Submission 2675
Submission For: NDIS Legislation 2026
I am an NDIS participant with multiple disabilities (however only the impairments resulting from severe energy limiting illness are NDIS listed). I rely on the NDIS for very basic activities such as pre-packaged meals, laundry, cleaning, task relief to enable bathing, transport for the rare occasions I can leave the house (mostly medical appointments) and a lot of administrative tasks. I also hold a Master of Strategic Foresight, which taught me skills in systems thinking and predicting outcomes of policy decisions.
Prior to disability I worked for a state government creating process maps of legislative approval process for red tape reduction. I am concerned at the poor quality of legislation that is being written concerning the NDIA lately - it is full of loopholes, poorly considered changes with unintended consequences which could be predicted by a good policy team or consultation, and sweeping powers with details to be in regulations that are yet to be drafted.
Good consultation could alleviate a lot of this, but two weeks to comment on legislation would be ridiculously short for healthy people, but is so much worse for disabled people who often require supports to comment. I am having to forgo basic life activities like bathing in order to write this submission. This also happens on the back of continuous consultations and changes for the last 2 years resulting in a lot of burnout of disabled people and disability advocates. Trust that consultation will actually result in changes is also low as the last few consultations it seems that only matters big enough to create a media storm created change. For example, many submissions to the NDIA consultations on support lists mentioned noise cancelling headphones, an autism support so common it is used as a stereotype. But these submissions did not result in this common support’s status being clarified in the support lists.
The legislation offers sweeping powers to remove participants, even whole classes of participants from the scheme, without right of appeal. No appeal is very unjust. Sweeping powers can easily be misused by future governments. These powers are largely not actually needed - the current processes allow participants to have their access reviewed at the ministers discretion. Sweeping changes have huge personal costs to disabled people. For example, removing supports from people listed under autism would capture many participants with severe chronic illness, intellectual disabilities or other secondary disabilities which accidentally never got listed at access because the system favoured applications on the basis of autism (LACs would actually recommend applying for autism alone and then providing proof of additional disabilities at the first planning meeting or after the first functional capacity assessment). Withdrawing supports could be extremely detrimental to these people. Many still don’t even know what their listed condition is as we have not been issued impairment notices yet (I think these are at least a year overdue now).
Such participants would be eligible for the scheme on the basis of their other disabilities, but would need time to provide proof of the severity of these disabilities. There is still no clear path for participants to add disabilities when new disabilities are acquired, or they discover old ones have been omitted from paperwork. In some cases, secondary disabilities have simply been lost in the transfer between computer systems, with the participants having no way of knowing this has happened because disabilities and impairments are not listed on our plans. Arbitrary removals would be very unfair in these cases, it should be a review process
Submission 2675
that gives participants time to collect and provide reports, which often takes months. And it is so important to actually have the systems ready for this - issue impairment notices, establish a formal pathway for adding additional disabilities/impairments, and get the foundational supports ready before you chuck people off the scheme to use them. Also increase funding for advocacy programs if large numbers of participants are going to have their access cut so those participants can manage the changes, and those inevitable mistakes (any big system has some, a system as new as the NDIS has more) can be appealed.
The sections of the Bill on permanence of conditions before gaining access are very concerning. While the general principles are sound, the way this legislation is written could be very damaging. Requiring conditions to be fully treated to enter the scheme is not a bad thing, but it depends on how this is implemented, the wording is very loose currently allowing treatments to be demanded for access which are experimental, extremely expensive, possibly damaging or not available within travelling range of the participant. I have access for a condition which is not listed on list B, and I constantly hear others with this condition asking in bewilderment why their access has been denied when their doctor has said their condition and their impairments are fully treated. The wording needs to say that only reasonable treatments must be required. Ones backed by condition guidelines which are available at reasonable cost, location and safety. When an access request gets denied for lack of treatment, the request needs to say which treatments have been missed. It is not ok to simply say access denied because conditions are not fully treated without saying what is missing - that could be abused to deny anyone. This will disproportionately affect women as they are more likely to have disabilities which are harder to prove permanence on - chronic illnesses, mental health issues etc rather than physical injuries.
As a person who did not enter the scheme via a list A or B condition, I have basically followed the application process that all new applications will now have to follow, so I know how onerous it can be, how difficult it is to get suitable reports from medical professionals (let alone pay for them as reports are not covered by medicare), how few medical professionals understand NDIS reporting requirements, and how insanely fussy an access team who have been given targets for rejections can be about writing the perfect application. The entire process is extremely stressful when conducted in this adversarial manner, when tiny petty ambiguous statements in an application are misinterpreted and no clarification is sought to clear up any tiny points that might make the difference between an application’s success or failure. It is very difficult to complete such an application when no advocates have capacity to help until the ART stage. Such fussy requirements need extensive paperwork to prove access eligibility, but then, as stated by the head of the NDIS, the access team are too busy to actually read such long reports resulting in applications being denied because of lack of evidence contained in unread pages of the application.
While in theory internal reviews (appeals) exist, most appear recently to be either rubber stamping the original findings (without considering additional evidence submitted or reading the original paperwork) or automatically rejecting the appeal because the NDIA team has been too busy to asses it in 21 days. Most applicants need to go to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (creating undue strain on that authority) simply to get the whole of their application read to see that their condition and impairments are fully treated and functional impairments are extreme.
Submission 2675
This onerous and stressful system is what the legislation proposes should now apply to all new and reviewed participants. It will create great strain on medical professionals, foundational supports who are not suited to supporting such individuals while they try to get applications together, on disabled people and their carers, on the ART, and on hospitals who cannot clear disabled people from their beds for lack of an NDIS plan. This will also hugely increase the workload of the NDIA acess team, and yet jobs are being cut from the authority. Who is reading applications? Are staff trusting AI program summaries of submitted paperwork for such critical decisions?
I am extremely concerned that automated decision making has not been adequately tested. AI systems have been shown to magnify bias. Certain groups such as women and participants with unconventional disabilities are likely to suffer under automated decision making regeimes. Of greater concern the process by which a functional capacity assesment is turned into a plan is a black box. We have no information about how this is done. No chance to address flaws in the process (any new system has some) systematically. No guarantee this process is fair. And no right of appeal if this black box process provides an poor result. We can only appeal if the functional capacity assesment was wrong. But if this new, minimally tested, non-transparent algorithm gets things badly wrong, there is no right of appeal to check the algorithms workings.
I am concerned about only funding listed disabilities. Where a person has multiple disabilities, some severe and qualifying for NDIS and some milder and not qualifying. How will the new algorithm take into consideration how the milder disabilities (or medical conditions) impact the ability to receive supports for the NDIS qualifying condition. For example, my “mild” autism (not NDIS listed) makes it hard for me receive supports for my physical disability - leading to support workers quitting, others causing significant stress which impacts my physical disability because they cannot provide supports that are compatible with my autism. This combined effect makes it much harder to receive supports than someone else who only has a physical disability of the same severity. Will any consideration of environmental conditions of the participant (eg availability of family to help) be conducted in the algorithms? Will this consideration extent to the impact of non NDIS listed disabilities and medical conditions on support needs?
I’m also concerned that non qualifying conditions will fall through the support gaps - that foundational supports will be denied to NDIS participants on the basis of the NDIS package, even when the support is for an impairment that is not NDIS listed. Or that foundational supports will not be able to deal with the complexities of multiple conditions - eg. a foundational service for autism will probably not have the ability to provide supports for a person with significant physical disabilities or mental health issues because these require extra training and management. But that person’s NDIS package will be barred from providing autism supports. So the person will end up with no supports for their autism at all.
I am concerned that so little detail is given in the Bill about exact details. This gives the minister (and future ministers) a lot of room to change the rules more easily when it is only in the rules or regulations and not the legislation. For example not defining what level of functional capacity is required to become or remain an NDIS participant in the legislation leaves a lot of room for a definition so tight that hardly anyone fits it. We are writing an open cheque to decide who qualifies without parliamentary oversight. Without the ability to see if
Submission 2675
certain groups with very severe disabilities get accidentally left out because of poorly worded rules.
I am concerned that the 90 day limit on claiming from NDIS plans might backfire on participants. Instead of forcing providers to be efficient and timely with their paperwork, they might instead bill participants for the service they were unable to get reimbursed. For high needs participants, this could be thousands of dollars a day. Some form of protection is needed to stop this happening. Already many large registered providers are trying to introduce service agreements that force the participant/carer to agree to pay any bills the NDIA do not cover. Also, there should be some discretionary powers for exemptions in exceptional situations (the process could be much more onerous than standard claims) eg if a sole trader was hospitalised for 100 days, they should be able to submit claims from before that period. To not do so risks bankrupting small providers (which includes many therapists) and reducing the already thin workforce.
I am concerned that the limitations to ability to apply for a change of circumstances review could be applied really harshly. That in the hands of an overworked KPI chasing bureaucrat, this legislation might enable them to say no to legitimate requests. For example, my disability has been progressive (but not all forms of my disability are, so it is hard to prove this will continue) resulting in lowered capacity each year. A functional capacity assessment is I hear expected to last 5 years, during which time my functionality is expected to decline. I am worried that if I request a change of circumstances on the basis of functional decline every 2 years, that later requests might be arbitrarily dismissed as a serial complainer rather than understanding that my functioning is declining and will regularly need reassessment. Plans that are cut to the bone will further exacerbate this effect as there will be absolutely no room to cope with a decrease in my functionality
Thank you for reading my rambles, unfortunately my disability has affected my ability to keep things precise, cite exact paragraphs of the legislation or provide references or statistics to back up my submission.