National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 2918
To the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission,
I write as a community member concerned about the upcoming bill around the NDIS. I write also as a parent of three children with autism, and as a paediatrician in WA that supports families of children with needs.
I agree about the NDIS needing to be made more sustainable. However, the current focus of the reforms is largely concentrated on the vulnerable, the disabled individuals and the families. These groups through this legislation are being removed into hastily commissioned services like Thriving Kids that are still lacking clear detailed plans.
I want to highlight that the bill fails to address an important area of NDIS costs and should do more to scrutinise providers of NDIS services that are responsible for much of the cost blowouts. It is good that that there is now a need for provider registration, and it is good that there are better procedures to deal with fraud, but I would like to see the independent assessment processes to also move to focus on effectiveness of providers. In the context of this bill it would need the NDIS to conduct its own assessments in-house and not contractors.
NDIS and safeguarding against corporate exploitation
Within the NDIS system there are now has mega-corporations that make multimillion dollar profits. I want to point out that these corporations have lobby groups that generously give to the major political parties, and boards filled with high profile people with political connections. This matters as it is clear that the NDIS is easily exploited for profit, even within the rules of funding. With this the bill amendments need to safeguard against corporate exploitation.
A big part of the NDIS changes are about delivering independent assessments to determine funding. The way the amendments in the bill are worded (on page 105) essentially allows anybody to deliver assessments. These assessments are not trivial they will have important health and social consequences. The bill says nothing to ensure that those delivering asssessments will have necessary qualifications or experience, and no conflict of interest.
To highlight why this is already becoming problematic. An article in the ABC (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-03-25/david-bowen-raises-concerns-on-ndis independent-assessments/13271354), highlighted that there are at least two big corporate groups that have entities that are being employed by NDIS to deliver “independent” assessments including Advanced Personnel Management (APM), and Zenitas Healthcare. Both of these corporations also own entities that deliver therapy and support services and could be perceived to have a direct conflict of interest. The bill is permissive of potential corporate corruption and does nothing to guard against commercial bias or self-interest. It will actively work against any objectivity if assessments also scrutinise the effectiveness of companies delivering services. There is also no mention in the bill that those employed by NDIS to deliver assessments need to have necessary qualifications or experience. This is particularly important when dealing with people with intellectual disabilities, and disadvantage, and especially with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. It is important that assessments are done skilfully by people that are experienced in the difficulties and nuances of collecting information from these groups. If assessments are written into legislation there needs to be clarity in the legislation so that it is done well and not at the lowest possible cost.
NDIS assessments should be run within the NDIS by qualified staff.
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 2918
There seems to be no good reason why the NDIS cannot employ people itself to deliver assessments, especially if objectivity is required. I would argue that the legislation should be written to remove contractors and non-employees to be allowed to deliver assessments. The NDIS should be capable of this. There is a previous successful government run model that existed in WA called the Disability Service Commission (DSC) that was cost-effective, and accountable and assessed the support needs of people with disability. This is model disappeared with the implementation of NDIS, it used a qualified multidisciplinary team of allied health clinicians to assess and determine funding needs for disabled people. It also meant that allied health staff spoke about the needs of their client with similarly qualified allied health staff who knew exactly what they were talking about. Some families especially many of those with children with Down Syndrome have remarked that they were worse off when NDIS replaced the DSC (despite the NDIS being higher cost per child). The DSC is the model that NDIS needs to try to replicate and re-instate not an independent contractor model that is currently being proposed.
Disabled people are ask to justify why they need funding and, so I ask, where is the scrutiny on providers to show their cost effectiveness? Current NDIS system exploitation is permitted to continue to thrive under the current Bill. Companies that provide therapy services can charge maximal NDIS rates to deliver therapy using newly graduated therapists without providing any further training. It is well known that for therapists to develop expertise in their field it takes years of further post-graduate training and supervision. To ensure accountability and “value for money” the effectiveness of service providers also needs to be scrutinised which is best done when assessments are done by a team of qualified clinicians that are invested in people receiving the best care. The Bill should push for NDIS assessments to operate in house within government to allow the system to move to better transparency and accountability. This is a good first step to safe-guard the future of the system.