Submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee
Inquiry into the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
To the Committee,
Thank you for the opportunity to make a submission.
I am writing from the perspective of someone outside the NDIS, not as a participant, but as someone who sees its impact on friends, colleagues and community members with disabilities, including people who are neurodivergent, people with mobility disabilities, sensory disabilities and complex support needs.
I also write as someone who was diagnosed with ADHD later in life. That diagnosis was only possible because I was employed at the time and could afford the very expensive assessment process. Many people cannot. ADHD assessment and diagnosis remain financially out of reach for many adults, particularly women and gender diverse people who may already have been missed, dismissed or misdiagnosed earlier in life. This experience has shaped my concern about reforms that assume people can simply prove, navigate, contest or advocate their way through complex systems.
The NDIS should not be made sustainable by making people with disabilities easier to exclude, restrict or scrutinise. If the concern is waste, the focus must be on the parts of the system where waste is being extracted: inflated supplier pricing, poor provider conduct, under-delivery, weak regulation and market failure. Scheme integrity must not become a euphemism for reducing the rights of people with disabilities.
Core Concern
I am concerned that current public and political discussion about NDIS sustainability risks placing too much responsibility on individuals with disabilities, rather than addressing the market behaviours, provider practices and system settings that contribute to waste, overcharging and poor outcomes.
The NDIS must be sustainable, but not by further marginalising people with disabilities or making access to support more difficult. The Scheme exists because people with disabilities have human rights, not because we are a cost problem to be managed.
The government has framed the Bill around priorities including fighting fraud and rorts, slowing cost increases, clearer eligibility, and improving quality services and supports. Those are legitimate concerns, but the key question is where reform effort is directed.
If reform focuses too heavily on participant access, eligibility restrictions or individual compliance, it risks punishing the people the Scheme was created to support. The stronger and fairer focus should be on suppliers, pricing practices, service quality, provider conduct and market stewardship.
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Gender inequity must be central, not incidental
To be effective, NDIS reform must be assessed through a gender equity and intersectional human rights lens.
Women With Disabilities Australia has raised serious concerns about the gendered impact of NDIS reform, including that women with disability already face greater barriers to access and are exited from the Scheme at higher rates than men. WWDA has also highlighted the existing gender gap in NDIS participation, noting that women make up more than half of people with disability in Australia but only just over a third of NDIS participants. (And this doesn’t even consider gender diverse people with disabilities.)
ABS analysis of 2019 NDIS participant data similarly found that almost two-thirds, 62%, of NDIS participants were male.
This matters. If two thirds of participants are male, then any reform to eligibility, access, reviews, planning or evidence requirements must be tested for how it affects women and gender diverse people with disabilities who may already be less likely to access the NDIS in the first place.
Women and gender diverse people with disabilities are often navigating overlapping forms of inequity, including gendered violence, poverty, medical dismissal, caring responsibilities, employment insecurity, housing stress and the under-recognition of neurodivergence. This is the essence of intersectionality, an important factor in seeing the whole picture.
When systems require people to repeatedly prove their need, challenge unfair decisions, understand complex rules, or identify provider misconduct, the burden falls hardest on those with the least structural power and the fewest resources. This is the essence of discrimination in its structural form, not to mention the subtle acts of exclusion that erode trust in institutions and weaken our social fabric. These are human rights issues, not a numbers game.
The Intent-Impact Gap
There is a significant intent-impact gap in NDIS reform.
The intent may be to protect the Scheme, prevent exploitation and secure its future. But the impact may be very different if reforms make it harder for people with disabilities to access support, increase administrative burden, restrict choice and control, or create more fear about saying or doing the wrong thing.
This intent-impact gap disproportionately harms people with disabilities because we are already more likely to be navigating systems that are fragmented, exhausting, expensive and difficult to challenge. For women and gender diverse people with disabilities, that harm can be compounded by gender bias, diagnostic bias, family violence, economic insecurity and social isolation.
Paying closer attention to this gap may also help government identify better ways to address the real challenges in the delivery of the program. If reforms begin by asking where the gap sits between policy intent and lived impact, they may reveal more effective solutions: stronger provider regulation, better market stewardship, improved access to
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 2762
advocacy, clearer accountability for overcharging, and fewer administrative burdens on participants.
Overcharging and poor value must be treated as central integrity issues
A sustainable NDIS requires fair pricing, quality services and strong provider accountability. When suppliers charge inflated prices simply because someone is an NDIS participant, this drains public funds and reduces the support available to people with disabilities. When providers under-deliver, overcharge or provide poor quality services, participants should not be the ones who bear the consequences. It also harms our trust in the system.
The NDIS Commission already states that providers are expected to act with honesty, integrity and transparency, and must be able to justify their pricing. The ACCC also notes that action can be taken where providers charge NDIS participants higher prices without justification.
The Committee should consider whether the Bill sufficiently addresses the conduct of providers, intermediaries and suppliers, rather than relying too heavily on changes that affect participant access, choice and control. And, of course, human rights.
Nothing about us without us
“Nothing about us without us” is a widely recognised clarion call for the human rights of people with disabilities to be respected. A central principle of the NDIS must be that people with disabilities are meaningfully involved in decisions that affect our lives.
Centring lived experience is essential to closing the intent-impact gap, reducing further marginalisation and improving the effectiveness of policy and practice. People with disabilities hold critical knowledge about how systems operate in practice, including where the harm happens and creates exclusion or unintended burden. This reflects the social model of disability, which recognises that disability is shaped not only by impairment, but by the barriers created by systems, environments and attitudes.
I also recommend the Women with Disabilities Victoria resource, Understanding Disability, as a useful introduction to this perspective. It’s designed for workforce development to prevent violence against women and gender diverse people with disabilities. This includes the NIDS workforce.
Recommendations
I recommend that the Committee:
- Strengthen the focus on provider accountability, including overcharging, under-delivery, poor quality services, coercive conduct, inflated pricing and exploitative market behaviour.
- Ensure people with disabilities are not penalised for provider misconduct, market failure or weak regulatory oversight.
- Assess all NDIS reforms through a gender equity and intersectional human rights lens, with specific attention to women and gender diverse people with disabilities,
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National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 2762
- Nations people with disabilities, LGBTQIA+ people with disabilities, culturally and racially marginalised people with disabilities, people in regional and remote areas, and people experiencing poverty.
- Explicitly examine the intent-impact gap in NDIS reform, including how reforms designed to protect the Scheme may unintentionally reduce access, increase fear, or create additional administrative burden for people with disabilities. This assessment should be informed by lived experience evidence, not only administrative or financial data.
- Invest in accessible advocacy and complaints pathways, so individuals are not left responsible for identifying, proving and challenging overcharging or poor practice on their own.
- Prioritise market stewardship over participant restriction, including stronger monitoring of pricing patterns, provider behaviour, service quality and participant outcomes.
- Protect choice and control, recognising that autonomy is not an optional feature of the NDIS but central to its purpose.
- Centre lived experience in reform design, implementation and evaluation, ensuring people with disabilities and representative organisations are meaningfully involved before major changes are made, particularly where reforms may affect access, eligibility, planning, reviews or funded supports.
Closing
The NDIS should be protected for future generations, with great care to avoid narrowing the rights, autonomy or safety of the people it was created to support. A fairer approach to sustainability would focus on the parts of the system with the most power: providers, suppliers, pricing structures, administrative design and regulatory oversight.
People with disabilities should not be treated as the problem. We must be recognised as rights holders, community members and experts in the systems that affect our lives.
Thank you for considering this submission.
Tathra Street Leadership Futurist tathrastreet.com Melbourne, Victoria, Australia