National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
SUBMISSION OF CONCERN
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS
for Future Generations) Bill 2026
[Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee | May 2026](/foi-library/releases/89e86d52fb85-foi-25-26-1684/document-009__senate-community-affairs-legislation-committee/)About Me
As an allied health professional, mother to neurodivergent children, partner of a neurodivergent man and family member to others with various disabilities, I am deeply concerned and disheartened by the proposed changes to the NDIS.
I support the need for a sustainable scheme. However, these reforms significantly alter the foundations on which the NDIS was built and disadvantage people with disability.
This submission does not oppose reform. It opposes this Bill in its current form, which I believe poses a grave and unacceptable risk to the safety, dignity, and human rights of NDIS participants across Australia.
I am so worried and fearful of how the proposed changes will affect my loved ones, my clients and some of the most vulnerable people in the community.
Many of these people rely on the supports funded by NDIS. Without these supports their functional abilities, health, mental health and quality of life are significantly impacted.
Will my 9 year old autistic child get the supports they need to function and live life to the fullest? Will I be expected to stop work and care for them beyond the levels that are expected of parents to mainstream children?
Will my client who lives in rural Victoria still be eligible for NDIS if they decline a particular treatment? Or if they don’t have reasonable access to the treatment? Who will determine what is reasonable? Does my parent with a spinal cord injury need to explore stem cell therapy?
There are too many grey areas and variables in the proposed bill. There is too much power granted to individuals with no recourse of appeals or subsequent actions.
- Support Needs Assessments The proposed assessment framework, including an adapted I-CAN tool, raises serious concerns about accuracy, fairness and clinical validity.
Independent analysis has reported accuracy rates of approximately 53%, raising significant concerns about its reliability in determining funding levels.
Key concerns include:
No functional observation of participants in real-world environments
Heavy reliance on self-report, disadvantaging people with intellectual disability, cognitive impairment, and communication barriers
No consistent or standardised question set
Not guaranteed to be administered by allied health professionals, despite being designed for clinical use
This significantly increases the risk of incorrect assessments and inadequate funding outcomes.
The shift toward a single impairment-based model, rather than a whole-person assessment, also risks failing to capture the combined and interacting impacts of disability, environment and comorbid conditions.
- Functional Capacity Must Include Context Functional capacity cannot be assessed in isolation.
A person’s capacity is shaped by:
environment and accessibility
supports and assistive technology
fatigue, pain, and fluctuating health
cognitive load and daily demands
Removing context does not improve accuracy, it distorts it.
Disability is dynamic and often not visible in brief one-off assessments. Participants must be assessed as whole people in real-world conditions. This involves comprehensive assessments with functional observations.
- Permanence, Treatment, and Eligibility Barriers The requirement for “appropriate treatment” before recognising permanence raises serious concerns.
Not all treatment is accessible, affordable, safe or tolerable.
Key issues include:
people being penalised for inability to access treatment
people being penalised for refusing treatment
lack of clarity about who defines “appropriate” treatment
risk that supports may be reframed as treatment required before eligibility
Many interventions and assistive technologies lack strong research evidence bases yet are widely used in practice due to learnings from lived experience and clinical expertise. Not every treatment or recommendation has been adequately researched and peer reviewed. Not because of lack of benefit, because of lack of resources or need to research said recommendation.
Participants should not be required to exhaust all theoretical treatment options before accessing lifelong disability supports.
4. Eligibility and Reassessment
Once a person is assessed as having a permanent and significant disability, ongoing reassessment of eligibility is unnecessary and harmful.
It creates:
administrative burden
emotional distress
instability for people with lifelong disability needs
- Review Rights and Appeals There is concern that review pathways may become less accessible or less effective in practice.
Where assessments are incorrect, participants must have a meaningful and realistic right to challenge outcomes.
Appeal processes are already complex, slow and distressing. Weakening these safeguards removes a critical protection.
Automatic plan renewals without meaningful review also risk locking in inadequate supports and reducing participants’ ability to respond to changed circumstances.
- Funding Controls, Ministerial Powers and Value for Money Proposed powers allowing funding reductions across participant groups are extremely concerning.
Participants rely on NDIS funding for essential daily support. Many are already managing inadequate plans due to fear that requesting review may result in further reductions.
Key concerns include:
blanket funding reductions without individual reassessment
loss of essential supports regardless of need
increased vulnerability for already under-supported participants
Funding cuts do not reduce support needs - they shift responsibility onto families, carers and other systems such as health and crisis services.
Key decisions affecting eligibility and funding should not be made through ministerial instruments outside full parliamentary scrutiny and participants should receive clear notice before any changes affect them.
Funding reductions should also not occur before alternative foundational supports are fully operational and able to meet participant needs.
The removal or weakening of “value for money / same outcome” principles risks shifting decisions toward cost rather than functional need, leading to lower-cost supports that may not achieve equivalent outcomes.
Participants should not be worse off as a result of these changes and should retain meaningful review rights and access to reassessment where circumstances change.
- Informal Supports and Carer Burden The Bill increases reliance on informal supports.
This places additional pressure on families and carers, many of whom are already at capacity, including those with disability or health conditions themselves.
This is not a neutral shift. It transfers system responsibility into households. Many households are already at breaking point. It is not sustainable for them to continue with the persistent, ongoing and intense supports that many participants need.
- Pricing and Ministerial Control Allowing ministerial control over pricing without independent oversight risks pricing decisions being driven by budget constraints rather than actual service delivery costs.
This is particularly concerning in allied health and disability support sectors already facing workforce shortages, especially in regional areas.
Administrative timeframes (including 90-day pricing reviews) are not responsive enough to maintain service viability.
Pricing should be determined by an independent body, not ministerial discretion.
CONCLUSION
Across the Bill, there is a clear shift away from individualised, needs-based support toward system control and budget-driven decision-making.
While sustainability is important, it must not come at the expense of the core principles of the NDIS.
RECOMMENDATIONS
I ask the Committee to recommend that this Bill not proceed in its current form.
Specifically:
Functional assessments must include real-world context and clinical validity
Eligibility must not depend on inaccessible or refused treatment
Permanent disability must not require ongoing reassessment
Participants must retain meaningful rights of appeal
Functional need must remain central to planning decisions
Informal supports must not be assumed as system substitutes
Funding cuts must not be applied as blanket measures or before replacement supports exist
Pricing must be independently regulated, not ministerially controlled
Existing participants must not be worse off under transitional changes
Disabled people are not a budget category. They are individuals with rights, needs and dignity.
The NDIS exists because Australia recognised that support should be based on need, not cost pressure.
This Bill departs from that principle. I ask the Committee not to proceed.
People with disabilities are PEOPLE not numbers.
Submitted respectfully,
An Allied Health Professional, Mother, Partner and Family Member of People with
Disabilities
Bendigo, Victoria | May 2026