National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 257
1 June 2026
Dear Committee,
Disabled People Against Cuts is a grassroots campaign network of Disabled people who oppose cuts to the NDIS and other disability support systems. We promote individualised support, independent living and the realisation of Disabled people’s human rights under the UNCRPD.
Initially, we wish to register that the timeframe provided to make submissions to the inquiry on this complex legislation is inadequate. This is particularly the case for Disabled people. The severely truncated timeframe for this inquiry has greatly limited our, and others, engagement in the submission process.
Recommendation 1: The Bill be referred to an inquiry process, with no less than 8 weeks for submissions.
We wish to express our unreserved opposition to this Bill. The Bill represents a foundational and philosophical attack on the National Disability Insurance Scheme and the principles of disability rights, independent living and full citizenship that underpinned the original intent of the Scheme.
We note with profound concern that an explicit goal of these reforms is the removal of 241,000 people from the NDIS, through the narrowing of eligibility for the Scheme through a variety of measures, including direct exclusion of populations of participants deemed eligible for other programs, redefining functional capacity, narrowing the permanence gateway and imposing artificial distinctions between eligible and ineligible impairments. We oppose these cuts categorically. The committee must be made aware that cuts of this scale will put lives at risk, transfer the burden of care onto informal supports, lead to an exodus from the workforce of Disabled people and their family members, put Disabled people at risk of abuse and neglect, directly contribute to family breakdown, mental health crisis, hospitalisation, preventable death and contribute to suicide risk.
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 257
Recommendation 2: The Bill not be passed in its current form, and that any amendment to the NDIS Act be undertaken with explicit regard to the UNCRPD and the human rights of Disabled people.
There are several specific provisions in the Bill which warrant specific opposition and recommendations in their place. Several are listed below. This should only be regarded as a sample of the numerous issues with the Bill.
- Removal of ‘Principles Relating to Participant Plans’. The repeal of this section removes the foundations of the NDIS, individualised planning and choice and control.
Recommendation 3: principles relating to participant plans be retained in recognition that individualisation is key to ensuring Disabled people’s human rights and independence.
- Removal of reasonable and necessary supports. The Bill extensively rewrites the framework for determining if a support is reasonable and necessary, reorienting it away from considerations of individuals and the support they need to live ordinary lives and towards cohort-level determinations based on generalisable evidence and a focus on cost cutting and consistency between participants.
Recommendation 4: the original intent of the Scheme, reflected in the 2013 section 34 be reinstated and used to determine reasonable and necessary supports for participants.
- Support determinations. The Bill allows the minister to arbitrarily reduce funding for all participants, or groups of participants, across particular, or all support categories by up to 99.9%. The power is retained for successive ministers in perpetuity. This destroys the foundational principle of reasonable and necessary support within the NDIS, reinstating rationing of support and producing unmet need. This provision will cost lives.
Recommendation 5: the Minister not be granted permission to make support determinations that reduce support below levels determined to be reasonable and necessary for a participant.
- Functional capacity defined without reference to personal and environmental circumstances. This promotes a biomedical view of disability as a static state. It does not recognise the interaction of impairment and environment. This definition will be incapable of capturing the reality of Disabled people’s lives
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 257
and needs, including existing and available support, co-occurring disability and conditions necessary for survival.
Recommendation 6: functional capacity should be defined specifically with reference to the impact of personal and environmental circumstances.
- Further removal of whole of person support. This likewise promotes an unrealistic, biomedical view of disability which does not reflect the reality of Disabled people’s lives.
Recommendation 6: participants be assessed in relation to the totality of their disability support needs to ensure their inclusion in society.
- All appropriate treatment. Requiring people to undertake treatment that they cannot in practice undertake will create a population of people with significant and permanent disability unable to access support. This will cost lives and severely disadvantage Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, people in rural and remote locations and people experiencing poverty. It also breaches all rights regarding choice, control and bodily autonomy.
Recommendation 7: retention of the current permanence test, further, treatment required of participants to be eligible for the NDIS should be treatment that is available through the public health system. Financial disadvantage should never be a reason to deny supports.
- Rule-making powers. The Bill grants extensive rule making powers to the minister of the day, including the power to set eligibility thresholds for access to the NDIS, determine when all appropriate treatment has been undertaken and determine where participants should be receiving support through alternate programs of support. These rule making powers contain the potential to reshape the Scheme operation and the participant cohort.
Recommendation 8: Inclusion of an enforceable duty to consult on amendments to the Act and delegated legislation, reflecting the four Gunning Principles.
- Automation. The Bill grants sweeping powers to the National Disability Insurance Agency to automate decision-making in areas that will have enormous impacts on the lives of Disabled people. Providing information about where automation has been used does not ensure that the underlying assumptions of these systems or their actual operation are safe for use in
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 257
making determinations about supports that keep people alive and allow them to be part of the community.
Recommendation 9: automated decision-making should not be a feature of the National Disability Insurance Scheme, especially with no transparency or human oversight. Disabled people should have access to individualised plans of support that reflect the reality of their needs and lives.
- Surveillance and policing powers. The Bill grants significant new powers to the NDIA to engage in policing of participants and providers. There are known and significant issues with the capacity and culture of the NDIA and there is enormous potential for harm in the granting of these powers without appropriate safeguards for Disabled people. We are particularly concerned about debt-raising powers, which are not reviewable.
Recommendation 10: no further policing or debt-raising powers be given to the National Disability Insurance Agency in the absence of a comprehensive investigation into their capacity and culture, including capacity to uphold the law in dealing with participants.
Impact on those with the highest care needs We wish to directly address the narrative that these cuts will protect the NDIS for those who supposedly need it the most. This belies the experience of participants with the highest needs, who struggle to have their care needs met and frequently face plan decisions that directly put their lives in danger. Despite the mention of “saving the scheme for the highest need” the blunt instrument of support determinations and caps on supports will significantly affect those people with high support needs.
People with high care needs are very likely to have multiple impairments. The insertion of “directly’ to “arising from” of s34(1)aa is a threat to real needs of Disabled people with complex care needs. There also remain significant outstanding issues in relation to the interface between health and disability support, and state and Commonwealth responsibilities. This Bill provides extensive capacity for cost-shifting to the health hospital system, but does nothing to ensure that support provided through those systems will be adequate to protect the lives of Disabled people.
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 257
Alternatives to the Proposed Reform
An alternative approach to the current reform agenda would begin from a fundamentally different premise about the purpose of the NDIS itself. Rather than treating disability support primarily as a problem of cost, the Government could instead approach reform through a genuinely rights-based and participant-governed framework grounded in the original intent of the Scheme and Australia’s obligations under Article 19 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
Such an approach would recognise that the long-term sustainability of the NDIS cannot be measured solely through short-term budget containment or reductions in individualised supports. Genuine sustainability must also be measured through the extent to which Disabled people are able to live safe, stable, meaningful, and self-directed lives within ordinary communities.
A genuinely transformative reform process would also involve meaningful co-design led by Disabled people themselves, particularly people with complex support needs who are most vulnerable to institutionalisation and segregation.
An enforceable duty to consult is a commitment to uphold the rule of law We adopt and endorse Dr Darren O’Donovan’s 2024 recommendation to legislate an enforceable duty to consult which reflects the Gunning Principles:
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Consultation must occur when proposals are still at a formative stage, not when issues have been predetermined.
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There must be sufficient information to give ‘intelligent consideration.’
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Information regarding the proposal must be sufficiently available, accessible, and easily interpretable for consultees to provide an informed response.
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There is adequate time and ‘conscientious consideration’ must be given to the consultation responses before a decision is made.
We argue this is the bare minimum expected of a signatory to the CRPD, including for amendments to primary legislation that will have an enormous impact on Disabled people’s lives. We note that courts in the UK have already upheld these principles in relation to consultation on disability policy R (Clifford) v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions [2025] EWHC 58 (Admin).
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 257
Conclusion The original promise of the NDIS was not merely that Disabled people would receive care or supervision. It was the promise that Disabled people would be supported to live ordinary, self-directed lives as equal citizens within ordinary communities. The current reform trajectory increasingly risks replacing this vision with one in which Disabled people become managed populations within centrally organised service ecosystems shaped primarily around provider sustainability, workforce management, and cost containment.
An alternative pathway remains available. Reform could strengthen the original principles that justified the creation of the NDIS. Instead of viewing Disabled people as cost burdens, reform could begin from the recognition that Disabled people are citizens entitled to ordinary lives, meaningful relationships, belonging, dignity, and self-determination. Sustainability should not be measured solely through reductions in budget growth, but also in the extent to which
The deeper question raised by these reforms is therefore not simply how disability support should be funded - it is what kind of lives society believes Disabled people are entitled to live.
Yours sincerely,
Disabled People Against Cuts (Australia)