Submission 2656
Submission on the NDIS Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future
Generations) Bill 2026
- Who I am and why I care about the NDIS I am a 47-year-old woman with quadriplegia who uses a wheelchair. I live in a Specialist Disability Accommodation (SDA) apartment that has Onsite Shared Support - an OSS support worker who is available across ten apartments in my building.
I have high support needs. I rely on funded disability support for transfers, personal care, and managing my daily life. Without the NDIS, I would not be living as independently. I would be in a group home, or worse, in a hospital or aged care setting at 47 years old, which is the alternative this Bill is quietly moving me back towards.
I care about the NDIS because it is the reason I have a home of my own, a front door I control, and a life that is mine. I want it to be sustainable. I want it to be well run. I do not want it dismantled in the name of saving it.
- My position on the Bill I oppose this Bill in its current form. I am particularly concerned about the new power to reduce funding for groups of supports by ministerial instrument under new section 34A, and the new power to set maximum worker-to-participant ratios under subsection 33(2EA)(c).
I am also deeply concerned about what these powers mean for the OSS and SIL arrangements that make my way of living possible - and about the commissioned home and living model that will be designed using these powers from July 2026 onwards.
- The issue that matters most to me: OSS, the ratio power, and section 34A I want the Committee to understand what my OSS arrangement actually is, because I do not think policymakers always do.
I live in my own apartment. I have my own front door, my own tenancy, my own life. My OSS worker is onsite, shared across ten apartments in my building. They are not my primary support worker. What they provide is availability - the knowledge that if something goes wrong, someone who knows my equipment, knows my needs, and knows me is there.
That availability is what allows me to live with a lower level of core supports than I would otherwise need. The OSS model is not a luxury. It is the difference between independent
Submission 2656
living and a group home. Without it, the level of individually funded support I would require to remain safe would either be unaffordable to the scheme or simply unavailable in practice. Either way, I would not be here.
OSS is also already a structural saving for the NDIS. It allows people with very high support needs - people who would otherwise each require their own 24-hour individually funded support - to share overnight and emergency coverage across a small number of independent households. The scheme has already invested in that model. Cutting it does not trim waste. It destroys an arrangement that is saving money.
I am 47. I have worked hard to build this life. I chose this building, helped choose this provider, these workers. That relationship - the trust, the shared understanding of what support I need - took years to develop. It is not replaceable by whoever wins a government contract.
New section 34A gives the Minister the power to reduce funding for any group of supports by a percentage, through a legislative instrument that does not expire and is not subject to merits review. The announced 50 per cent cut to social and community participation funding is the first use of this power. It will not be the last.
There is already enough in section 34 of the Act to make sure supports are appropriate and well-targeted. The answer to poor planning decisions is better planning and greater oversight of providers - not a blunt ministerial power to cut funding across an entire category for everyone at once. That approach is diametrically opposed to the design of the NDIS as an individualised scheme.
For me, a 50 per cent reduction to community participation funding is not an abstract budget adjustment. I am a wheelchair user with quadriplegia. Getting out of my home requires accessible transport, often a support worker, and venues that can accommodate me. Many cannot. The transport options in many parts of Australia barely exist. Halve the budget that funds that participation and my world shrinks - not because I chose to stay home, but because the funding that makes leaving possible is gone.
New subsection 33(2EA)(c) gives the Minister the power to set a maximum worker-to participant ratio for any support. This will be used to shape the commissioned model for home and living supports being designed from July 2026. I support quality oversight of SIL and OSS providers. The Royal Commission documented serious failures in congregate settings that need a firm response. But my SDA apartment is not a group home. It is not a group home in the sky. It operates on a completely different logic - independent tenants with their own front doors sharing an onsite resource - and a ratio instrument designed for a congregate setting could make this model financially unviable as a side effect of fixing something else. Change those ratios and the model stops working in buildings like mine.
Submission 2656
What concerns me most is that neither of these powers requires the Minister to consult people like me before using them. The instruments are exempt from sunsetting - they do not expire. And the commissioning model being designed right now, which will determine who delivers my OSS and on what terms, does not have a legislative requirement to include SDA tenants in its design.
I have been an SDA tenant. I have navigated this system. I know what works and what doesn’t in a way that no policy document captures. If the commissioned model is designed without my voice in the room, it will get things wrong - and the cost of those mistakes will be borne by people like me, in our bodies, in our homes.
- What I am asking the Committee to recommend First, the power in section 34A to cut funding for any group of supports by ministerial instrument should be abandoned entirely. The section 34 reasonable and necessary test, applied properly with better planning decisions and greater provider oversight, is the right mechanism for making sure funding goes where it is needed. A blanket ministerial cut power is not a targeted tool - it is a blunt instrument that cannot distinguish between discretionary spending and essential safety funding. If Parliament does not agree to abandon it, then at minimum it must require genuine co-design with affected people before any cut is made, a plain-language impact assessment published before the instrument is tabled, and an expiry date of no more than three years so Parliament must actively choose to keep any cut in place.
Second, if the government uses its new power to set limits on how many participants a worker can support, those limits must not treat my SDA apartment the same as a group home. I am asking the Committee to recommend that any ratio instrument be required to distinguish between those two models, and that a single ratio cannot apply across both. The OSS apartment model works differently. Treating it the same as congregate care will break it.
Third, the commissioned model for home and living supports being designed from July 2026 will determine who delivers my OSS, on what terms, and whether the model I depend on even continues to exist. I am asking the Committee to recommend that this design process be required by law to include SDA tenants who actually live in OSS arrangements - not as a category to be consulted, but as people who help design it. Our input should be publicly recorded, and the government should be required to respond to it in writing before the model is finalised. If that co-design happens after the architecture is already set, it is not co-design.
Submission 2656
Fifth, the instruments that will follow this Bill - setting the ratios, the cuts, and the commissioning rules - will be just as consequential as the Bill itself, and right now they have almost no consultation requirements attached to them. I am asking the Committee to recommend a minimum 90-day consultation period for all of those instruments, with accessible formats from the start: Easy Read, Auslan, and the option to respond by video or audio. Fifteen days was not enough for this Bill. It should not be the model for everything that follows.
I am submitting this because I believe the Committee must hear from people who will live the consequences of these decisions - not just organisations, not just advocates, but the person in the SDA apartment.
I am 47. I want to still be living as independently at 57 and 67. This Bill, as written, makes that harder.
SDA tenant, Sydney NSW
29 May 2026