Submission 2738
Attention: Committee Secretary, Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs
Submitted by email: community.affairs.sen@aph.gov.au
Date: 1st of June
I welcome the opportunity to make a submission to the Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs about the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026.
I am an ordinary Australian with friends and family friends who rely on the NDIS, I want to outline the harm this Amendment Bill will cause if it passes Parliament. This Bill is too far-reaching to pass as it stands. I believe the Bill requires further scrutiny and amendment before it proceeds.
Parliamentary Scrutiny and Transparency
The consultation period for the Amendment Bill is two weeks, which is insufficient to allow for appropriate consultation, considering accessibility and communication needs. The Australian Government Guide to Policy Impact Analysis says consultation should occur for a minimum of 30 days where possible.
The short timeline will not allow a careful consideration of how to reduce budget costs whilst also maximising the NDIS’s continued usefulness for disabled Australians. It will force a sudden shift in care and support for many people I know and will leave whole social networks and communities destabilised from the shock and added challenges this will cause.
Recommendation:
Amend the consultation period for a best practice minimum of 30 days.
Key decisions left to ministerial instruments, not law
The issue: The Bill allows Ministers to change who gets NDIS support (Schedule 1 Parts 8 and 9) and how much funding people receive (Schedule 1 Part 4; Schedule 3) by signing an instrument, without going back to Parliament. The rules that will
Submission 2738
determine critical eligibility thresholds (Schedule 1 Parts 1, 8 and 9) have not yet
been written.
How this affects participants: The decisions that shape the lives of participants, whether they qualify for the NDIS and what supports they can access, could be changed without parliamentary debate or public scrutiny. Participants may not know supports or eligibility rules have changed until their plan is affected.
It’s difficult enough to keep on top of care plans and maintaining routines without having to wait around for subsidised appointments and care plans to suddenly run out without viable options for their renewal or an adequate replacement.
Recommendation: Require that all decisions affecting NDIS eligibility and funding levels be made through primary legislation subject to full parliamentary scrutiny, with mandatory advance notice to affected participants before any changes take effect.
Existing participants face narrower criteria and fewer rights to challenge decisions
The issue: The Bill changes the rules for existing NDIS participants and makes it harder to challenge some decisions about supports and funding. It also restricts when you can request a reassessment, removes review rights for automatic plan renewals, and makes funding reductions unreviewable (Schedule 1 Parts 1 and 8). Combined with restrictions on reassessment requests (Part 2), automatic plan renewals without review rights (Part 5), and unreviewable funding reductions (Part 4), existing participants face narrower criteria with significantly fewer avenues to challenge decisions about their supports.
How this affects participants: This does not protect participants already on the NDIS, who could be reassessed under stricter rules. If someone’s funding is reduced or their plan renewed automatically, they may have limited or no ability to challenge that decision. This could make it harder for people to get extra support when their circumstances or disability change.
PWDA Template: Submission to the National Disability Insurance Scheme
Submission 2738
People with disabilities thrive when given adequate supports and become more
‘functional’ but this can only happen when those supports remain in place. Taking
away supports for those with low care needs or who are going through an easier
patch keeps these people in an ongoing struggle to simply get by and makes it more
likely they will need more serious and more costly intervention later on due to decline
in their ‘functionality’ as a result of a lack of NDIS support.
Recommendation: Require a “no harm” safeguard ensuring no current participant
loses access to supports unless equivalent supports are in place, with independent
review rights before any exit decision and access to unscheduled reassessments
preserved.
Unreviewable ministerial power to cut funding across all support categories
The Minister can reduce funding for any support or group of supports by a specified percentage through an instrument that cannot be challenged (Schedule 1 Part 4).
This applies across all budget categories. Unspent funds will no longer carry over at plan renewal (Schedule 1 Part 5).
How this affects participants: A participant’s community participation, capacity building or assistive technology funding could be cut without warning and without any right to appeal. Participants who save unspent funds across plan periods for high- cost items will lose that ability entirely.
Treating aspects of the NDIS as big-ticket or small-ticket items to remove at will the ease up some pressure on the budget does not work because a person’s care needs are complex and multifaceted. Removing one service in one area may require that person accessing another service in another area. Moreover, needs do not stay consistent, there are once-off or annual services that people need which they can save up for only if they are given space to use their funds for their needs rather than having their funds stripped to always the barest essentials to keep existing.
Submission 2738
Recommendation: Require that unspent funds carry over at plan renewal for
participants saving for high-cost items and require independent review rights before
any funding reduction takes effect.
Requirement to exhaust treatment options before eligibility
The issue:
A person with disability will need to exhaust treatment options before they can be eligible for the Scheme (Schedule 1 Part 8). There will also be a removal of whole-of-person assessment, replaced by single eligible impairment consideration (Schedule 1 Part 3). The note that previously acknowledged environmental factors and other ineligible impairments could affect support needs will be removed (Schedule 1 Part 3).
How this affects participants:
People with disability will need to prove their impairment cannot be treated before they access the NDIS. Once in the scheme, heir supports will only be assessed against a single eligible impairment rather than their whole experience. A person’s individual circumstances will not be considered, including ability to pay for treatment, where they live or whether treatment is actually available to them.
Disability and impairment are expressed in different ways because people find their own ways of managing around their disabilities. This risks unfairly biasing the NDIS to people who fit certain cultural and wealth based strategies of living with disability.
It also ignores the interconnected nature of human health, that treating only one aspect of a person at a time does not provide the best nor most cost effective care.
Recommendation: Do not proceed with a requirement to exhaust “appropriate” treatment options – there are no safeguarding measures around participant harm due to side effects or complications, a participant’s financial ability to pay, or their geographic capacity to access treatments.
Unvalidated functional capacity assessment tool risks misidentifying need
The issue:
The Bill shifts assessment from whole-of-person consideration to a single eligible impairment (Schedule 1 Part 3). Read together with the eligibility thresholds in Parts 8 and 9, the tool used to conduct functional capacity assessments must be capable of sufficiently identifying whether a person meets the threshold for that single impairment.
How this affects participants:
The named assessment tool is the Instrument for Classification and Assessment of Support Needs (I-CAN). I-CAN requires validation to ensure it will sufficiently identify the needs of all people with disability, including those whose needs may be fluctuating or episodic and may not be captured through a point-in-time assessment, and to ensure it is culturally appropriate for First Peoples with disability.
If the assessment tool does not accurately capture the full extent of a person’s disability, including needs that fluctuate or vary over time, a participant may be found ineligible or have their supports undercounted, with no guarantee the result reflects their actual experience.
The NDIS helps keep other services such as Centrelink, hospitals, and psychologists able to handle the load of clients/patients they receive; Australia has care needs and when a major support is taken away from disabled Australians not only do those needs increase and become more complex but other services are forced to take the strain. Cuts to the NDIS can’t just be a snapshot to lower the numbers at this synchronic moment in time, if the Australian Government is to reduce the costs of disability support it must consider how these supports cater to compex and fluctuating situations and needs. To reduce the amount of situations requiring significant intervention will require wider ranging supports rather than fewer supports.
The way to cut costs in the long term may ironically be to increase them in the short term.
Submission 2738
Recommendation: Do not proceed with I-CAN as the functional capacity assessment tool unless it has been demonstrably validated to identify the needs of all people with disability, including those with episodic or fluctuating disability, and demonstrated to be culturally appropriate for First Peoples with disability.
Supports cut before replacement system is ready
The issue: From 1 October 2026, the government has announced funding for social, civic and community participation supports will be cut by 50 per cent and capacity building daily activities by 10 per cent for all participants, reductions that will be implemented through the ministerial instrument power in Schedule 1 Part 4. The Foundational Supports system intended to fill that gap has no confirmed implementation date and is not yet operational.
How this affects participants: Supports that help participants connect with their community, build skills and maintain independence may be cut before anything exists to replace them, leaving carers and families with greater responsibilities and no additional support. These supports are often what help people stay visible, connected and safe.
It widens gender inequality to remove these supports without proper replacement because it increases the domestic labour required to help disabled Australians live ordinary lives and this domestic labour will almost fall predominantly on women.
Moreover it weakens our communities by cutting off so many people, both NDIS participants and carers from participating in their communities and in the economy adequately.
Recommendation: Require that no reductions to community participation or capacity building supports take effect until Foundational Supports are fully operational, adequately funded and demonstrably able to meet the needs of those who will lose NDIS supports.
Please consider these recommendations.
Submission 2738
Kind regards.
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PWDA Template: Submission to the National Disability Insurance Scheme