National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 2483
I have many concerns about the proposed NDIS Amendment Bill as our lives are based on the supports received and I’m writing to you because I’m very worried. These changes are being labelled as reform but they are purely a cost cutting measure and not in the interests of the disability community who may be left without the supports they need or a way to appeal decisions. People’s supports and rights are already being ripped away and this bill relies on rules not yet determined by the agency which could be anything, throwing people’s lives into disarray and risking putting people in harmful situations. How are providers able to provide quality supports with so much uncertainty? The rushed engagement and difficulties in uploading submissions are also of concern. Schedule 1 The proposed changes to accessing the scheme and planning based on functional capacity for funding supports do not take into account the whole person but instead attempt to cut a person up into parts that cannot be assessed separately, this is the wrong approach. People need to be recognised as complete beings and their needs assessed taking all factors into account. Attempting to assess one part without another dehumanises people with a disability. This form of assessment is also unsuitable for those with fluctuating capacity and degenerative conditions while overly burdening those with stable already identified support needs by having to continually prove their needs over and over at cost to the taxpayer. How can the agency rely on diagnoses for what supports are funded if diagnosis is not used for access or to determine funded supports? How will adding a disability work and the impairment notices? Senator Maria Kovacic said “The Albanese Labor government’s primary focus on reassessments risks stripping support from genuine NDIS participants, rather than targeting the fraud, waste and exploitation driven by bad actors.” Also, 90 days is far too long a timeframe for access without support. Limiting unscheduled plan reassessments runs the risk of leaving people without much needed supports. Of great concern is that vulnerable people are also denied any support from someone like a support coordinator to request changes they need, leaving them even more vulnerable. I appreciate that there are too many requests for reassessments as when my son was looking to change days services, all of the big registered providers asked us to request a plan reassessment so we had enough funding for their services; I don’t know how many people did that but we did not. My son has been on the NDIS for over 5 years, prior to that he was on the state system and his supports are basically the same, day services, transport, 1:1 support workers and some AT. His supports haven’t changed as his support needs haven’t changed and yet we are always subject to reassessments and slightly different plans even though we have no need for changes. I ask you to imagine always having to prove every difficulty you have over and over again? It’s exhausting and yet now with these changes, we will be unable to ask for changes if needed but continue to have constant changes made by the NDIA when we do not need them. We should be in control of identifying when something isn’t working for us, not the agency. There should also still be a time frame when if a participant asks for a reassessment and they do not hear anything from the agency, they can appeal. Protections for vulnerable people should not be removed. Too many planning decisions are already being appealled which implies the decision making process may be flawed and a simple one time assessment is stepping away from rectifying the unsuitable plans.
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 2483
Very concerning is the absolute power of the minister to override what was determined as reasonable and necessary to just cut any support any time. This leaves people without any certainty of continuation of supports and also leaves business vulnerable as they cannot invest in building up services with no certainty of NDIS participants having funding to access their services. The minister should not have the power make any change without the agreement of the states. This problem is amplified when the rules are not yet determined and subject to change. Introducing plan renewals where the plan’s end date is set is a great idea as long as new plan is automatically issued the next day. The old state system worked this way and it provides certainty and gives people and businesses an opportunity to have service agreements and paperwork in place. Once we were issued 3 plans in 2 months, initiated by the agency and it was so difficult to keep on top of all the paperwork and it was also very confusing, not to mention unnecessary. The final plan we received still had the original error which we did not ask to be rectified. Many plans have errors and receiving a new plan each time an error is corrected is very disruptive. The old state systems had draft plans which enable errors to be rectified and I think draft plans should be introduced to enable errors to be easily fixed. Losing funding at the end of a plan needs to be reconsidered as there may be funding for an item or renovations underway that haven’t been paid for and then the opportunity is suddenly lost. Also for plans with reducing annual budgets, funds will be lost even if not used so this should not be lost along with any unpurchased AT, that funding should roll over like it does now. When determining reasonable and necessary, allowing considerations of others in similar circumstances is nonsensical as each person is individual and their supports needs can vary greatly from others with similar conditions. To determine supports based on individual function arising from an impairment is actually inconsistent with comparing different people with similar disabilities to assess support needs. Also, how can a budget be determined and then be cut by the minister without any justification? Plan suspensions should only be made if there is reason to suspend like fraud on behalf of the participant. An inability to contact someone does not mean someone does not need support and may even indicate that their support needs are greater than what is provided. People wait many months for the agency to action requests and it is so unfair to hold vulnerable people to a higher standard than the agency is held to. Communication with the agency is just too hard. People have wrong information on their files and they have no direct contact at the agency who is familiar to them. If people had a contact who explains the plan to them and are available for questions, a lot of mistakes would be avoided and fraud more easily identified. Tightening measures around permanence leads us to a slippery slope. There is a lady I know who needs NDIS supports and one of her limiting factors is related to emphysema. As she is unable to breathe, she cannot look after herself but she was denied NDIS as she hasn’t had a lung transplant. She does not want a lung transplant, but even if she did, she couldn’t just book it and have it the next day as there is a very lengthy process with a long recovery period. This proposed amendment places a huge burden on disabled people which is totally unnecessary. Needing to prove that there is no other system to provide support is also unnecessarily burdensome.
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 2483
Schedule 2 Mandatory NDIS registration is the worst thing that can happen to the NDIS. Before NDIS, there were services and none of them were NDIS registered but they managed to provide quality services. NDIS registration is useless for making anyone safer and it greatly increases the cost of the scheme. My son used to attend a day service with a big registered provider and he was funded through state based FFYA system where the annual funded amount was just under $25,000. This exact same service quoted over $70,000 under NDIS for the exact same service in the same year. Day services actually refused FFYA funding during the transition period and demanded more funds under the NDIS. This shows that the move away from block funding not only increased the administrative burden and costs, but were used by the big providers to increase what they charge. The big registered providers invented sharp practices to make more money and these are not banned by the agency. When big registered providers hire staff to fiddle with the books to pass mandatory audits and also hire multiple media consultants to advertise their services, you know something is very wrong as they are not prioritising being a quality service. My son was actually removed from activities he had been doing for years and his choices were limited because he did not provide media consent as the big registered company found advertising more important than providing supports. Anyone can purchase a business which is already NDIS registered online so what does mandatory registration actually do? Other measures like community visitors and proper worker screening checks that are not tied to an employer or NDIS but all systems including aged care would keep people safer and improve services without costing much or greatly increasing the cost of the scheme as mandatory NDIS registration will. Workers who work at NDIS registered companies can easily change jobs and therefore if they are putting the disability community at risk or even just not doing a good job, they can just go elsewhere for employment without anyone knowing that the worker is a problem. Also, people may choose to work in other systems like aged care and having registration solely in NDIS won’t identify those who do not provide reasonable supports or even defraud NDIS and therefore will allow them to repeat the issues throughout different systems. Right now, it’s only NDIS registered providers that can access plans without oversight and so continuing with mandatory registration could easily open the door for even more fraud while making things unsafer as NDIS services do not exist in a bubble and sometimes overlap with other systems like aged care. Retention of records is another unnecessary burden for those who are agency or plan managed. If an invoice is submitted for payment, the NDIA or plan manager have that on file and that information should be retained if required without needing participants or their nominees to retain it too. Reducing claim times may assist participants to have a better understanding of their actual budgets and therefore a good idea, however, I believe that there should be an opportunity for later submissions in exceptional circumstances like when a renovation is taking a very long time or equipment needs to be adjusted. Plan managers do not need to be registered but they should be consistent in how they operate. Plans need to be explained to participants and then supports using those line items should be funded. All plan managers should operate in similar ways and have mandatory time requirements in paying invoices to ensure a participant isn’t left without supports.
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 2483
Schedule 3 Unfortunately, the Government setting prices has not been very successful and the aged care sector has delayed this with good reason. There should be a better way. Right now, providers are able to claim more than people are funded in individual plans and that means people miss out on other supports. Big registered providers are able to claim support under line items which participant’s plans are not funded for; for example apart from the 1:3 ratio of 6 hours funded in an average NDIS plan, the provider also charges 1:1 in a group, 1:1 NF2F and capital centre costs. This should not be allowed and an optional block funding arrangement for some support types like day services should be considered to reduce administrative costs. Businesses should be able to apply for grants covering business related costs like capital centre costs instead of making individual participants responsible through NDIS plans. Automation is the worst part of this bill. Automation failures include Robodebt and in August 2025 the obudsman found automation unlawfully removed people from Jobseeker payments. Aged care package recipients also report this is failing them. Automation needs human oversight when assessing human beings or the disastrous failures of the past will be repeated. Right now plans are based on TSP but a human can make necessary changes. If an algorithm is used, many people will receive funding that does not match their needs without any way of fixing it. The funding may not be more, just not relevant. For example, many people are given BSP funding which is tens of thousands of dollars and they may not need that but possibly two or three thousand dollars of psychology or OT funding along with funding for support workers to implement strategies instead. Schedule 4 This is truly awful as this amendment relies on rules, changes and processes not yet determined. Any plan can change at any time for any reason. How can something be deemed necessary and then be taken away? All people already on the scheme have had their support needs determined over and over again, so this will not benefit anyone with a suitable plan and stable supports, it is just an expensive way to create new plans that provide the same supports that people already have. The proposed changes do not return the scheme to it’s original intent but instead are purely a cost cutting measure which does not tackle fraud, waste, exploitation or sharp practices and it does not address the overly bureaucratic and burdensome administrative difficulties including unnecessarily handling the same things over and over again. The difficulties in understanding funding and with basic contact with staff who can answer questions cause so many unnecessary problems. The uncertainty in the scheme causes fear and anxiety for participants and their families all while making it difficult to conduct the business of providing supports for providers as they have no certainty of income. Some big registered providers who provide group services will likely collapse with a 50% reduction in community participation and if not, they will invent even more sharp practices to ensure their survival. Community participation costs have ballooned somewhat due to sharp practices invented and used by big registered providers.
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 2483
The government is constantly trying to reduce the scheme’s cost by cutting participants’ plans instead of fixing the administrative processes and effectively using systems already in place like plan managers and support coordinators. They have not replicated the successful aspects of the state based systems. Blanket cuts do not take into account people’s personal circumstances. Reducing community participation may be the one factor where a sole carer decides that’s it’s too much to provide full time care and then the person will need to move into NDIS housing which will cost more than properly funding community participation. Thank you for reading my submission.