Submission 2465
Attention: Committee Secretary, Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs
Submitted by email: community.affairs.sen@aph.gov.au
Date: 30/05/2026
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 appreciate the extension granted by the committee for submissions, as I would have been unable to respond under the previous deadline.
I am a parent and carer of an NDIS participant with a complex and permanent disability, with both physical and neurological dimensions. We have been an NDIS participant for five years and are self-managed, with my wife and I managing therapy and the NDIS plan. The NDIS has been a “life saver”, as we had been paying for therapies out-of-pocket for 16 years prior, and had quite simply run out of money. The money we used up was for our retirement, thus we now cannot afford to stop working, and have no spare money for therapies. My son’s NDIS plan is not suitable for him as he has had a significant change of circumstances having left school, however, we have little confidence that a reassessment will result in an appropriate level of support and the plan has rolled over. The plan is not indexed, thus we have lost about 15-20% of the plan value to inflation since commencement.
The NDIS plan has allowed us to engage therapies my son needs, and support him in a modest way to have some normality in going out into the community (only during the week), interacting with people and learning new skills. It has allowed my wife and I to work somewhat, although we have both had to turn down additional responsibilities and experienced stalled careers and underparticipation in the workforce as a consequence. Our ability to support our son has reduced due to our inability to pursue increased income through career progression, a common feature in many carers’ lives. We do not have holidays, do not own property other than our home, and should we wish to go away, we will need to take our son with us. The NDIS is not an “ATM” to us, it is a means of obtaining support for our disabled child, that would otherwise simply not be available to us.
Submission 2465
Submission from Carer – SA in Perth
I want to outline the harm this Amendment Bill will cause if it passes Parliament. The Bill contains provisions that will marginalise people with disabilities, reduce their supports to the point where they are supports in name only, and alienate people with disabilities from their communities. It is an expression of a lack of care and interest on the part of government, and contravenes the philosophy and spirit of the NDIS.
The Bill requires further scrutiny and substantial amendment before it proceeds.
Thank you for receiving my submission.
Summary
My lived experience of participation in the NDIS may be useful to Senators in reviewing this regressive legislation, and improving it for the benefit of participants and the scheme overall.
In summary, the main points I wish to draw the committee’s attention to are:
- Inadequate Scrutiny. The timetable set for consideration of the Bill does not allow for adequate scrutiny or oversight. There needs to be much greater scrutiny of the changes, and regressive, inequitable, and inefficient changes removed.
- A reliance on Ministerial diktat rather than legislation. Schedule 1 parts 4, 8 and 9 give the Minister the power to make determinations on participation and funding, without giving reasons, and without review. This introduces substantial risks of inconsistency in decision-making, politicises the NDIS through allowing the Minister to effectively transfer NDIS funding to other political priorities without explanation or challenge. This cannot be allowed to stand.
- Removal of the right of review. The Bill removes the right of review from many decisions which affect participants through Schedule 1 parts 1 and 8. This is dangerous, as no system is without fault. Removing effective oversight of decisions will not improve decision quality or consistency, but encourage Ministerial capriciousness. It carries the risk of damaging the standing of the NDIS through poor decision quality.
- Unreviewable Ministerial power to cut funding. The Bill gives the Minister an unreviewable power to arbitrarily (without explanation) cut funding to any group or class of participants in whichever way he or she desires. This power generates the risk of damaging the standing of and confidence in the NDIS through effectively using NDIS
Submission 2465
Submission from Carer – SA in Perth
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funding for political purposes. All Ministerial or bureaucratic decisions should be
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reviewable. Unreviewable decision-making is contrary to the principles of open and
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accountable government and should be rejected.
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Move away from a whole person to a single disability model. This is a simplistic
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view of disability with many disabilities being co-morbid and interacting to reduce
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functional ability. While it might work for some, it definitely will not work for all, but is
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being applied as a “one-size fits all” approach. A whole person approach needs to be
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retained.
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Reliance on a non-validated functional capacity assessment tool. The I-CAN tool
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has not been proven as a reliable and valid assessment tool across the entire spectrum
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of disability. The tool can only be used by certified assessors, and has not been
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validated against a population of the size required to justify validity. It relies on a three-
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hour interview, which can easily be seen as unsuitable for many classes of disabilities.
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Supports cut before replacement system implemented. The government’s
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replacement scheme for community access will not be available for the best part of a
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year after supports will be removed, leaving disabled people again without support.
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This is unacceptable, even if you accept that the replacement scheme is adequate (it is
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not).
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A 90-day limit on claims is unfair and discriminatory. The Bill calls for a time limit
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for claims to be submitted to the NDIS of 90 days post service delivery. This is grossly
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unfair to those with neurological disabilities, and far more onerous than limits applied to
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able-bodied people in analogous schemes. It will prevent people auditing their claims
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and submitting overlooked claims, which is simply petty and punitive. Given the
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substantial difference between the limit proposed and that of Medicare, it is
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discriminatory and should be changed to 90 days post plan termination or rollover.
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A need for a focus on efficiency. The Bill is deficient in that it does not provide for or
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encourage the government to pursue efficiency other than a vague mention of decision-
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automation. A real focus on efficiency in the operation of the scheme is required, and
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the government should stop nickel and diming participants instead.
More detail of the above summary points is given below.
Submission 2465
Submission from Carer – SA in Perth
1. Inadequate Parliamentary ScruƟny and Transparency
The consultation period for the Amendment Bill has been set as two weeks, which is grossly insufficient to allow for appropriate consultation, considering the complexity of the changes, the far-reaching implications, accessibility, and communication needs of people with disabilities.
The Australian Government Guide to Policy Impact Analysis prescribes a consultation period of minimum of 30 days where possible. With such a short period of consultation, it is clear to me that the government is not interested in meaningful consultation.
It also suggests that there are implications that the government does not want to be uncovered. Either way, the absence of meaningful scrutiny runs counter to the principle of open and accountable government, and should be comprehensively repudiated.
The short timeline impacts me in particular, by not providing sufficient time to:
- access the materials (such as the bill, explanatory memorandum, second reading speeches, and amendments);
- digest the implications of the changes;
- discuss the implications of the changes with my son, his therapy providers, and the rest of our family who are all involved with supporting him in addition to supports funded by the NDIS; and
- consult with other affected parties to determine the real impact of these changes.
Recommendation: Amend the consultation period for a best practice minimum of 30 days, however, a period of 90 days or more would be more reasonable given the scope and complexity of the changes.
2. Key decisions leŌ 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 3) 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.
Submission 2465
Submission from Carer – SA in Perth
No other government scheme operates in this way. When compared to systems operated for the benefit of able-bodied people such as Medicare, to substantially limit access through opaque and largely non-reviewable mechanisms designed to avoid Parliamentary scrutiny, the NDIS will cease to be a scheme operated for the benefit of vulnerable Australians, instead becoming a scheme where funding decisions are made for administrative convenience and political benefit.
As the operation of the scheme will be so different from those affecting mainstream Australia, it effectively discriminates against people with disabilities, thus is inconsistent with the discrimination Law. As such, it should not be possible to legislate to create an operating philosophy or procedures which differ from mainstream systems, applying more onerous access conditions or processes than apply to able-bodied people.
If not illegal, it is certainly shameful, and blatantly discriminatory.
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.
Submission 2465
Submission from Carer – SA in Perth
decisions would have remained unremedied if not for the avenue/s of review, and with the
NDIS’ record being somewhere between 70% to 90% of reviewed decisions being overturned, the removal of review will only compound the inequities perpetrated on Australia’s most vulnerable and disadvantaged people. To attempt to “fix” the NDIS by giving more power to the Minister and bureaucracy to act capriciously is immature and lazy, and introduces moral hazard into the NDIS system. No bureaucratic assessment or decision should be beyond review.
The focus of NDIS improvement should be on consistency and compliance, and the elimination of fraud.
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.
- All decisions of the Minister and the NDIS bureaucracy need to be reviewable.
4. 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, s34A). 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.
Schedule 1 part 4 appears to make the NDIS a political funding source. Given the power to arbitrarily and without review, reduce the funding of any part of a class of participants’ plans by any percentage that the Minister desires, the Minister could easily decide to plug a hole in the budget by extracting money in this way from the NDIS. Such money can easily be seen to be a political tool. The NDIS was established to exactly NOT work in this way, applying funding in a consistent and equitable manner to support people with disabilities according to established
Submission 2465
Submission from Carer – SA in Perth
and understood principles. These changes simply turn it into the Minister’s (or government of the day’s) slush fund.
This is a dangerous change, also running explicitly counter to a founding principle of the NDIS and cannot be allowed to stand.
Recommendation:
- Require that unspent funds carry over at plan renewal for participants saving for high- cost items.
- Eliminate Ministerial power of arbitrary class of funding reduction.
- Allow independent review of any funding decision.
- Requirement to exhaust treatment opƟons and move to a single disability assessment.
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.
Single impairment (Schedule 1 part 3). This is one of the most cynical and pernicious changes in this Bill, and obviously drawn up by able-bodied people. Many disabilities are comprised of multiple dimensions which can interact and create further functional impairment. Having to select one impairment when a person is impacted by a series of complex interactions between multiple disabilities is simply not possible. It is a childish simplification of how a person’s life is impacted by disability – in some cases where the aetiology is unknown. While it may be possible to catalogue physical impairment in this way, any form of neurological impairment will resist such a singularity and cause anxiety for someone already vulnerable, and significant inequity in the outcome.
Submission 2465
Submission from Carer – SA in Perth
My son has a complex range of disabilities, all of which interact and affect his functional
capacity. Having to select one as the “primary” diagnosis is a meaningless process and
medically invalid. This will only lead to more inequity and shifting MORE of the pressure of
support to families on top of the existing pressure. It will ruin lives.
It appears to me that the approach selected here is deliberately obtuse, with the premeditated
outcome of denying the plain and observable impacts of the disability of the whole person.
Individual circumstances (Schedule 1 part 3). Lord Bowen’s notion of “reasonableness” has
been a part of Common Law and indeed many Statutes since the early twentieth century.
These changes remove this fundamental notion from the NDIS. If a treatment is not
“reasonably” available to a person, then it is “not available”. Our experience of this concept
was financial – when we were granted access to the NDS, we had exhausted our financial
resources providing therapies for our son. Expensive medication or treatments were not
options for us – even fundamental treatments were becoming unavailable due to having spent
all our reserves to that point. To have some comfortable bureaucrat in a back room in
Canberra decree that a treatment was available (say in America where healthcare costs are
multiples of those in Australia), therefore available to us, would simply be laughable.
Any decree of available treatments must be tempered by “reasonableness”, not simply an
unreviewable decree by an absolutist bureaucrat insulated from reality.
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.
- Assessment must remain as the whole person’s disability – do not proceed with the requirement to select a single impairment to be supported by the NDIS.
- Unvalidated funcƟonal capacity assessment tool risks misidenƟfying 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,
Submission 2465
Submission from Carer – SA in Perth
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 tool must be flexible enough to assess a vast spectrum of disabilities, and I doubt it can.
The tool must have been demonstrated as deriving reliable and valid results, prior to being adopted as the mainstay of the NDIS assessment process. I am not aware that this has been demonstrated to the required level to be a safe basis for classification.
Furthermore, the pretext that any disability can be decomposed to a “primary” disability with “secondary” and presumably “tertiary” impairments is ludicrous. While perhaps a physical disability may, any neurological condition which is typically a series of impairments with complex interactions will resist typecasting with this tool.
This will affect us by understating the level of impairment (thus support) required by my son, now an adult, and supposedly independent. This will simply mean a greater impost on my family, with the pressure causing a reduction in my (and my wife’s) lifespan. This will mean that my son will be without support earlier in his life than is otherwise possible, and will be the government’s problem.
I am appalled that this cynical and obviously cost-cutting measure made it into the legislation.
It will simply result in systemic underfunding, and a transfer of MORE OF the burden of support to families, with the obvious results of such increased pressure apparent in the near future.
Submission 2465
Submission from Carer – SA in Perth
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Retain a whole person view of disability, and reject the “single impairment” approach as
incapable of equitably describing or documenting necessary and reasonable support
needs.
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Reject I-CAN as the functional capacity assessment tool until and unless it has been
demonstrably validated to identify the needs of all people with disability, including those
with episodic or fluctuating disability, and appropriate to Australian conditions.
- 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 (s34A). 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 will be cut before anything exists to replace them,
leaving carers and families with greater responsibilities/costs and no additional support. These
supports are often what help people stay visible, connected and safe. In many cases it is all
that keeps them alive.
The Ministerial diktat power under Schedule 1 part 4 (s34A) is also dangerous and introduces
moral hazard due to its broad scope and absence of review. It should be removed, and every
decision should be able to be reviewed. NDIS Plans are based on each individual’s
reasonable and necessary requirements – removing Social and Community Engagement unds from plans simply creates more disadvantage, invalidates the notion of plans matching a requirement, and will keep disabled people out of their communities. Keeping disabled people only able to mix with other disabled people may be what the government wants to minimise costs, but it will cause societal issues and waste societal capital by preventing people with
disabilities from contributing to their communities. Australia will be weaker and less inclusive as a result.
Personal Impact: Our son uses community participation funding to support him attending TAFE to learn new skills, but his funding is insufficient to cover all his attendances. My wife and I further support him by taking time off (unpaid), meaning that a lack of NDIS funding directly reduces our income and our ability to support our son further. Reductions in our
Submission 2465
Submission from Carer – SA in Perth
income mean less tax revenue, less discretionary expenditure, and less security for our son in time. As we are of retirement age, the more this happens, the sooner we will need to access the age pension, having already spent our savings on support and therapy prior to joining the NDIS.
In this way, such arbitrary reductions will simply shift the cost of support to families, communities, aged care and the health systems.
The Ministerial diktat power will make the NDIS just another political slush fund, where funds can be effectively transferred from disabled people to political projects at Ministerial whim. I am disgusted that this was ever suggested.
Recommendation:
- Require that no reductions to community participation or capacity building supports be allowed as proposed.
- Remove the ability of the Minister to make funding reduction decisions affecting broad classes of NDIS participants (the Ministerial diktat power under Schedule 1 part 4).
- Ensure that any Ministerial decision be subject to review.
- 90-day limit on claims is discriminatory.
The issue: Schedule 2 part 5 (s45A) will reduce the time to claim from the current statutory limit of 2 years, to 90 days. S45A(6) will allow the CEO to accept claims older than this if the CEO is satisfied that “exceptional circumstances” apply, although is silent on any time limits to the CEO’s discretion. Participants with limited organisational capability will not be able to claim “exceptional circumstances” as this is their normality, and as a consequence may be unable to claim in time or keep appropriate records. It is clear that such people will be unreasonably disadvantaged by this change. That it is completely out of step with other government programs suggests parsimony rather than fraud prevention.
This change discriminates against participants with neurological conditions (which are often comorbid with other disabilities), regardless of whether the NDIS recognises/funds them or not. Furthermore, requiring disabled people to claim in 90 days, whereas able-bodied people under Medicare enjoy much longer claim periods, is simply discriminatory. It will also prevent neurotypical people auditing their own accounts for completeness of claims, as I and many other people do for our tax and other purposes.
Submission 2465
Submission from Carer – SA in Perth
Personal impact: This change will prevent me from submitting valid claims that we may have simply overlooked as we are under pressure from working as full-time as possible, supporting our other children, and supporting our disabled son more and more. It will prevent me from conducting an audit of accounts – a reasonable and common right. I feel that it is administrative trickery, simply designed to shift more costs onto my family – on top of the extreme direct and indirect costs my whole family has already incurred. If it was genuine fraud prevention, then other government programs would have reduced claim times to this level many years ago.
Recommendation:
- Require that claim time limits NOT be shortened to 90 days, but set to 90 days after a plan finishes.
- Require that claim time limits be aligned with other government programs and not discriminate against disabled people. In the case of the NDIS, the benchmarked program would be Medicare. Where any claiming time limit varies from similar programs, the variation be justified by the Minister and set in legislation.
- Insufficient focus on efficiency in the Bill.
The issue: The Bill on the whole appears to focus on removing supports from people requiring support as a primary objective. Schedule 2 deals with reducing fraud, which appears to be a secondary focus. This is wrong – the first priority should be identifying and reducing fraud. The second priority should be driving efficiency within the NDIS bureaucracy. Nothing in this Bill except for the vague permitting of automated decision-making demonstrates a desire for efficiency. The government has instead increased the bureaucracy by creating a new police force within the NDIS. At no stage has the government identified the costs of administering the NDIS and benchmarked them against analogous schemes such as Medicare, and subsequently taken action to drive efficiency. Once the fraud has been eliminated and bureaucratic efficiency improved, the focus should turn to participant eligibility.
Recommendation:
- Split the Bill into parts, prioritising measures to counter fraud in the first instance, particular provider fraud.
Submission 2465
Submission from Carer – SA in Perth
- Focus on generating efficiency in the scheme as part 2.
- Focus on adjusting scheme participation as part 3.