Submission 2653
Submission on the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment
(Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Personal Submission: Name Withheld
Date: 1 June 2026
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Submission 2653
Table of Contents
Executive Summary
- Why I Am Making This Submission
- My Son, His Goals, and the Supports That Make Them Possible
2.1 Who He Is
2.2 Participation and Belonging
2.3 The Supports That Make Participation Possible
- Independent Review, and Why It Matters
3.1 The Current Review Framework
3.2 Why Independent Review Matters
3.3 Why This Matters for My Son
- How the Bill Changes the NDIS and the Protections It Removes 4.1 A Shift Away from Individualised Funding
4.2 The Removal of Meaningful Review Rights
4.3 Changes to the Role of the Administrative Review Tribunal
4.4 The Legal Protections at Risk
4.4.1 Eastham – The Whole-of-Person Approach
4.4.2 Davis – Practical Accessibility Matters
4.4.3 Sutherland – Other Systems Must Actually Work
4.4.4 McGarrigle – Assessed Need Matters
4.5 Why These Changes Matter
- Automated Decision-Making and the Risk of Oversimplification 5.1 Disability Cannot Be Reduced to a Formula
5.2 The Importance of Human Judgement
5.3 Lessons from Previous Government Experience
5.4 Why This Matters
- The Impact on Families and Nominees
6.1 The Unpaid Workforce Behind the Scheme
6.2 The Bill Increases Obligations While Reducing Protections
6.3 Informal Supports Are Not Unlimited
6.4 Why This Matters
- What These Changes Mean for My Son’s Transition to Adulthood 7.1 A Critical Transition Period
7.2 The Future He Is Working Towards
7.3 Why Stability Matters
7.4 The Risk of Lowered Expectations
7.5 Why This Matters Beyond My Son
- Recommendations
- Closing Statement
- Conclusion 2
Submission 2653
Executive Summary
I am the parent and registered NDIS nominee of my 18-year-old son.
He is currently completing scored year 12, communicates using AAC and eye-gaze technology, and directs every aspect of his own life and care. Like many young adults, he is planning for the future. Through his communication systems, he consistently expresses preferences, goals, opinions, and decisions about matters affecting his life. He intends to pursue university study and continue building the independence, relationships, and community participation that the NDIS was designed to support. The supports he receives do not create those aspirations; they enable him to pursue them.
Throughout this submission, references to access and participation in education relate to the disability related supports and assistive technology that enable access and participation across settings (for example, his wheelchair, AAC and communication systems, and other NDIS-funded supports that travel with him between home, school, and the community).
I am making this submission because I am deeply concerned that the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 fundamentally alters the balance between participant rights, independent oversight, and government decision-making.
The Bill introduces a number of significant changes that, when viewed collectively, move the Scheme away from its original foundation as an individualised, rights-based system and toward a framework in which administrative efficiency and centrally determined funding controls are given greater weight than individual circumstances and assessed need.
In particular, the Bill introduces mechanisms that may permit funding decisions to become increasingly disconnected from individual assessments and participant circumstances. This represents a significant shift away from the principle that supports should be determined by a participant’s assessed reasonable and necessary needs.
My concerns are not theoretical.
While this submission is informed by my son’s circumstances, the issues raised are not unique to him. The NDIS supports people with diverse disabilities, support needs, communication styles, goals, and life circumstances. The strength of the Scheme has always been its ability to recognise that diversity through individualised decision-making. My concern is that several provisions in this Bill reduce the flexibility, accountability, and participant safeguards that benefit all participants, regardless of disability type, diagnosis, age, or support intensity.
My son requires highly individualised disability-related supports to access and participate in education, communicate, maintain relationships, exercise choice and control, and pursue the same aspirations held by many young adults. He does not require support because of any limitation in his aspirations, motivation, or ability to direct his own life. He requires support because of the complexity of his severe physical disability and the barriers created by environments and systems that are not designed for people with his support needs. The supports around him do not create dependence. They enable participation.
Several provisions within the Bill have the potential to significantly affect participants like my son, including:
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The introduction of support determinations that may create a gap between assessed need and funded support, without access to merits review.
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Changes that reduce the practical effectiveness of independent review through the Administrative Review Tribunal (ART).
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The removal or limitation of review rights for certain planning and funding decisions.
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Increased administrative obligations and compliance requirements for nominees. 3
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Reduced claiming timeframes and extended reassessment periods.
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Contactability provisions that may disproportionately affect participants who rely on supported communication and nominee arrangements.
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Expanded use of automated decision-making for functions that may affect participant funding, claims, supports, and access to the Scheme.
I am particularly concerned that automated decision-making systems may be increasingly relied upon within a Scheme that serves people with highly individualised and complex support needs. Disability support exists within an interconnected ecosystem of communication, health, education, personal care, assistive technology, formal supports, informal supports, relationships, and community participation. Decisions affecting that ecosystem require context, judgement, and an understanding of how supports interact in practice and the cascading effect as one is removed. These are matters that cannot always be reduced to rules, formulas, or automated processes.
The NDIS was established on the principle that people with disability should receive supports that reflect their individual needs, goals, and circumstances. It was also established on the principle that participants should have access to independent review when they disagree with decisions that affect their lives.
I support efforts to improve the sustainability, integrity, and effectiveness of the NDIS. However, sustainability should not be achieved by reducing accountability, limiting review rights, weakening participant protections, or creating funding arrangements that are increasingly disconnected from individual need. The long-term success of the Scheme depends on maintaining both financial sustainability and participant confidence that decisions will be fair, individualised, and subject to meaningful review.
Several provisions within the Bill have the effect of weakening these principles and reducing the safeguards that participants currently rely upon when decisions affect their supports, funding, and future opportunities.
Throughout this submission, I explain how these reforms would affect my son, why independent review matters, what legal protections would be removed or weakened, and why the Committee should be cautious about reforms that reduce participant safeguards without equivalent protections elsewhere.
I support reform that improves the sustainability and integrity of the NDIS. However, reform should strengthen accountability and participant confidence, not reduce the protections available when decisions are wrong.
I respectfully ask the Committee to recommend amendments that:
- Preserve meaningful access to independent review.
- Ensure assessed need remains central to funding decisions.
- Protect participants from funding reductions that cannot be independently challenged.
- Protect participants from adverse automated decisions that occur without meaningful human oversight.
- Create proportionate obligations for nominees acting in good faith.
- Maintain the rights-based foundations on which the NDIS was originally built. For my son, and for many other participants across the Scheme, these reforms are not simply administrative changes. They have the potential to affect safety, participation, access and participate in education, autonomy, and future opportunities.
The decisions Parliament makes about this Bill will influence whether the next generation of young people with disability continue to benefit from a Scheme centred on individual need, accountability, and opportunity, or whether those protections are gradually diminished.
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At its heart, this submission is about preserving a Scheme that recognises the individuality, aspirations, and dignity of people with disability. It is about ensuring that reform strengthens the NDIS without weakening the rights and safeguards that participants rely upon to pursue meaningful, connected, and self-directed lives.
- Why I Am Making This Submission I am the parent and registered NDIS nominee of my 18-year-old son.
Like many young people his age, he is thinking about what comes next. He is currently completing a scored year 12 and plans to pursue university study. He enjoys spending time with friends, participating in family life, engaging with technology, and exploring opportunities that will allow him to build increasing independence in his adult life.
He is also a young man with a significant and complex physical disability.
Too often, discussions about disability focus exclusively on limitations and support needs. While support needs are important, they are not the most important thing about my son.
The most important thing about him is that he is a person with goals, preferences, ambitions, relationships, opinions, and the right to direct his own life.
He communicates using a combination of AAC systems, including a PODD communication book and eye gaze technology. Through these systems he expresses preferences, makes decisions, directs support workers, participates in discussions, maintains friendships, and communicates his aspirations for the future.
He is not a passive recipient of support. He is the person directing it.
The reason I act as his nominee is not because he is unable to make decisions about his own life. It is because the systems surrounding the NDIS remain largely inaccessible to a person who cannot independently make a phone call, complete forms, navigate online portals, or engage with complex administrative processes without assistance.
As his nominee, I receive every plan decision, review every funding allocation, coordinate evidence, communicate with the NDIA, manage claims, maintain records, and challenge decisions where necessary.
I do this because he needs someone to bridge the gap between his ability to make decisions and the system’s ability to hear them.
This submission is informed by both of those perspectives.
It is informed by my experience as a parent supporting a young person with complex disability, and by my experience as a nominee navigating the practical realities of the NDIS.
Most importantly, however, it is informed by my son’s experience.
He has made it clear that he wants the same things most young adults want. He wants to continue his education. He wants meaningful relationships. He wants increasing independence. He wants choice and control over who supports him and how that support is provided.
He has also made it clear that he does not want his parents to be his support workers.
As he moves into adulthood, he wants trained support workers to provide personal care and disability related support. He wants his family to remain his family.
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That is not an extraordinary aspiration.
It is a reasonable and age-appropriate expectation that reflects dignity, autonomy, and adulthood.
The NDIS has played a critical role in making that future possible.
My concern is that several provisions within this Bill place that future at risk by reducing review rights, weakening participant safeguards, increasing nominee obligations, and allowing funding decisions to become increasingly disconnected from individual circumstances.
At its heart, this submission is about whether the NDIS continues to operate as an individualised, rights based scheme in which participants have meaningful protections when decisions are wrong. In particular, the Bill introduces mechanisms that may permit funding decisions to become increasingly disconnected from individual assessments and participant circumstances. This represents a significant shift away from the principle that supports should be determined by a participant’s assessed reasonable and necessary needs.
For people like my son, those protections matter.
- My Son, His Goals, and the Supports That Make Them
Possible
2.1 Who He Is
My son is an intelligent, determined, and capable young adult.
He communicates using AAC and eye-gaze technology and directs every aspect of his own life and care. He makes decisions about who supports him, his daily routine, expresses preferences, communicates goals, participates in family life, maintains friendships, and actively engages with the world around him.
Like many young adults, he is increasingly focused on the future.
My son’s disability does not diminish his aspirations, his understanding of the world around him, or his role in directing decisions about his own life. While he requires significant physical support, including assistance to manage complex daily living and health-related needs, he remains the person directing those supports and making decisions about matters that affect him. Like many people who communicate using AAC, he relies on others recognising and responding appropriately to his chosen communication methods. This is particularly relevant to the Bill’s proposed contactability provisions and increasing reliance on administrative and automated decision-making processes. Systems that fail to recognise alternative communication methods risk mistaking communication barriers for disengagement, with significant consequences for participants who rely on supported communication. His communication systems provide access to his voice; they do not create it.
He wants to continue his education. He wants greater independence. He wants to expand his social connections and community participation. He wants to make decisions about his own life and exercise increasing autonomy as he transitions into adulthood.
These goals are entirely realistic.
They are not limited by his aspirations, determination, or ability to direct his own future.
They depend on whether the supports that enable his participation remain available.
2.2 Participation and Belonging
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My son is an active participant in our family and community.
With support, he contributes to conversations through his communication systems, spends time with friends, participates in activities he enjoys, accesses education, and engages with the broader community.
These moments are not incidental.
They are how inclusion, participation, dignity, and belonging are experienced in practice.
The NDIS was established to support these outcomes.
It was not created merely to keep people safe. It was created to enable people with disability to participate as equal members of their families, communities, and society.
For my son, participation requires support.
Without support, communication becomes inaccessible. Community participation becomes restricted. Access to education becomes more difficult and participation in educational activities is reduced. The supports around him do not replace independence.
They enable it.
This includes disability-related supports that enable him to access and participate in education, communicate effectively, engage with his community, and exercise choice and control in everyday life.
2.3 The Supports That Make Participation Possible
While my son communicates, makes decisions, and directs his own support through AAC, he also has highly complex physical support needs.
He requires assistance with personal care, transfers, respiratory management, communication access, positioning, PEG feeding, medication administration, and a range of daily activities necessary to maintain his health, safety, and wellbeing.
Many of these supports require specialised training and experience.
His support arrangements have been developed over many years and involve multiple trained disability support workers who understand his needs and can provide support safely.
These arrangements are not interchangeable.
We cannot simply fill a shift with an unfamiliar worker and assume everything will function effectively.
New support workers require training, supervision, and competency development before they can work independently.
This complexity is important to understand because discussions about funding reductions often assume support can simply be reduced without consequence.
For my son, support is not an optional extra.
It is the mechanism through which he accesses education, communication, participation, independence, and opportunity.
When support is adequate, he thrives.
When support is reduced, participation is reduced.
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That distinction sits at the centre of my concerns about this Bill.
- Independent Review, and Why It Matters One of the most important safeguards within the NDIS is the right to independent review.
The Scheme does not operate perfectly. Like any large government program, decisions are sometimes made that participants, families, clinicians, and support providers believe are incorrect. The legitimacy of the NDIS therefore depends not only on the decisions it makes, but also on the existence of fair and meaningful mechanisms to challenge those decisions when necessary.
As my son’s nominee, I am the person responsible for undertaking that process.
I receive every plan decision. I assess whether the decision reflects his needs. I gather evidence, communicate with clinicians and providers, prepare submissions, and pursue reviews when required.
Over time, I have developed a detailed understanding of how the review system operates in practice.
3.1 The Current Review Framework
At present, participants have access to two primary levels of review.
The first is an internal review conducted by the NDIA.
This process allows the Agency to reconsider its own decision. While internal review is an important part of the system, it can be administratively demanding for families and nominees. It often requires the collection of additional evidence, extensive correspondence, and significant time investment while continuing to manage the daily realities of disability support.
The second level of review is through the Administrative Review Tribunal (ART).
The significance of the ART is its independence.
It is not bound by the NDIA’s previous conclusions, operational priorities, or budget considerations. It examines the evidence afresh and can make its own binding determination.
For participants and families, this independence is essential.
It provides confidence that decisions can be scrutinised by an impartial body when there is a genuine disagreement about what a participant requires.
3.2 Why Independent Review Matters
Independent review is not simply a procedural safeguard.
It is one of the primary accountability mechanisms within the Scheme.
Over many years, independent review has helped establish important legal principles about participant rights, funding obligations, reasonable and necessary supports, and the interpretation of the NDIS Act.
Many of the protections participants rely upon today exist because participants and families were able to challenge decisions through independent review processes.
Without meaningful review rights, those protections would never have been established.
Independent review also serves another important purpose. 8
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It creates confidence that participants can challenge decisions without being entirely dependent on the organisation that made the original decision.
For participants with complex disabilities, where decisions can affect safety, communication, access to education, participation, and quality of life, that confidence matters.
The ability to challenge a decision is often as important as the decision itself.
3.3 Why This Matters for My Son
My son’s supports are highly individualised.
They have been developed over many years and reflect the interaction of his physical disability, communication needs, educational participation, community involvement, and transition into adulthood.
Funding decisions affecting those supports are not abstract administrative matters.
They directly affect whether he can participate in education, communicate effectively, maintain relationships, and pursue the future he is working towards.
If a decision reduces supports that he genuinely requires, independent review provides a mechanism to challenge that outcome.
Without that safeguard, the consequences of an incorrect decision become significantly more difficult to address.
This is why I am concerned by provisions within the Bill that reduce review rights or limit the practical effectiveness of independent review.
The issue is not simply whether participants agree with every decision.
The issue is whether participants retain meaningful access to an independent process when they believe those decisions are wrong.
- How the Bill Changes the NDIS and the Protections It
Removes
My concern with this Bill is not based on any single provision.
Rather, it is based on the cumulative effect of multiple changes that collectively reduce participant safeguards while increasing administrative powers and obligations.
When viewed individually, some provisions may appear administrative in nature. When viewed together, however, they represent a significant shift in the balance between participant rights and government decision-making.
4.1 A Shift Away from Individualised Funding
One of the defining features of the NDIS has been its commitment to individualised support.
The Scheme was established on the principle that funding should reflect the reasonable and necessary needs of each participant, taking into account their individual goals, circumstances, and support requirements.
The proposed support determination framework represents a significant departure from that principle.
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Under proposed section 34A, funding reductions may be applied across categories of support through ministerial determination.
This creates a situation in which a participant’s assessed needs and their funded supports may no longer align.
The practical consequence is that funding decisions become increasingly influenced by broader policy settings rather than solely by individual circumstances.
For participants with highly individualised support requirements, this raises significant concerns.
The people most affected by standardised funding reductions are often those whose needs are least capable of being standardised.
Importantly, this concern is not limited to participants with complex or high support needs. Every participant enters the Scheme with a unique combination of goals, circumstances, strengths, challenges, and support requirements. The principle at stake is not whether one participant’s needs are greater than another’s. The principle is whether supports continue to be determined by individual circumstances and assessed need, rather than increasingly broad funding assumptions applied across diverse groups of participants.
4.2 The Removal of Meaningful Review Rights
The Bill also removes or limits review rights in several areas.
Most significantly, support determinations that reduce funding are not subject to merits review.
This means a participant may experience a reduction in funded supports despite evidence demonstrating a higher level of need, yet have no ability to challenge that reduction through the usual review mechanisms.
For participants with complex disabilities, this represents a significant departure from the existing framework.
Independent review has historically acted as a safeguard when funding decisions do not adequately reflect individual circumstances.
Removing access to review weakens that safeguard.
4.3 Changes to the Role of the Administrative Review Tribunal
The Bill also alters the practical role of the Administrative Review Tribunal.
Historically, independent review has been effective because the Tribunal has been able to make its own determinations where appropriate.
The proposed changes move toward a model in which matters are more frequently returned to the NDIA for reconsideration.
While this may appear procedural, it has significant implications.
Independent review derives much of its value from the ability of an independent decision-maker to reach an independent conclusion.
Any reduction in that independence should be approached cautiously.
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4.4 The Legal Protections at Risk
Several important Federal Court decisions have shaped how the NDIS operates in practice.
These decisions established protections that participants and families have relied upon for many years.
4.4.1 Eastham – The Whole-of-Person Approach
The Eastham decision recognised that disability cannot always be separated into neat diagnostic categories.
It confirmed that supports arising from the interaction of multiple impairments should still be considered where one of those impairments is a qualifying disability.
The Bill moves away from that approach by reintroducing a stronger requirement for direct causation.
For participants with complex disabilities, this increases the risk of fragmentation and disputes about which condition is responsible for a particular support need.
4.4.2 Davis – Practical Accessibility Matters
The Davis decision recognised that the existence of a support or treatment in theory does not necessarily mean it is available in practice.
The Court acknowledged that cost, geography, waiting lists, and practical accessibility all matter.
The Bill reduces the significance of those considerations.
This creates a risk that participants may be directed toward supports that technically exist but are not realistically accessible.
4.4.3 Sutherland – Other Systems Must Actually Work
The Sutherland decision recognised that participants should not be denied support simply because another service system might theoretically provide it.
The practical question is whether that system can actually deliver the required support.
The Bill strengthens the ability to rely upon alternative systems.
For families already navigating disability, health, education, and community services, this risks increasing uncertainty and service gaps.
4.4.4 McGarrigle – Assessed Need Matters
The McGarrigle decision reinforced the principle that reasonable and necessary supports should be funded.
The support determination framework moves away from that principle by permitting situations in which assessed need and funded support may differ.
For participants with complex disabilities, the consequences of that gap can affect safety, participation, educational access and attainment, independence, and wellbeing.
4.5 Why These Changes Matter
Viewed individually, each of these provisions may appear manageable. 11
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Viewed collectively, they represent a significant shift.
The Bill reduces review rights, increases administrative powers, weakens several established legal protections, and allows funding decisions to become less closely connected to individual assessments.
For participants like my son, the issue is not whether reform should occur.
The issue is whether reform can occur while preserving the principles that have made the NDIS transformative for many Australians with disability.
Those principles include individualised funding, choice and control, meaningful review rights, and accountability when decisions are wrong.
It is those principles that I believe require protection.
- Automated Decision-Making and the Risk of
Oversimplification
I am concerned by the Bill’s provisions that authorise automated decision-making for certain NDIS functions and permit the future expansion of those functions through legislative instrument.
Technology has an important role to play in improving administrative efficiency. However, disability support is not merely an administrative process.
The NDIS exists to support people with diverse disabilities, support needs, goals, communication styles, and life circumstances. While the impact of a decision may differ from one participant to another, all participants rely on decisions that properly consider their individual circumstances rather than applying standardised assumptions.
For many participants, support needs exist within a highly interconnected ecosystem of relationships, risks, goals, safeguards, formal supports, informal supports, education, health care, assistive technology, communication systems, and community participation.
The interaction between these factors is often nuanced and highly individual.
My son’s circumstances illustrate this complexity.
His supports do not operate independently of one another. They function as an interconnected ecosystem that supports communication, health, safety, participation, physical function, and overall wellbeing.
His communication needs affect how he engages with the NDIA. His support arrangements affect his ability to participate in community life, and everyday activities. His assistive technology affects his ability to access education, communicate, exercise choice and control, maintain physical function, and participate in the world around him. His health and disability supports cannot be neatly separated into isolated categories because they operate together as a single support ecosystem.
For example, an assistive technology decision may appear to relate only to equipment and cost. In reality, the purpose of that fully customised equipment is often to prevent a range of known and foreseeable consequences.
Appropriate customised seating and positioning systems directly affect posture, communication, respiration, digestion, pressure management, physical function, transfers, comfort, and long-term health outcomes. If a clinically required support is removed or not funded, the consequences do not occur in isolation. Support worker requirements increase. Independence decreases. Health risks increase. Participation reduces. Communication becomes more difficult. The risk of secondary complications and future health interventions increases.
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For my son, the consequences would extend well beyond the loss of a single piece of equipment. They would affect his ability to communicate effectively, maintain his health, manage his pain, participate in everyday activities, engage with his community, exercise choice and control, and successfully complete his year 12 during a critical stage of his education.
This is why disability support cannot always be understood through isolated categories, standardised assumptions, automated decision-making systems, or individual line items. The effectiveness of one support is often dependent upon the availability of others, and the removal of a single support can create cascading impacts across multiple areas of a participant’s life.
The complexity described above is not unusual. It reflects the reality of many participants whose supports operate together to maintain health, safety, communication, participation, independence, and quality of life. These interactions are often highly individual and difficult to understand when supports are considered in isolation.
This is also why human judgement remains essential. A funding determination, standardised funding model, or automated decision-making system may identify the cost of a support. It may be far less capable of recognising the interconnected consequences of removing it. What appears to be a single equipment item, support intensity and hour, or budget allocation can in reality be supporting communication, physical function, health, participation, education, mental wellbeing, and long-term outcomes simultaneously.
Human decision-makers have the ability to consider context, examine evidence, ask questions, and understand how supports interact within a participant’s broader life. They can recognise when a support serves multiple functions, when a seemingly small change may create significant downstream consequences, and when an individual’s circumstances do not fit neatly within standard assumptions.
For participants, meaningful human involvement and independent review are not administrative safeguards alone. They are essential protections against decisions that fail to fully understand the realities of disability, the interdependence of supports, and the consequences that can arise when those supports are considered in isolation.
The Committee should therefore be cautious about reforms that expand automated decision-making, standardised funding approaches, or funding determinations while simultaneously reducing opportunities for human review and independent oversight. While the consequences may differ depending on individual circumstances, participants whose supports operate as highly interconnected complex systems may be particularly affected when decisions are made without adequate consideration of context and consequence.
The NDIS was built around the recognition that disability is nuanced and individual. Any decision-making framework adopted by the Scheme should reflect that reality. Administrative efficiency is important, but it should not come at the expense of fairness, individualisation, accountability, or the ability of decision makers to understand the full impact of their decisions on the lives of participants.
5.1 Disability Cannot Be Reduced to a Formula
One of my concerns is that automated systems are inherently designed to identify patterns, apply rules, and generate decisions based on predetermined inputs.
While this approach may be suitable for straightforward administrative functions, it becomes far more problematic when applied to decisions affecting participants with complex and highly individualised circumstances.
An automated system may be capable of identifying whether a claim meets a set of predetermined criteria.
It may be far less capable of understanding:
- The cumulative effect of multiple support reductions.
- The interaction between disability supports and educational access. 13
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- The practical consequences of losing a particular support worker or support arrangement.
- The impact of communication barriers on engagement with the Scheme.
- The relationship between seemingly separate supports that operate together to maintain safety and participation.
Most importantly, it may not understand what experienced clinicians, support workers, participants, and families understand instinctively: that disability support is rarely a collection of isolated supports. It is an ecosystem.
Removing one component can affect many others.
5.2 The Importance of Human Judgement
The more complex a participant’s circumstances become, the more important human judgement becomes.
Human decision-makers can ask questions, consider context, evaluate competing evidence, and recognise when a participant’s circumstances do not fit neatly within standard assumptions.
Automated systems are designed to apply rules consistently.
Consistency can be valuable.
However, consistency should not come at the expense of fairness, context, or individualisation.
A system can apply the same rule consistently and still reach the wrong outcome if the rule itself fails to account for individual circumstances.
One of the foundational principles of the NDIS is that disability is not experienced uniformly, even among people with the same diagnosis. Two participants may share a disability label yet have very different support needs, communication methods, functional capacity, living arrangements, health considerations, goals, risks, and aspirations.
The complexity of disability cannot be captured through categories, levels, cohorts, or standardised assumptions. What appears similar on paper may be very different in practice. The support required by one participant may be entirely inappropriate for another, despite sharing the same disability type or diagnostic description.
This is why individual assessment, human judgement, and meaningful review remain so important. The further decision-making moves away from individual circumstances and toward standardised assumptions, the greater the risk that participants receive supports that reflect a category rather than their actual needs.
5.3 Lessons from Previous Government Experience
Australia has already experienced the consequences of excessive reliance on automated government decision-making.
While the NDIS context is different, the broader lesson remains relevant.
Where decisions affect people’s rights, finances, supports, and wellbeing, robust safeguards are essential.
Those safeguards should not rely solely on administrative discretion.
They should be legally enforceable.
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Participants should have access to meaningful human review before adverse automated decisions take effect.
5.4 Why This Matters
The NDIS was built around the recognition that disability is individual.
Participants with complex disabilities do not experience their support needs as a series of separate transactions or isolated support items. Their supports operate as an interconnected system that enables communication, participation, safety, education, independence, and community inclusion.
Automated systems may assist with administrative efficiency. However, efficiency should not come at the expense of individualisation, context, or fairness.
For participants like my son, human judgement remains essential.
The Committee should carefully consider whether decisions affecting participant supports, funding, eligibility, and access to the Scheme are appropriate functions for automation, particularly where those decisions require consideration of complex and highly individual circumstances.
- The Impact on Families and Nominees The NDIS often describes nominees as people who assist participants to engage with the Scheme.
In practice, for many families supporting people with complex disabilities, the nominee role is far more substantial than that description suggests.
As my son’s nominee, I am responsible for ensuring that his voice is heard, his preferences, goals, and support needs are accurately represented within a system that is not designed to be directly accessible to him.
While my son directs his own life and makes his own decisions, he cannot independently navigate many of the administrative processes required by the NDIS as they are not accessible. The nominee role exists to bridge that gap.
Every plan decision, review request, funding allocation, service agreement, claim, and piece of correspondence ultimately passes through me.
My son attends and participates in his NDIS meetings, advocating for his own needs. I review the decisions, coordinate evidence, liaise with clinicians and providers, maintain records, oversee claiming, respond to NDIA requests, monitor budgets, identify errors, and pursue reviews where necessary.
These responsibilities are not performed in isolation.
They exist alongside the ordinary realities of supporting a young person with complex disability.
Like many families, we are simultaneously coordinating support workers, managing staffing shortages, attending appointments, responding to unexpected changes in support arrangements, maintaining equipment, supporting educational participation, planning for adulthood, and navigating multiple service systems.
The nominee role is therefore not an administrative task that sits neatly alongside family and work life.
It is deeply intertwined with it.
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6.1 The Unpaid Workforce Behind the Scheme
The NDIS relies heavily on the contribution of families.
Parents, partners, siblings, and other family members routinely perform significant administrative, coordination, advocacy, and risk-management functions that are essential to the effective operation of participant supports.
Much of this work is unpaid.
It is often invisible.
Yet without it, many support arrangements would struggle to function effectively.
Families frequently become the coordinators of complex support ecosystems involving disability support workers, therapists, equipment suppliers, schools, health professionals, support coordinators, plan managers, and government agencies.
This work requires time, knowledge, organisation, and persistence.
It also carries significant responsibility.
When things go wrong, it is often families who identify the problem, gather the evidence, coordinate the response, and absorb the consequences.
The administrative burden of the Scheme is therefore not carried solely by government or providers.
A substantial portion of that burden is carried by participants and their families.
6.2 The Bill Increases Obligations While Reducing Protections
One of my concerns is that the Bill increases administrative and compliance obligations for nominees while simultaneously reducing some of the protections available to participants.
Longer record-keeping requirements, shorter claiming periods, increased compliance expectations, and expanded administrative responsibilities place additional pressure on nominees who are already managing complex support arrangements.
At the same time, several provisions reduce opportunities to challenge decisions through independent review.
This creates an imbalance.
The responsibilities of nominees increase while the mechanisms available to protect participants become weaker.
For families supporting people with significant disabilities, this can feel less like reform and more like a transfer of risk.
The burden increasingly shifts toward participants and families while accountability mechanisms are reduced.
6.3 Informal Supports Are Not Unlimited
Another theme that emerges throughout the Bill is an increasing reliance on informal supports.
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I recognise that families play an important role in the lives of people with disability.
However, informal supports have limits.
More importantly, they should not be viewed as a substitute for supports that are properly recognised as disability-related needs.
My son has been very clear about the future he wants.
As he moves into adulthood, he wants trained professionals to provide personal care and disability-related support.
He wants his family to be his family.
He wants the same separation between family relationships and personal care that many other young adults take for granted.
This is not an unreasonable expectation.
It reflects dignity, autonomy, privacy, and adulthood.
Policies that assume increasing levels of informal support risk undermining those outcomes.
They also risk overlooking the reality that families themselves age, experience illness, encounter financial pressures, and face competing responsibilities.
Informal supports are important.
They are not limitless.
Nor should they be treated as an alternative funding source when disability-related support needs remain unchanged.
6.4 Why This Matters
The effectiveness of the NDIS depends not only on funding decisions but also on the practical ability of participants and families to navigate the system.
When administrative obligations become too complex, too burdensome, or too unforgiving, participants are affected.
When review rights are reduced, participants are affected.
When families are expected to absorb increasing levels of responsibility without corresponding support, participants are affected.
Ultimately, every administrative obligation imposed on a nominee exists because there is a participant whose ability to engage directly with the Scheme is limited.
It is therefore important that reforms affecting nominees are assessed not only through a compliance lens, but also through the lens of participant rights, accessibility, and practical implementation.
The question should not simply be whether additional obligations can be imposed.
The question should be whether those obligations improve outcomes for participants.
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Submission 2653
In my view, several provisions within this Bill increase burdens on nominees without delivering equivalent benefits to the people they are intended to support.
For participants like my son, and for the families who assist them to navigate the Scheme, that is a significant concern.
- What These Changes Mean for My Son’s Transition to
Adulthood
The timing of these reforms is particularly significant for my son.
He is not a young child entering the Scheme. He is a young adult preparing for life beyond school.
He is currently completing a scored year 12 and planning for the next stage of his life. Like many young people his age, he is thinking about further education, expanding his independence, strengthening friendships and relationships, and increasing his participation in the broader community.
These aspirations are neither unrealistic nor extraordinary.
They are the same aspirations held by many young adults across Australia.
The difference is that my son’s ability to pursue them depends on the supports around him.
7.1 A Critical Transition Period
The transition from adolescence to adulthood is one of the most significant periods in any person’s life.
It is a time when young people begin to make decisions about education, employment, relationships, independence, identity, and future goals.
For young people with disability, this transition often involves additional complexity.
Support arrangements evolve. Educational pathways change. Adult service systems begin to replace childhood systems. Expectations shift. Families work to balance support with increasing autonomy and independence.
The NDIS plays an important role in supporting these transitions.
For many participants, the Scheme provides the stability and continuity required to pursue opportunities that might otherwise be inaccessible.
My son is currently navigating exactly this transition.
The decisions made during the next few years will influence his educational opportunities, community participation, independence, and quality of life for many years to come.
7.2 The Future He Is Working Towards
My son has worked hard to build the skills, confidence, and communication systems that allow him to participate actively in his own life.
He has learned to advocate for himself through AAC and eye-gaze technology.
He directs his support workers.
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He expresses preferences and makes his own decisions.
He communicates goals for the future.
He has invested years in building the foundations necessary to participate as fully as possible in education, family life, friendships, and the community.
Those achievements should be viewed as successes of the Scheme.
They demonstrate what is possible when supports are available, individualised, and responsive to need.
The goal of disability support should not simply be maintenance.
It should be growth.
It should create opportunities for increasing participation, autonomy, and independence.
That is the future my son is working towards.
7.3 Why Stability Matters
Successful transitions require stability.
Educational participation requires stability.
Support worker retention requires stability.
Planning for adulthood requires stability.
The proposed reforms introduce uncertainty at precisely the point where stability is most important.
Funding reductions that cannot be independently reviewed, longer reassessment timeframes, increased administrative complexity, and reduced participant safeguards all create uncertainty for families attempting to plan for the future.
This uncertainty affects decision-making.
It affects educational planning.
It affects support arrangements.
It affects the confidence with which participants and families can invest in long-term goals.
For young people transitioning into adulthood, these consequences can be significant.
7.4 The Risk of Lowered Expectations
One of my concerns is that the cumulative effect of these reforms may be to lower expectations for what people with disability can achieve.
The NDIS was originally designed around the idea that disability support should enable participation, inclusion, independence, and social and economic contribution.
Its purpose was not merely to respond to crisis or maintain basic safety.
It was to create opportunities.
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Submission 2653
When funding becomes increasingly disconnected from assessed need, when review rights are reduced, and when participants face greater barriers to challenging decisions, there is a risk that aspirations become constrained by administrative settings rather than individual potential.
For young people with disability, that risk is particularly concerning.
The message should be that ambitions are encouraged and supported.
The message should not be that aspirations must be adjusted to fit funding limitations.
7.5 Why This Matters Beyond My Son
While this submission is informed by my son’s circumstances, the issues extend beyond our family.
There are thousands of young Australians with disability currently navigating the transition from school to adulthood.
They are pursuing university, vocational education, employment, community participation, independent living, and a range of other pathways.
The success of these transitions depends in part on whether the NDIS continues to operate as a scheme that supports individual goals and responds to individual needs.
The Committee should therefore consider not only the immediate financial or administrative impacts of the Bill, but also the long-term consequences for a generation of young people with disability entering adulthood.
The question is not simply how the Scheme manages costs.
The question is what kind of future the Scheme is designed to support.
For my son, that future is one of further education, participation, autonomy, relationships, and increasing independence.
While this section focuses on my son’s transition to adulthood, similar questions arise for many other participants across the Scheme. Whether a participant is pursuing education, employment, parenting, independent living, community participation, cultural connection, or simply greater autonomy in everyday life, the underlying principle remains the same: supports should be responsive to individual goals and circumstances, and participants should retain meaningful safeguards when decisions affect those opportunities.
The reforms contained in this Bill should therefore be assessed not only in terms of their impact on individual participants, but also in terms of their effect on the principles that underpin the Scheme itself.
One of my concerns is not simply the effect of any individual provision within the Bill, but the cumulative effect of multiple reforms operating together. Support determinations, automated decision-making, reduced review rights, extended reassessment timeframes, increased administrative obligations, and expanded decision-making powers may each appear manageable in isolation. However, when combined, they create a framework in which participants face greater difficulty challenging decisions, greater uncertainty regarding future supports, and fewer safeguards when funding decisions do not reflect their individual circumstances.
The Committee should therefore assess the Bill not only provision by provision, but also in terms of its overall impact on individualisation, participant protections, independent oversight, and confidence in the Scheme.
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Submission 2653
- Recommendations The NDIS has transformed the lives of many Australians with disability by recognising that supports should be individualised, participant-directed, and focused on enabling participation, independence, and inclusion.
Reform is both necessary and appropriate when it strengthens the Scheme, improves accountability, reduces waste, and ensures long-term sustainability.
However, sustainability should not come at the expense of the principles that made the Scheme successful.
The following recommendations seek to preserve those principles while ensuring participants retain meaningful protections when decisions affect their lives, safety, and future opportunities.
Recommendation 1 – Remove Support Determinations That Override Individual
Assessment
The Committee should recommend the removal of proposed support determination provisions that allow funding to be reduced through broad category-based percentage reductions.
The NDIS was established on the principle that supports should be determined through individual assessment of a participant’s reasonable and necessary needs. Funding decisions should remain connected to individual circumstances, goals, risks, and support requirements rather than broad reductions applied across categories of support.
Participants with the same disability, diagnosis, support category, or funding profile may have very different support needs, communication methods, health requirements, living arrangements, risks, and aspirations. The Committee should be cautious about reforms that move funding decisions away from individual assessment and toward standardised assumptions.
Where supports are assessed as reasonable and necessary, they should remain the primary basis for determining funding.
Recommendation 2 – Protect Participants if Support Determinations Remain
If support determinations remain within the Bill, participants must retain access to effective safeguards that prevent broad funding reductions from creating gaps between assessed need and funded support.
Where a support determination reduces funding below the level identified as reasonable and necessary through assessment, participants should have access to independent merits review or an equivalent exemption mechanism capable of restoring funding where required.
The Committee should ensure that support determinations cannot be applied in a manner that produces unsafe, unreasonable, or unsupported reductions in participant supports.
This is particularly important where reductions may affect supports that are critical to health, safety, communication, personal care, behaviour support, community participation, assistive technology, or other supports that enable a participant to function safely and effectively in daily life.
No participant should be left without a meaningful mechanism to challenge a funding reduction that creates a gap between assessed need and funded support.
Recommendation 3 – Preserve Individualised Assessment and Funding
Funding decisions should continue to be based on a participant’s individual circumstances, assessed needs, goals, risks, and support requirements.
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Submission 2653
The Committee should ensure that support determinations, automated decision-making systems, funding frameworks, categories, cohorts, levels, or other standardised approaches cannot replace individual assessment as the primary basis for determining participant supports.
Participants with the same disability may have very different support needs, communication methods, functional capacity, health requirements, living arrangements, risks, and aspirations. The NDIS was established to recognise this diversity through individualised decision-making.
Any reforms that move funding decisions away from individual circumstances and toward standardised assumptions should be approached cautiously.
Recommendation 4 – Maintain the Independence and Effectiveness of the
Administrative Review Tribunal
The Administrative Review Tribunal should retain the ability to conduct genuine independent review and make effective binding determinations where appropriate.
The value of independent review lies in its independence.
Participants must continue to have access to a decision-maker capable of examining evidence, considering individual circumstances, and reaching conclusions independently of the NDIA.
Independent review is particularly important where support determinations, automated decision-making, funding frameworks, or other standardised mechanisms may produce outcomes that do not reflect a participant’s assessed needs or circumstances.
Any reforms that diminish that independence should be reconsidered.
Recommendation 5 – Amend the Contactability Provisions
The Bill should require the NDIA to engage through a participant’s documented communication supports, nominee arrangements, and established communication pathways before suspension or revocation processes can occur.
Additional safeguards should apply where participants:
- Use AAC or supported communication.
- Rely on nominees.
- Have disabilities affecting communication.
- Are experiencing significant health, family, or support-related crises. Participants should not be at risk of losing supports because disability itself creates communication barriers.
Recommendation 6 – Restore Timely Reassessment Pathways
Participants should retain access to timely reassessment processes when circumstances change.
The extension of reassessment timeframes risks leaving participants without appropriate supports during periods of significant change.
The Scheme should include:
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Submission 2653
- Timely reassessment pathways.
- Urgent review mechanisms.
- Clear escalation processes where safety or support arrangements are affected. For participants, lengthy delays can have significant consequences when support needs change unexpectedly.
Recommendation 7 – Create Proportionate Obligations for Nominees
Nominee obligations should be proportionate to the realities of the role.
Most family nominees are unpaid individuals acting in good faith to support a person with disability.
Compliance requirements should recognise this reality.
The Bill should include:
- Reasonable safeguards for good-faith administrative errors.
- Practical record-keeping expectations.
- Protections that distinguish family nominees from professional providers. Participants should not be disadvantaged because their nominee is a family member rather than a funded administrative service.
Recommendation 8 – Retain Realistic Claiming Timeframes
Claiming arrangements should reflect the practical realities of managing disability supports.
Families often manage multiple providers, changing support arrangements, health events, educational commitments, staffing challenges, and competing responsibilities.
Administrative timeframes should support compliance rather than create barriers to it.
Any reduction in claiming periods should be carefully reconsidered.
Recommendation 9 – Ensure Replacement Systems Exist Before Existing Supports
Are Reduced
No reduction in participant supports should occur until replacement systems are demonstrably operational, adequately funded, and genuinely accessible.
This principle should apply to:
- Foundational Supports.
- Mainstream service alternatives.
- State and territory responsibilities.
- Any replacement arrangements proposed as alternatives to current NDIS supports. 23
Submission 2653
Participants should not be expected to rely on systems that do not yet exist, are not fully operational, or cannot meet their needs in practice.
Recommendation 10 – Preserve Human Decision-Making for Individualised
Participant Decisions
Automated decision-making should not be used for planning, support determination, eligibility, reassessment, or funding decisions where individual circumstances, evidence, communication needs, goals, risks, or support arrangements require the exercise of human judgement.
Decisions affecting participant supports should remain subject to meaningful consideration by appropriately trained human decision-makers.
Recommendation 11 – Strengthen Safeguards for Automated Decision-Making
Any automated decision-making framework introduced under the NDIS Act should include legally enforceable safeguards, transparency regarding its use, and mandatory human review before any adverse decision affecting a participant’s funding, eligibility, supports, or claims takes effect.
The Committee should also recommend an independent review of automated decision-making provisions within two years of commencement.
Recommendation 12 – Independent Post-Implementation Review
The Committee should recommend an independent post-implementation review of the reforms introduced by this Bill.
The review should commence no later than 18 months after commencement and be reported publicly to Parliament within 24 months.
Given the scale of the proposed changes and the uncertainty regarding their cumulative impact on participants, the review should assess whether the reforms have achieved their stated objectives without creating unintended consequences for people with disability.
- Conclusion Before concluding, I want to return to the person at the centre of this submission.
My son is not a policy problem to be solved or a budget measure to be managed.
He is a young adult preparing for the next stage of his life.
He is completing his scored year 12. He is planning for university. He is building friendships, developing independence, making decisions about his future, and working towards the same opportunities many young Australians take for granted.
The supports he receives do not create those ambitions.
Those ambitions already exist.
The supports simply make it possible for him to pursue them.
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Submission 2653
Over many years, our family, support workers, clinicians, educators, and my son himself have worked hard to build the foundations that allow him to participate in education, communicate effectively, exercise choice and control, and engage with the world around him.
The progress he has made is not accidental.
It is the result of individualised supports, skilled people, and a Scheme that has historically recognised the importance of funding reasonable and necessary needs while preserving avenues for review when disagreements arise.
The question before the Committee is not whether the NDIS should evolve.
It should.
The question is whether those reforms preserve the principles that have enabled people with disability to pursue meaningful, connected, and increasingly independent lives.
For my son, and for many others like him, the answer to that question matters enormously.
The decisions made through this Bill will not simply affect administrative processes.
They will influence opportunities, participation, independence, safety, health, quality of life, and the futures available to a generation of Australians with disability. For some participants, particularly those with complex and high-intensity support needs, decisions that reduce or remove critical supports may have profound consequences, including serious harm and significant risks to health and safety.
At its core, the NDIS recognises that disability cannot be understood solely through diagnosis, category, funding band, or standardised assumptions. Every participant’s circumstances are unique, and the Scheme has been most successful when it responds to that individuality.
I recognise that participants experience the NDIS in very different ways. Some participants require extensive daily support, while others access the Scheme in more limited ways. Some communicate through speech, others through AAC. Some are pursuing education, others employment, parenting, independent living, community participation, or retirement. What unites these experiences is that every participant deserves supports determined by their individual circumstances and access to meaningful review when decisions affect their lives.
My concern is not that the NDIS should remain unchanged. My concern is that reform should strengthen the Scheme without diminishing the rights, opportunities, and protections that participants rely upon.
My son has worked hard to build the future he wants.
He deserves a Scheme that supports those ambitions.
He deserves a system that recognises his voice, values his aspirations, and remains accountable when decisions are wrong.
Most importantly, he deserves the same opportunity as every other young Australian to pursue a meaningful, connected, and self-directed life.
I respectfully ask the Committee to ensure that the NDIS continues to make that possible.
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