Submission 2575
29 May 2026
Committee Secretary, Community Affairs Legislation Committee
Inquiry into the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment
(Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Dear Committee Secretary
I welcome the opportunity to have input into this Bill.
I also appreciate the extension provided.
However, I still do not know how else to describe the turnaround for this consultation process
in terms other than “bad faith”. If I have understood this incorrectly, I would welcome a
publicly-given alternative explanation in response that addresses the speed at which this
process is being conducted.
This speed effectively precludes people from having substantive, if any, input into a
consultation that struggles to meet the definition; about a Bill that will struggle to meet its
obligations under the UNCRPD that is explicitly recognised by domestic law.
Frankly, it is almost impossibly difficult to engage in good faith in response. But I will,
because Australians with disability deserve nothing less.
You have heard from lawyers, NDIS participants, families, and representative organisations
who have articulated the legal and human impacts far more eloquently than I could hope to at
this time. One example of a submission I endorse is that of Occupational Therapy Society
(OTSi).
I will not ‘re-prosecute’ arguments against the Bill that I strongly encourage/implore you to
read with the gravity these warrant. Instead, I will give my own brief commentary in the best
way I know within the timeframe. This submission is in more of my natural ‘voice’ than I
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would like for such a submission, because I am beyond tired. As is the rest of Australia’s
disability community.
I have spoken to various ‘headings’ in response to the Bill. My exclusion of other headings is
not tacit endorsement of their content. I share the concerns raised by others across the
headings I have spoken to in this submission, and those I have not.
A summary of my position is that this Bill will cause significant harm if it is passed without
amendment, or with superficial amendment only. My understanding from other concerned
community members, and an experience I share, is one of ‘shouting into the void’ on a
foregone conclusion.
Please prove us wrong.
The process needs to be slowed down and genuine consultation (if not co-design) must be
conducted to ensure the safety of Australians with disability. The Bill appears to be a
calculated effort to overturn the positive impacts of case law in order to meet Budget targets
at the expense of lives.
The NDIS needs reform. I don’t know anybody who disagrees with that. Where we disagree
is on the ‘how’.
Please enable us a fair hearing. Two weeks plus a weekend isn’t it.
Sincerely
Katy Gagliardi
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Schedule 1 – Access and Planning Measures
Part 1 – Defining functional capacity
I don’t have capacity to speak to this in any detail. Others have, extensively.
A line that stands out to me in a fact sheet published by the Australian Government |Department of Health, Disability and Ageing is:
‘The threshold and assessment process for this will be informed by advice from a Technical Advisory Group and engagement with the community and states and territories.’ (Emphasis added).
The current process does not fill me with confidence this will be conducted in a manner accessible to people with comprehensive legal and policy understanding, much less people with cognitive disability and complex communication needs.
My concern here is that the threshold and assessment process for this will be informed by cherry-picked advice; that overstretched advocates will be stretched further to share extensively nuanced information within a functionally impossible timeframe; and that people with cognitive disability and complex communication needs will not be given unbiased information or sufficient time to engage at all.
Part 2 – Limit unscheduled plan reassessments
Why?
If these are administratively difficult to conduct, then measures must be taken to improve the administration. Effectively punishing participants with a demonstrably poor view to how this Part would play out in people’s real lives will see the ‘problems’ pushed elsewhere.
Part 3 – Strengthen link between an impairment and need for support
The understanding that disability impacts can be separated out and funded according to eligibility is misguided.
A simple way I explain this is through an art simile:
Yellow (disability 1) + blue (disability 2) does not make yellow + blue. They make green (disability 3).
An arbitrary slice-and-dicing of disability impacts that positions itself as administrative sense-making is akin to an art teacher telling a kid they’ll only get an A if they can point to the yellow in their painting of grass.
This makes perfect sense to me. But not everyone’s head lives in simile.
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If someone is on NDIS for one disability but they have two others that are unfunded, an administrative attempt to pop these disabilities into neat boxes to exclude the unfunded two from being funded is neat – but wrong.
Not wrong as in ‘morally’ (that’s another discussion). Wrong as in ‘incorrect’.
I say this not as a theoretical abstraction. I say it as someone who listens to professionals and people with lived experience. I say it as someone who lives it.
I have been told that personal, lived experience submissions to this inquiry will have the most power. But I can’t do it. I cannot put my personal experience in any amount of detail to a public inquiry in the hopes it will garner empathy from within a process that has demonstrated anything but.
Therefore, this is as much as I can share from a personal perspective. Please read the submissions of people with lived experience who are braver or more desperate than I, and do not underestimate the personal cost to them of sharing their experiences – or discount these as dramatic or not really understanding what the Bill is set to do. That would be a convenient, but inaccurate, framing of legitimate fear.
The sun will not rise again for people who don’t survive this ‘reform’.
Part 4 – Support determinations
This is a disturbing amount of power for a Minister. I know it’s not unheard of. I still object.
Where are the safeguards for this Part?
Are ‘groups of supports’ set to become a political game whereby the government of the day takes 50% of a child’s supports while the Opposition relishes the opportunity to position itself as the ‘cool parent’ until they are voted into power and the other guys become the ‘cool parents’ again?
This is a crass analogy. But I struggle to understand the reality in different terms.
What happens to NDIS participants while this dynamic plays out in Parliament? And their informal supports? Burnout and worse have already occurred.
Given the extreme reliance on informal supports under the proposed legislation, it would be beneficial for everyone concerned if these needs were considered. Burned out supports keep going until they don’t.
Then what happens to human lives?
And to Federal and/or State Budgets?
Part 7 – Plan suspensions
This Part assumes the NDIA understands what a reasonable attempt to contact an individual is.
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I have heard of d/Deaf people receiving phone calls despite repeated requests for SMS contact.
Autistic participants receiving phone calls when this exacerbates their impairments.
What of people with psychosocial disability who have periods where answering the phone is impossible due to their impairments? Or due to NDIA-induced/exacerbated trauma? Or a combination?
What of people experiencing homelessness?
Domestic violence?
I am not convinced the NDIA is currently equipped to effectively factor in the complexities of disabled and otherwise marginalised human living into their reading of ‘reasonable attempts’ to contact a participant before revoking their access.
Perhaps cynically, or perhaps realistically, my reading of how ‘reasonable attempts’ will be read in practice is ‘reasonable according to a neurotypical, hearing, securely housed standard – with some scope for flexibility that will be genuinely, in good faith, understood as ‘generous’ by the Agency but ‘thoroughly insufficient for reasons already explained but repeatedly misunderstood or underestimated’ by people ‘on the ground’ and their providers.’
Short of surreptitiously orchestrating a personal connection and subsequent realisation parallel to that of a previously sceptical Media Advisor during Robodebt, I do not know how to bridge the current gap between people who support (or remain ambivalent toward) the current Parliamentary processes and the real human damage occurring as a result of this process and proposed legislation.
And potential financial or reputational damage.
Part 8 – Tightening meaning of permanence to reduce access where an impairment can be treated
What will constitute ‘all appropriate’ treatment?
Whose decision about whether a treatment is appropriate will be given policy and/or legal primacy? The person receiving it? Their family? Their provider? An APS6 who does not know them or have allied health qualifications?
What will it mean to ‘alleviate’ an impairment? Will ABA be considered to have ‘alleviated’ the impacts of autism where a person learned to give eye contact and remain still at the cost of their internal emotional wellbeing that could go on to result in NDIS-worthy levels of PTSD?
If the person cannot articulate themselves in ways that are easily understood by others, could ‘traumatic distress’ be read as ‘behaviours of concern’ and alleviated by ‘chemical restraint’?
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‘Legally sanctioned’ is not automatically synonymous with ‘clinically correct’ or ‘ethically sound’.
From what I have read about the Bill, it appears to be tightening the screws on an above ground pool that, if passed (as-is or with superficial amendments only), will burst at the seams when pressure-tested. Federal costs could well become State costs by virtue of hospitalisation, for example. Or they could become higher Federal costs when a person goes without support until such time as they do meet the criteria at immeasurable cost to themselves and their families.
Part 9 – Eligibility based on access to other services
This is not okay.
Other submissions discuss this in great detail. This Part appears to be an effort to overturn the work achieved in National Disability Insurance Agency v Sutherland. This is not an appropriate measure to ensure Sutherland doesn’t open legal floodgates.
Schedule 2 – Fraud measures
Part 1 – Registration of NDIS providers
What of people with intellectual disability who have had traumatic experiences at the hands of registered providers, who – along with their families – have carved out bespoke ‘service models’ that meet their housing and other needs without exacerbating traumatised responses (commonly referred to as ‘behaviours of concern’)?
What of services for one? If you are unfamiliar or recently familiarised with that term, that is one example of why a much longer consultation period is needed to ensure this Bill does not inadvertently contain provisions designed for cost cutting that have the potential to exacerbate harm – that could in some instances exacerbate cost.
A service for one is where a person (or their nominee) directly employs staff to support them (or the person they are caring for).
Schedule 3 – Governance arrangements
Part 2 – Automation of administrative action
“Part 2 allows the NDIA to automate specific administrative actions, with appropriate oversight and safeguards. This will include processing claims and payments.” (Australian
Government | Department of Health, Disability and Ageing).I have questions based on reading this in isolation. I acknowledge other materials may exist that I have not read that answer my questions. However, on the face of the above:
Who defines the parameters of ‘appropriate’, and on what grounds? Will the concerns of NDIS participants, their families and providers be taken into account?
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What else will it include besides processing claims and payments? I acknowledge these are likely in the Bill that I am not currently capable of reading. I suspect I am far from alone.
What other information am I and others missing that will have material impacts on people’s lives?
Will scared NDIS participants and their families get genuine assurance (by way of robust legislative drafting complemented by genuine community consultation) that there will be no risk of a repeat of Robodebt?
What are the safeguards? Will these be accessible to people with intellectual disability – to families at breaking point in good part due to bureaucracy – to people with English as a second language – to small providers trying to keep up with the changes while supporting participants?
What safeguards will be in place to protect the safeguards from becoming too swamped by demand to, well, safeguard?
How will you know these are accessible if the same consultation period provided here (or less) is provided to community-test the proposed safeguards?
Schedule 4 – New framework planning
Not all participants have even received their impairment notices yet!
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