Submission 2827
Submission on the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the
NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submitted by
NDIS Participant
Perth, Western Australia
My name is and I have been an NDIS participant since 2025. I am submitting in emphatic opposition to the proposed Bill.
My concerns with the proposed Bill include but are not limited to;
a) Inadequate submission window First of all, I would like to protest the inadequate submission window for this inquiry. Two weeks (followed by an extension of only two days) to give input on a Bill that has the potential to upend and destroy lives would be too short for any population, let alone for a marginalised demographic with impairments that make preparing a submission on short notice more challenging. This reads as a deliberate attempt to prevent the people most affected by this Bill from having their say.
b) Proposal to use functional capacity assessments as a key eligibility test It is difficult to even raise specific issues with this proposal at this point, as the assessment tool has not been released and we are unclear on how it will be administered and who by. Generally speaking, functional capacity assessments are less effective at capturing fluctuating or non apparent disabilities and risk people with these disabilities being denied needed support. My disabilities fluctuate wildly from day to day and are not adequately documented by “snapshot” style assessments. I am also able to communicate and advocate for myself, which is often interpreted at a surface level as me being less impaired than I am. This is the case for many autistic people, as well as people with chronic or psychosocial conditions, and a move to functional capacity assessments as key to eligibility will have an undue negative impact on this specific cohort of disabled people. I am concerned both for myself as a current participant who will be reassessed in 2028 under the proposed Bill, and for people new to the NDIS who will now find it much harder to access the scheme even though their support needs have not changed.
c) Requirement to exhaust ‘all appropriate treatment’ before NDIS eligibility is confirmed I have serious concerns about giving the NDIA the ability to determine what treatments are “appropriate” for any given disabled person; that is a conversation for the disabled person and their medical/treatment team. I was put through abusive “treatments” for my autism as a child,
Submission 2827
which did nothing to help my autism but which did leave me with lifelong complex PTSD. I would be horrified to learn that other autistic people were being put through similar therapies (which are still used today) just in order to access government support for their disabilities. Similarly, I have loved ones with chronic illnesses like ME/CFS who could be forced to do exercise therapies that are well documented as causing harm but which are still commonly recommended. The other obvious issue is that not all “appropriate” treatments are accessible (would a bedbound person expected to leave their house to access an “appropriate” treatment?). The new Bill does not take into consideration the access issues, geographical issues, or financial issues that might prevent someone from accessing “appropriate” treatment, and thus prevent them from gaining eligibility to the NDIS through no fault of their own.
d) Proposal that support needs must arise ‘directly’ from an NDIS-eligible impairment to be funded
No disability exists in a vacuum, the majority of disabled people are dealing with two or more conditions, and the NDIS is already woefully inadequate when it comes to supporting people with complex disabilities. This proposal would take the scheme backward, making it even harder for people who have multiple disabilities that interact with each other from being given the support they actually need. I do not currently access supports that are not connected to my NDIS-eligible impairment, but I do have complex disabilities and should I need support based on another condition in the future, I would hope that the scheme would assess my impairment based on a complete picture of my disability, not just the diagnosis they have written on my form. The language used by the government around this Bill has been about a move away from assessing impairment based on diagnosis alone, but if that is the intention, this proposal is moving in the opposite direction.
e) Requirement to lodge claims within 90 days (currently 2 years); giving the NDIA power to suspend or revoke a participant’s access if they do not contact the NDIA within 90 days; increased record keeping requirements
I, along with many NDIS participants, am being funded for a disability which has a severe impact on my executive functioning. Introducing these measures would make the NDIS significantly less accessible to me and potentially punish me with removal from the scheme simply for experiencing symptoms of the disability it is meant to support. The increased requirements for record keeping would have a similar impact.
f) Proposal for a move to increase reliance on informal supports. One of the biggest strengths of the NDIS is allowing disabled people to be more independent and reducing the burden of unpaid caregiving labour on family, friends and other informal caregivers. A move back to increased reliance on informal supports would return countless disabled people to situations where they are vulnerable to abuse due to dependence on informal supports, and countless caregivers already stretched thin and overworked, even with NDIS support, to outright crisis. The recent murders of disabled
Submission 2827
children by their parents in Mosman Park and Campbelltown show us the consequences of inadequate support for disabled people and their families.
For me, losing NDIS support would look like my aging autistic mother taking over care for me, at the cost of both her health (she has become dangerously burnt out caring for me multiple times previously) and keeping her job in State government. This would be hugely damaging and unsustainable for both of us, leading to both of us having higher support and medical needs in future, and I have absolutely no idea who would support me if something were to happen to her. I do not have any other informal supports.
g) Proposal for support needs assessments to have more limited appeal outcomes; proposal to further automate administrative decisions.
I am concerned about both these proposals singly, but I am extremely concerned about the impact of both these proposals being introduced at once. Automated administration of Australian government funding has already led to irreparable harm (up to and including deaths) in the form of Robodebt, and implementing automated administration in the NDIS runs the strong risk of the same outcome, but levelled against some of our most vulnerable people. One person working at the NDIS can make an error and harm a disabled person; an automated system or AI has the potential to do harm to participants scheme-wide. Apart from anything else, it is unlikely that these tools would have the capacity to take into account the complex individual needs of each NDIS applicant/participant. To introduce automated tools that carry such huge risks, while simultaneously removing the full right to appeal decisions made by those tools, is an incredibly dangerous proposition that should be immediately dropped from the Bill.
Conclusion:
It is my opinion that the Bill as it currently stands should be withdrawn. If passed into law, this BIll will cause untold harm to disabled Australians and their families, in many more ways than I have been able to draw attention to in this submission given the limited time. The process for this Bill has been rushed and disabled advocates, organisations, participants and community members–the people who will be impacted the most–have not been adequately consulted. There is also a complete lack of clarity around many of the specifics of the bill, leaving questions that disabled Australians deserve to have answered before this Bill goes further.