National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 2545
Submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee
Inquiry into the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026.
Date: 1 June 2026
This submission is made in response to the proposed amendments to the National Disability Insurance Scheme. The proposed changes should be assessed against the objects and principles of the NDIS Act 2013 – Sections 3 and 4 (Federal Register of Legislation), describe supporting the social participation of people with disability, providing reasonable and necessary support and enabling people with disability to exercise choice and control. The supports should promote independence, inclusion, and participation. Any reform that creates constant uncertainty regarding participant funding, continuity of supports, or provider sustainability risks undermining these foundational principles.
The scheme was designed for people with significant and permanent disability, and I support reforms that protect this cohort. Unfortunately, proposed amendments punitively and excessively target those with significant and permanent disability through cuts, caps, broad ministerial powers and reduced appeal rights. What is already an extremely restricted life would become unbearably difficult.
Schedule 1, Part 6 “Reasonable and necessary” supports. The current “reasonable and necessary” test s34 of the NDIS Act and the accompanying Rules require exhaustive criteria to be met. The proposed discretionary ministerial powers to reduce “reasonable and necessary support” by any volume at any time, with little transparency and no avenue for challenge are brutal. For a complex participant, if a support is required but the minister overrides it, a provider cannot deliver it. This exposes the participant to neglect, institutionalisation, abuse, or restrictive practices. This provision is dangerous, unreasonable and unacceptable.
The proposed 50% cuts to social participation to every participant, rather than case-by-case or on merit are particularly distressing. They send the message that some people, through no fault of their own, deserve only survival and not connection, contribution or purpose. If Covid taught our society anything, it taught us of the harms of social isolation.
That the minister also proposes sweeping powers to cut any support category by any percentage in an automated, non-transparent and unchallengeable manner is unacceptable. Participants and providers can’t operate in a stable way under this threat. It exposes participants to abuse and neglect, and good providers cannot maintain employment commitments when the funding underpinning those commitments is constantly uncertain.
History shows what happens when vulnerable people lose choice and self-determination and are managed by paternalistic authorities. The movie