropriate and unsound. This decision by the
government also seeks to invalidate and undermine the expertise and
recommendations of allied health professionals who work closely with their clients.
The I-CAN has not been designed with all disability types in mind, was not designed
as a solo assessment tool and was certainly not designed to be used for making
funding decisions about people’s NDIS plans. Furthermore, the I-CAN does not have
any safe guards or internal tool systems included for assessing masking. A tool such
as the I-CAN is inappropriate for those who are high-masking or who tend to be very
literal because they may technically be able to do something but with extreme
difficulty. Furthermore, the emphasis on ‘I can’ statements is dismissive of the
everyday functional challenges of people with disability and does not provide them
the space to freely discuss and explore their challenges as they experience them
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
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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.
The arbitrary cutting of social, civic and community funding by the NDIA will have
devastating impacts on NDIS participants. Chiefly, this cost-cutting number of 50%
has been selected by the Australian government by looking at numbers first, not
people. There are many areas the Australian government could choose to reduce
spending by 50% and it is very telling of the Australian government’s values that it
would choose to scapegoat disabled Australians in this way rather than address
other areas of bloated parliamentary spending such as tax-cuts for the wealthy and
military spending.
If the Australian government deems that the NDIS is costing too much, there are far
more appropriate areas to cut spending or re-allocate spending or steam line
processes to reduce spending that do not negatively impact the lives of the people
the NDIS was introduced to support. For instance, stream-lining of planning
processes, removal of superfluous LACs, reduced reliance on Support Coordination
and Recovery Coaching which are far less relevant to participant plans the longer
they have been on the Scheme, safe-guarding against bad-faith actors in the NDIS,
etc. The NDIA and Australian government need not look far to find many ways the
NDIS engages in systemic double-handling (LACs, Support Coordinators, Plan
Managers), over-pays professionals who do very little to enhance participant
experience of the scheme (re: Plan Managers) and where systems can be stream
lined. Furthermore, one of the largest proportion of government spending in regards
to the NDIS is AAT and appeals processes. The solution to these costs is not to
remove the right of participants to appeal or to arbitrarily cut funding, but to make
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fair, equitable and appropriate decisions based on the criteria the NDIA claims to
follow, thus reducing the need to pay copious legal fees.
Any cuts made to the NDIS should not be ones that affect the participants adversely
but that safeguard participants against systemic abuses of power and make the
NDIS function more smoothly and effectively for all.
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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