Opposition to funding cuts impacting clients with significant intellectual and physical disabilities (Provider advocacy) | External submission

Submission 2520

PO BOX 268, Wynnum Qld 4178

Email: info@bls.org.au Phone: 07 3893 4528 www.bls.org.au

ABN – 61 109 569 182

Submission to the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the

NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

Attention: Committee Secretary, Senate Standing Committee on Community AƯairs

Submitted by email: community.aƯairs.sen@aph.gov.au and online submission portal

Date: 10 July 2026

We are Branches Lifestyle Support, a Brisbane-based disability service provider. We welcome the opportunity to make a submission to the Senate Standing Committee on Community AƯairs about the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026.

We are a small, not-for-proﬁt service, and for 23 years we have supported our clients to live independently and engage meaningfully in their community. Our clients require support for 24 hours each day, 365 days each year. With only 17 clients, we have remained committed to providing specialised and tailored support to these individuals – we understand their support needs closely.

We provide a specialised model of support to uphold our core philosophy that all people, regardless of the impact of any disability they may have, have the absolute right to lead a rewarding, fulﬁlling life, with all of the beneﬁts enjoyed by those people who do not have a disability.

Our clients represent the most vulnerable members of our community. They are adults with permanent, lifelong and signiﬁcant intellectual and/or physical disabilities, and they also live with varying other diagnoses. Despite having loving family relationships, our clients’ disability needs have proven too high to allow them to remain within their family homes. While 5% of NDIS participants are eligible for SIL supports, this has been deemed necessary for 100% of our clients.

So, regardless of the legislative changes that any government decides to make, our clients will continue to require ongoing support. They have required this support before the NDIS existed and will continue to require it into the future, regardless of what funding scheme is available. However, the quality and safety of that support, and how it aligns with basic human rights, will depend on this legislation amendment.

We are writing this submission on behalf of our clients and their families, and our devoted and committed staƯ members who deliver the day-to-day disability supports – all of whom will be signiﬁcantly, negatively and dangerously impacted by the proposed legislation in its current form.

Branches Lifestyle Support – Final Submission to Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs – NDIS Bill

Submission 2520

We oppose the amendments to the legislation in their current form

Branches Lifestyle Support agrees that reform, aligned with the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, must occur to address fraud, poor quality service delivery, and unsustainable cost growth.

However, we oppose the Bill in its current form. We implore the Committee to recommend that decision-makers and our elected Members of Parliament take more extensive, genuine and informed advice from key stakeholders, particularly those with lived experience and an understanding of the real impact of the legislation.

Further, our elected representatives should make a formal apology to the Disability Community for the blame laid upon them for the current problems with the NDIS. People with a disability have been shamed through this process.

In addition, the insinuation that all NDIS-funded services are potentially fraudulent, and the lack of robust defence from our elected representatives against such allegations, has caused direct harm to the reputation of legitimate, genuine and hard-working Australians who support those with a disability - who already have to ﬁght for legitimate supports. This should also be acknowledged by Members of Parliament.

Speciﬁcally, we object to

Any broad cuts to social and community participation funding
A proposed new functional capacity assessment that will be rolled out from 2028 to reassess everyone’s eligibility for the scheme
The proposed use of automated decisions and algorithms that neglect individual diƯerences in support needs, with no individual appeal options.
We object to ANY broad cuts to social and community participation funding.

One of our clients has already had her social and community participation funding reduced by 50%. This now signiﬁcantly impacts her ability to function and live - of every hour, of every day. She needs hands-on support to get dressed, to eat a meal and mobilise between her wheelchair and into a car. This reduction in funding drastically changes how, or if, these regular daily activities happen. We have signiﬁcant concern about her ongoing health and safety with such drastic funding cuts – when her disability support needs have not changed.

All of our clients are cognitively impaired which means that their communication abilities are very limited. Every minute of every hour is facilitated by their paid supports to allow access to essential activities such as medical appointments, grocery shopping, having a haircut, doing the banking, visits to family and engaging in social occasions. For the non-disabled members of the community, these are not optional aspects of daily life. People with disability should not be expected to relinquish their right to these either.

We suggest that before broadly reducing capacity-building and participation supports for all NDIS participants without personalised assessment of their needs, the Government should demonstrate that the administrative ineƯiciencies within the NDIS and NDIA have been

Branches Lifestyle Support – Final Submission to Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs – NDIS Bill

Submission 2520

identiﬁed, measured and addressed ﬁrst. This would also help the disability community to rebuild trust in their elected leaders.

We object to the new functional capacity test and the 2028 onwards reassessment of everyone.

The proposed Bill appears to increase reliance on standard frameworks and automatic tools in the process making eligibility and funding decisions for individuals. We work with many skilled professionals who use qualiﬁed judgement and clinical reasoning to assess our clients and their functional capacity. Our clients are not easily captured by standard tools – it is so important to understand how their functionality and abilities occur within the context of their environment.

We must stop forcing people with permanent, lifelong disabilities - who have been formally diagnosed and engaged with the disability system since birth - to continuously jump through hoops to prove they are still disabled. The system should automatically include these individuals. Standardised capacity tests have their place as a supportive efficiency tool, but they must never replace qualified clinical reasoning, and they certainly shouldn’t be used as a weapon to continually question the reality of a permanent, lifelong disability.

We object to the use of automated decisions and algorithms, with no individual appeal options.

The Bill appears to propose systems that may allow funding reductions across categories of supports or diagnoses, rather than via through fully individualised assessment of support needs.

We are concerned that narrow views of a primary diagnosis is a risk to the actual individual. Such a narrow-minded approach may disregard their real functional capacity within their environment, and therefore their real support needs.

A system-wide, automated decision-making model may appear administratively eƯicient, but it risks treating very diƯerent individual needs as if they are the same. The scheme must ensure that funding decisions are based on individual functional needs, not broad classiﬁcations or driven by artiﬁcial intelligence mechanisms.

Clerical workers and automated systems should not have the right to veto medical evidence and deny disabled people necessary, suitable and safe supports. A funding scheme must be implemented by staƯ who are trained appropriately to understand the sector within which they are working, and the customers they are serving.

The proposed legislation also appears to increase barriers to independent reviews and individual appeals processes. For many participants, particularly those with intellectual disability, psychosocial disability, cognitive impairment, or limited advocacy support, increased administrative complexity directly impacts their access to justice and procedural fairness. 3

Branches Lifestyle Support – Final Submission to Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs – NDIS Bill

Submission 2520

A Final Word…

In addition to the arguments outlined above, with 23 years of experience, we are well placed to make recommendations for the practical implementation of a funding scheme.

We believe that going back to de-centralised and localised NDIS oƯices will address many issues related to correct assessments, funding decisions, accountability for all and preventing possible fraud.

The current centralised model - where you are forced to clear every hurdle through a single national phone number or a generic email inbox - is a breeding ground for error and fraud. It defies common sense that a NDIA bureaucrat sitting in Western Australia can make life altering funding cuts, and life changing decisions for a participant in Queensland based on a single phone call without ever looking them in the eye. We need to go back to decentralised, localised NDIS offices. Putting properly trained staff back on the ground for face-to-face meetings instantly bringing accountability, human connection, and real evidence of functional capacity back into the system. This will increase the accountability of clients, disability support services and NDIS scheme employees alike when it comes to funding allocation.

We have seen this work in action, where direct connections between individuals, services and the funding scheme were eƯective in delivering supports in a timely and cost-eƯective manner.

Signed,

With deep concern for our future,

The Entire Community of Branches Lifestyle Support

 17 x NDIS clients who are living with permanent, lifelong disabilities

 Family Members

 Friends  Employees of all levels  Volunteers  Concerned members of the public