Submission to the
Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee
Inquiry into the
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment
(Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submitted by: Role: Parent / carer and NDIS nominee for an NDIS participant
Location: Western Australia
Date: 1 June 2026 Confidentiality: I request that my name be withheld from any public publication of this submission. I consent to my submission being made public with my name removed.
- Introduction I am writing as the parent and primary carer of a young woman who is an NDIS participant with a psychosocial and developmental disability. My daughter’s support needs are episodic and fluctuating — at times she requires significant support to manage daily life; at other times she functions largely independently. I have been her primary advocate and support coordinator throughout our years on the Scheme.
I write with serious concerns about the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026. While I understand the need for fiscal sustainability and improved integrity within the Scheme, I am deeply concerned that this Bill will cause real harm to participants like my daughter — not by targeting the fraud and waste that genuinely exists, but by cutting supports for vulnerable people and placing further administrative burden on families who are already stretched to their limits.
My concerns align with those raised by disability organisations including People with
Disability Australia (PWDA), Women With Disabilities Australia (WWDA), Self Manager
Hub, and Inclusion Australia, each of whom have flagged serious risks in the Bill, particularly for people with fluctuating, psychosocial, and episodic disabilities.
- The Problem with Inefficiency Is In the System — Not in
Participants
I want to be direct: I do not want to waste NDIS funds. I have never sought to use my daughter’s plan for inappropriate purposes. And yet I have found myself in a situation where the system actively prevents efficient, common-sense decisions and forces me into far more expensive alternatives.
A clear example: my daughter needs transport to a medical appointment. An Uber would cost approximately $15. I raised this with her Local Area Coordinator, who suggested using a St John driver — a specialised service costing more than three times as much, and using a resource my daughter simply does not need (she does not require a wheelchair-accessible van or a medically trained driver). When I consulted
plan managers about alternatives, the consensus was that I should use a support worker, who would be paid $60 per hour, drive her to the appointment, wait for it to end, and drive her home. A $15 trip became a $150 transaction. I now pay for her transport this way because I cannot sustain the effort of fighting the system. But I want to make clear to the Committee: this is not the behaviour of a participant or family trying to exploit the Scheme. This is the Scheme’s own rules and incentive structures producing waste. If the Government’s goal is sustainability, the reform agenda must interrogate why the system rewards expensive, over-serviced solutions over simple, practical ones.
I do not want more services or more people in my home. I do not want a provider for every small task. I want flexibility to use funds where they are actually needed — without a support worker attached to every interaction.
- My Experience of Being Switched from Self-Management Without
Warning or Explanation
Without any prior communication, I was switched overnight from self-managed to agency-managed for my daughter’s plan. I spent hours on the phone with the NDIA and could not get a clear explanation of why this had occurred. There appeared to be a question about whether her physiotherapy — which supported her functional capacity and for which I had professional reports — was appropriate. No one told me. I received no letter, no phone call, no email.
The practical consequences were devastating. Services that I had carefully coordinated disappeared overnight. I had to reduce my working hours in my small business to manage the fallout — weeks of calls, referrals, and attempts to re-establish supports under a new management model that limited which providers I could access.
I am now plan-managed, which is workable, but I was capable of and willing to self manage. I was doing so responsibly. The plan management fee now costs the NDIS over $100 per month that was entirely unnecessary. If there was a concern about how I was managing the plan, communicating that concern directly to me would have resolved it immediately. Instead, the system simply acted without any notification, transparency, or opportunity for me to respond.
Self Manager Hub and other organisations have raised concerns that the Bill contains new powers that could see participants’ NDIS status suspended or varied with insufficient safeguards and communication. My experience is a warning of what happens when the NDIA acts without procedural fairness. I urge the Committee to ensure that no participant faces sudden plan changes without adequate notice, explanation, and an accessible pathway to respond or appeal.
- Concern About Fluctuating and Episodic Support Needs My daughter’s disability is not constant. At certain times she is highly capable and functions independently. At other times, her needs are acute and she requires substantial support. This is the nature of psychosocial and some other disabilities — they are episodic and fluctuating.
The Bill proposes a new access model based on substantially reduced functional capacity, assessed through a standardised tool at a point in time. I have grave
concerns that a snapshot assessment will fail to capture the reality of my daughter’s support needs. If she is assessed on a good day, she may appear to not need supports. If her access to the Scheme is predicated on this, she will be without essential supports when her needs escalate — which is precisely when those supports are most critical.
PWDA has recommended that the Bill be amended to explicitly recognise psychosocial disability, episodic and fluctuating conditions, and communication needs in section 9B. Women With Disabilities Australia has warned that the reforms risk excluding people whose conditions are difficult to measure using standardised tools. I strongly support these recommendations and urge the Committee to require that any assessment framework explicitly accommodate episodic and fluctuating conditions.
- Concern About Psychosocial Supports and Reliance on a New
Mental Health Strategy
I am concerned about proposals to move psychosocial supports outside the NDIS and into a new mental health and suicide prevention strategy. Access and eligibility for mental health services is already severely limited in Australia — this is not a theoretical concern. It is the lived experience of many families.
The Western Australian Association for Mental Health (WAAMH) has long noted that community-based psychosocial supports are the most under-resourced part of the mental health system. The Commonwealth Psychosocial Support Program serves approximately 25,000 people nationally — a fraction of need. Depending on a new strategy to absorb participants displaced from the NDIS asks communities to rely on infrastructure that does not yet exist at scale.
My daughter’s psychosocial supports are not incidental to her NDIS participation — they are the foundation of her capacity to function. Moving these outside the Scheme, to a system not designed for individual needs-based funding, risks leaving her and thousands of others without meaningful support.
I ask the Committee to require that the Government demonstrate, prior to any transition, that adequate, funded psychosocial supports exist in mainstream mental health services to meet the needs of those who would be displaced from the NDIS.
- Focus on Organised Fraud, Not on Participants I support stronger action against organised fraud, unscrupulous providers, and predatory marketing in the Scheme. These actors are the genuine threat to sustainability. The NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission’s new powers under the earlier Integrity and Safeguarding Bill 2025 are a welcome step.
However, I am concerned that this Bill turns attention back onto participants and their families as if we are the problem. Reducing budgets, tightening access, imposing standardised assessments and plan end dates with no carryover of unspent funds — these measures burden the people who most need support, not the providers who exploit the system.
I urge the Committee to recommend that reform efforts prioritise systemic integrity — auditing providers, improving claims detection, addressing the perverse incentives that
push participants toward expensive over-serviced solutions — rather than restricting the rights and flexibility of participants.
- Summary of Recommendations
-
Amend the access criteria to explicitly recognise psychosocial disability and episodic, fluctuating support needs, ensuring that point-in-time assessments cannot determine access for people whose disability is not constant.
-
Require that before any plan change, reduction, or variation is made, participants and their nominees are given written notice with reasons, and a meaningful opportunity to respond or seek review that doesn’t affect their ongoing supports.
-
Require that before psychosocial supports are moved out of the NDIS, the Government must demonstrate that adequately funded, individualised alternatives exist in mainstream mental health services.
-
Investigate and address the system incentives that push participants and families toward expensive, over-serviced solutions rather than simple, practical ones.
-
Protect self-management and plan management choice, and ensure that participants who are managing their plans responsibly are not stripped of that autonomy without cause, explanation, and due process.
-
Ensure all rules, assessments, and implementation details are co-designed with people with disability and their families before the Bill is passed, not after.
-
Direct the primary fraud and integrity reform focus toward organised crime, predatory providers, and the structural incentives that inflate costs — not toward participants.
- Closing Statement I have a deep interest in the NDIS succeeding. My daughter’s life, independence, and wellbeing depend on it. I want the Scheme to be well-governed, financially sustainable, and focused on genuine outcomes for participants. I believe that is possible. But it requires reform that targets the right problems.
This Bill, in its current form, risks making the lives of participants and families harder, not better. I ask the Committee to take its time, listen to the lived experience of participants and carers, and recommend that the Bill be amended or delayed until adequate safeguards and supports are in place.
Do the hard work. Crack down on the organised crime to save your 20%.
Thank you for the opportunity to make this submission.
Parent / Carer and NDIS Nominee
Western Australia
1 June 2026