Submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee
Inquiry: National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submitter: Jessica Smithers
Capacity: NDIS participant; Registered Nurse and PhD candidate; founder of Neurodivergent Nurses Australia
Date: 29 May 2026
Postal address: Email: Phone:
About this submission
I write as an NDIS participant whose individualised plan is the reason I am able to undertake doctoral research, volunteer, and support neurodivergent nurses across Australia. I also write as a researcher whose PhD examines the experiences of neurodivergent nurses working in public healthcare, and as a taxpayer with a direct interest in how Commonwealth disability spending interacts with Medicare, the health system, child protection, social housing and the justice system.
I support reform of the NDIS. The scheme is administratively complex, inconsistent in its decisions and exhausting to navigate. The 2023 Independent Review (Bonyhady & Paul) made 26 recommendations and 139 supporting actions intended to be implemented as a connected package. The Bill before this Committee is not that package. It is, in my view and in the view of a broad cross-section of disability representative organisations, a different and more contractionary instrument that risks dismantling individualised disability support before any replacement system is in place.
Submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee - National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations Bill) 2026
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 2633 Jessica Smithers Neurodivergent Nurses Australia 29th May 2026
Summary position
I oppose the Bill in its current form. I do not oppose reform. I ask the Committee to recommend that the Bill not proceed until: (a) the consultation period is extended and conducted in genuinely accessible formats; (b) the functional-capacity assessment tool and the Foundational Supports / Thriving Kids architecture are publicly released, costed and tested; (c) the Bill is co-designed with Disability Representative Organisations, including organisations led by neurodivergent people, women with disability, First Nations people with disability and culturally and linguistically diverse communities; and (d) the Bill is sequenced behind, not ahead of, the alternative supports that participants are being told to rely on. The specific recommendations that follow are listed together at the end of this submission for the Committee’s convenience.
Why the structure of the Bill matters
The Bill runs to approximately 109 pages and is organised into five Schedules. The substantive shifts sit in Schedule 1 (access and planning), Schedule 2 (provider registration and compliance), Schedule 3 (governance, pricing and automation), Schedule 4 (new framework planning) and Schedule 5 (transitional rulemaking). Read in isolation, individual provisions can be presented as technical or administrative. Read together, they transfer significant discretionary power to the Minister and the Agency, narrow the legal definition of who the scheme supports and what it pays for, and reduce the rights of participants to test those decisions. The cumulative effect is what concerns me, and it is the cumulative effect on which I ask the Committee to focus.
Submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee - National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations Bill) 2026
Schedule 1 — Access and planning
Functional capacity as the access test (s 9B)
The Bill makes a standardised functional-capacity assessment a central gate for access. The assessment tool has not been publicly released. It will not be permitted to consider environmental factors such as housing, transport, income or assistive technology already in use. For neurodivergent participants, autistic participants, people with psychosocial disability, people with fluctuating conditions, and people who mask their support needs in clinical settings, a single standardised snapshot is well documented in the peer-reviewed literature to underestimate need. Removing environmental context further compresses what the assessor is permitted to see.
In my own case, the supports I receive are calibrated to the realities of my home, my study, my work, and my volunteer roles. A tool that ignores those realities will not produce an accurate picture of the support I need to participate. The Committee cannot be expected to endorse an access test it has not seen.
Recommendation 1: That Schedule 1 not commence until the functional-capacity assessment tool has been publicly released, independently validated for the cohorts to which it will be applied (including neurodivergent, psychosocial, fluctuating, intellectual, and culturally diverse cohorts), and reviewed by this Committee or its successor.
Recommendation 2: That the legislation expressly permits assessors to consider environmental, cultural and personal context in determining functional capacity, consistent with the biopsychosocial framework underpinning the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health.
Submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee - National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations Bill) 2026
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 2633 Jessica Smithers Neurodivergent Nurses Australia 29th May 2026
“All appropriate treatment” before access (s 9B and related provisions on permanence)
The Bill tightens the meaning of permanence so that access may be refused where an impairment can be “treated”. As drafted, this places an evidentiary burden on applicants to demonstrate that all appropriate treatments have been attempted before access is confirmed. For neurodivergent people, this framing is contested in principle: autism is not a condition to be treated, and several historical interventions framed as “treatment” are now recognised as harmful. For people with rare or co-occurring conditions, “appropriate treatment” is often unknown. For people on low incomes, in rural and regional areas, or in communities where culturally safe clinicians are scarce, “appropriate treatment” is often unaffordable or unavailable. Because the Bill prevents the Agency from considering environmental factors such as income, the practical effect is to deny access on the basis of socioeconomic circumstance.
Recommendation 3: That the Bill be amended to remove the “all appropriate treatment” requirement, or in the alternative, to define “appropriate” by reference to availability, affordability, cultural safety, the wishes of the person and the evidence base for the intervention; and to expressly exclude any treatment the person, or where applicable their substitute decision-maker, does not consent to.
“Directly arising from” a single eligible impairment (s 34(1)(aa))
The Bill requires that supports be directly linked to an eligible impairment. Many participants — and most neurodivergent participants — live with co-occurring conditions. Support needs commonly arise from the interaction of several impairments and the person’s environment rather than from one impairment in isolation. A requirement to attribute each support to a single source impairment will be administratively burdensome, will generate disputes about causation that cannot be resolved with the available evidence, and will systematically disadvantage people with intersecting conditions, including women, who are more likely to receive late or multiple diagnoses.
Recommendation 4: That section 34(1)(aa) be amended so that supports may be funded where they are reasonably necessary in response to the combined effect of the participant’s eligible impairments and their interaction with each other and with the person’s environment.
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 2633 Jessica Smithers Neurodivergent Nurses Australia 29th May 2026
Support determinations and cohort-level funding cuts (s 34A)
Schedule 1 confers on the Minister a power to make support determinations that reduce funding across categories of supports for groups of participants without individual assessment of need. The Government has announced an intention to use this power to reduce funding for social and community participation supports, and to reduce capacity-building daily-activity supports, from 1 October 2026. The reductions are described in public communications as 50 per cent and 10 per cent respectively. As drafted, the power is not limited to those reductions and could be applied at substantially higher percentages to any category. The only express constraint is that the Minister must have regard to the safety of participants.
For me, social and community participation supports are not optional extras. They are the mechanism through which I can leave my home, attend university, attend essential appointments, fulfil my professional duties, volunteer within my community, and remain connected to the community I research and serve. A 50 per cent reduction applied uniformly across this category would not produce a 50 per cent reduction in my participation. It would fundamentally change whether participation is possible at all, with consequential costs that fall on Medicare (through deteriorating physical and mental health), on tax revenue (through reduced workforce participation and earning capacity), and on informal carers (predominantly women).
Recommendation 5: That section 34A be removed from the Bill, or, in the alternative, that the power to make support determinations be (i) limited to upward adjustments, (ii) subject to disallowance by both Houses of Parliament, (iii) conditional on prior publication of distributional modelling including impacts by disability type, gender, First Nations status, rurality and age, and (iv) accompanied by an enforceable obligation to fund the alternative supports that affected participants are expected to rely upon before any reduction commences.
Submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee - National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations Bill) 2026
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 2633 Jessica Smithers Neurodivergent Nurses Australia 29th May 2026
Repeal of section 31 — principles relating to plans
Section 31 of the NDIS Act sets out principles that require participants to be treated as individuals with unique goals, aspirations and support needs. The Bill repeals most of these principles. The Government has indicated that some are relocated elsewhere in the Act. The disability community’s reading, which I share, is that the legal foundations of individualised planning are being weakened. The NDIS Review explicitly recommended a reformed individualised pathway for participants needing individual budgets; the proposed repeal is inconsistent with that recommendation.
Recommendation 6: That the principles in section 31 be retained in their current form, and that the Explanatory Memorandum be revised to clarify how each retained principle continues to operate after commencement.
Restrictions on reassessment, plan suspension and claim windows
The Bill restricts unscheduled plan reassessments to circumstances that are “unanticipated, significant and ongoing”; extends the Agency’s decision timeframe on reassessment requests from 21 days to 90 days; permits plan suspension and ultimately revocation of participant status for non-contact over a 90-day period; and shortens the claim window from two years to 90 days from 1 December 2026. Each of these provisions disadvantages participants in crisis: people experiencing hospitalisation, family violence, homelessness, mental ill-health, bereavement, or interactions with the justice system. The 90-day claim window in particular shifts a financial risk from the Agency to participants and small providers, including the sole traders many of us rely on.
Recommendation 7: That the Committee recommend retention of the 21-day decision timeframe; require that plan suspensions and revocations not commence without independent verification that the participant is safe and has been reached through accessible channels; and retain the existing claims window or, at a minimum, allow for hardship-based extensions.
Submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee - National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations Bill) 2026
Schedule 2 — Provider registration
The Bill expands mandatory provider registration and creates new categories of “high-risk supports” that are not yet publicly defined. For participants who self-direct their supports through “Service for One” or similar arrangements — that is, who recruit, train and employ their own workers — these provisions risk eliminating arrangements that the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission has otherwise recognised as a legitimate and often safer way of receiving support. As a registered nurse, I take quality and safeguarding seriously. The evidence does not support the proposition that mandatory registration is a proxy for safety; it does support the proposition that participant choice and continuity of worker relationships are associated with better outcomes and lower incidents.
Recommendation 8: That the categories of “high-risk supports” be defined on the face of the legislation, not in delegated rules; that self-directed and Service-for-One arrangements be preserved through an express carve-out; and that any expansion of mandatory registration be accompanied by published evidence that registration improves participant outcomes.
Schedule 3 — Pricing and automation
The Bill transfers pricing-setting power to the Minister, with advice from the Agency. The NDIS Review recommended that pricing be set by an independent body, with the Independent Health and Aged Care Pricing Authority (IHACPA) cited as the model. Concentrating both expenditure control and price-setting in the office of the Minister responsible for reducing NDIS spending creates a structural conflict of interest. The Bill also enables automation of administrative actions without specifying which decisions may be automated, the safeguards applied, or the rights of affected participants. Recent administrative-law experience in this country — including the Robodebt Royal Commission — should make Parliament cautious about automated decision-making in a benefit system without bright-line statutory safeguards.
Recommendation 9: That pricing authority be vested in an independent body modelled on IHACPA, as recommended by the NDIS Review. That the automation provisions be amended to (i) list the categories of decisions that may be automated, (ii) require human review of any adverse decision before it takes effect, (iii) require publication of the decision rules, and (iv) provide a right to a statement of reasons.
Submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee - National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations Bill) 2026
Schedule 5 — Transitional rulemaking
The Bill permits the Minister to make transitional rules that temporarily modify the operation of the Act. The power is time-limited (12 months) and excludes certain matters. Even with those limits, it allows substantive changes to the operation of disability law without ordinary parliamentary scrutiny. The community should not be asked to accept a transitional power of this scope on top of the standing rule-making powers that already exist in the Act.
Recommendation 10: That Schedule 5 be removed, or in the alternative, that any rule made under it be subject to disallowance, sunset on a 6-month basis, and tabling with an accompanying impact statement.
The cost-shift question the Committee should ask
The case for these reforms is presented in fiscal terms: that the rate of NDIS growth is too high. Public debate has rightly focused on whether the savings claimed are real savings, or whether they are transfers of cost to other systems. When NDIS-funded support is withdrawn, the underlying need does not disappear. It re-emerges in Medicare, in primary mental health care, in emergency departments, in inpatient admissions, in the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, in child protection, in family violence services, in homelessness services, in police and justice systems, and in lost tax revenue from carers (overwhelmingly women) reducing or leaving paid work. The Government has not, to my knowledge, published distributional or cross-portfolio modelling that quantifies these transfers. Without that modelling, the claim that this Bill secures the NDIS for future generations cannot be tested.
Recommendation 11: That the Committee recommend, as a precondition to any further consideration of the Bill, publication of independent cross-portfolio modelling of the fiscal and human costs of the proposed reductions, including modelling by gender, age, disability type, First Nations status and remoteness.
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 2633 Jessica Smithers Neurodivergent Nurses Australia 29th May 2026
Process
The Bill was introduced on 14 May 2026, referred to the Committee the same day, with submissions closing on 29 May 2026. Fifteen days is not a consultation period for legislation of this length and consequence; it is a notice period. Many participants who would have wished to contribute will not have managed the cognitive, executive-function and access barriers to a written submission in that window. The “Nothing about us without us” principle requires more than a 15-day window with no accessible-format support funded.
Recommendation 12: That the Committee recommend an extension of the inquiry, additional accessible-format public hearings, and a formal co-design process with Disability Representative Organisations prior to the reporting date.
Closing
The NDIS was legislated as a social insurance scheme to share the financial risk of disability across the community, and to give people with disability the agency to live ordinary lives. I am one of the people who has been given that agency. I am also one of the people whose tax this scheme is funded from. I believe in the scheme, and I believe in reform that strengthens it. The Bill before this Committee, in the form introduced on 14 May 2026, does not do that. I urge the Committee to recommend it not proceed in its current form.
Yours sincerely,
Jessie Smithers Registered Nurse | PhD Candidate, University of Technology Sydney Founder, Neurodivergent Nurses Australia
Submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee - National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations Bill) 2026