Submission 2920 — Name Withheld — NDIS Future Generations Bill

Submission to Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee Inquiry

National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations)

Bill 2026

To the Committee,

I write as a parent of a child with disability and as a working parent whose ability to remain in

employment depends on having an NDIS that is responsive, individualised, and grounded in real-world

evidence. I am deeply concerned that the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing

the NDIS for Future Generations)  Bill 2026  will shift the NDIS further away from  its core purpose of

supporting people with permanent and significant disability to participate in family, community, and

economic life, and seems counter to the recommendations of the Disability Royal Commission that

found people with disability in Australia have been systematically devalued.

My central concern is that these changes will reduce the supports families rely on to maintain work, care

safely, and keep children and adults with disability connected to education, community, and daily life.

When supports are cut or delayed, it is families who absorb that loss through reduced work hours, career

stagnation, financial stress, and burnout. For families like mine, this is not an abstract policy issue. It goes

directly to whether we can continue employment and remain financially stable while caring for our child.

On a very personal level, the continued changes and what feels like attacks on the supports our son

relies on to live an ordinary life create significant levels of anxiety for us as parents. We have lived a

number of years in a volatile system that has been characterised by inconsistency and constant

change. To now be presented with a Bill that paints participants as the demons in the NDIS for simply

seeking supports that are reasonable and necessary is insulting. Passage of this Bill as it stands will push

many families beyond their ability to care, and we will see more examples like the Clune family, the Lutz

Manrique family, or the events in Coonabarabran a year ago.

Assessment Process

Public information about the reform program says access to the NDIS will move to a standardised

assessment of functional capacity under new framework planning. The Department says a Technical

Advisory Group will advise on thresholds and assessments, and that members will be selected by the

Minister. The same reform package also aims to reduce expenditure growth and participant numbers.

As a  parent,    I am concerned  that  assessments described as  “objective”,  “standardised”  or

“independent” will in practice be embedded within a system that has a direct financial interest in

reducing access and funding. Even where not formally labelled “independent assessments”, these

mechanisms risk reproducing the very problems families have long feared: snapshot assessments, loss of

context, and reduction of a whole life to a narrow functional score. This is especially concerning where

the policy objective is explicitly tied to slowing growth, reducing participant numbers, and resetting

support budgets.

I urge the Committee to recommend that no assessment model be used to determine access or budget

outcomes unless it is fully transparent, independently governed, subject to external scrutiny, and legally

required to incorporate treating professional evidence and lived experience.

Reviews

The Bill tightens criteria for unscheduled plan reassessments and will limit participant-requested plan

reassessments to a level that is unreasonable.

For families, this matters enormously. When a plan is wrong, underfunded, or disconnected from reality,

a delayed or narrowed avenue for correction is not a minor administrative issue. It can mean missed

therapy, unsafe care arrangements, interrupted schooling, inability to maintain work, and preventable

deterioration in family wellbeing. While NDIA communications have said people will still be able to seek

review if something is not right, the proposed tightening of reassessment pathways will still make it harder

in practice to correct bad decisions quickly.

The Committee should recommend that participant rights to seek timely review, reassessment and merits

review be preserved and strengthened, not narrowed.

Expert Reports and Recommendations

The move toward standardised functional capacity and support needs assessments creates a serious

risk that assessments obtained by participants from treating clinicians, allied health professionals and

other experts will be given less weight than agency-favoured tools. Families often spend significant time

and money obtaining reports that explain not only diagnosis, but the real-world effect of disability

across home, school, care, transport, behaviour, community participation, and family functioning. Public

commentary on the Bill has already warned that standardised models may reduce the weight given to

treating professionals and allied health evidence.

This would be a profound mistake. The best evidence is not just what a person can do in a guided

conversation or controlled assessment setting. It is what their disability means in real life, over time, in the

environments where they actually live. The law should require the NDIA to consider participant-sourced

expert evidence and contextual lived experience as primary evidence, not optional material that can

be overridden by an internal tool or generic benchmark.

Robodebt Version 2

The Bill would permit automated administrative decision-making, and automated decision-making within

the NDIS. NDIA communications have said plans will continue to be approved by trained staff and not

automated systems.

That combination  is  still concerning. Even   if  final sign-off remains human, automation can shape

outcomes long before that point by constraining options, flagging risk, standardising budgets, or

narrowing what decision-makers treat as acceptable. Families need transparency about exactly what

will be automated, what data will be used, what safeguards will exist, and how people can challenge

machine-assisted outcomes. The NDIS should not drift into a form of “robo-planning” by stealth.

The Committee should recommend an explicit prohibition on automated systems making or materially

determining access, planning, reassessment, or funding decisions without full human review, explanation,

and appeal rights.

Back to the Past

The Minister has indicated that from 1 October 2026 budgets for social, civic and community

participation supports will be reset, with allocations reduced by 50 per cent for those supports and by

10 per cent for capacity building daily activity allocations, and that spending levels are intended to

be brought back broadly in line with 2023 levels. This does not reflect the reality of cost of living in

Australia, choosing to deliberately ignore the significant effects of inflation as they apply to people

with disability and pretend that such reductions will not impact the quality of support delivered nor the

quality of life of the very people the NDIS is designed to support.

The Committee should recommend that any plan settings, indexation or “reset” mechanisms be tested

against contemporary  cost-of-living  realities and  disability-specific cost  pressures, not against

politically convenient historical baselines.

Participant supports should be the last cost cutting option

The Government says the Bill is about sustainability, integrity, and reducing rapid cost increases.

As a parent, I object to a reform narrative that begins by reducing participant supports while families

continue to see administrative churn, duplicated systems, shifting rules, plan management redesign, and

significant executive remuneration at the agency level. I am not suggesting senior public servants should

not be paid. I am saying families should not bear the brunt of “sustainability” measures while

administrative inefficiency and internal cost structures receive less scrutiny than participant budgets.

The Committee should recommend that government prioritise administrative simplification and NDIA

operational efficiency, and investigate other savings (for example almost $1B paid to plan managers

to simply pay invoices) before reducing the supports that keep families afloat.

Unchecked Ministerial powers

The Bill would introduce a power for the Minister to reduce funding for specified groups of supports.

This is an extraordinary shift away from individualised planning. It creates a real risk that broad fiscal or

political decisions will override the evidence of treating professionals, participants and families. Once

the law allows funding reductions at the level of support categories or participant groups, even

excellent evidence can become secondary to budget settings.

The Committee should recommend removal or strict narrowing of ministerial powers that permit broad

reductions  in  funding  categories  without  independent  oversight,  parliamentary  scrutiny and

enforceable participant safeguards.

Recommendations

I respectfully ask the Committee to recommend that the Bill be amended so that:

• Standardised functional capacity and support needs assessments cannot override treating professional evidence, participant-sourced reports, or lived experience evidence.

• Automated decision-making is prohibited from determining, or materially constraining, access, planning, reassessment, or funding outcomes without full human accountability and review rights.

• Participant rights to request reassessment, correction and merits review are preserved and strengthened.

• Ministerial powers to reduce funding for support categories or participant groups are removed or tightly constrained.

• Any budget “reset” must account for current inflation and the real costs families face in 2026, rather than reverting to nominal 2023 settings.

• Cost containment efforts focus first on administrative inefficiency and NDIA operational waste, not on reducing disability supports that sustain family life and employment.

Closing

The NDIS was meant to make ordinary life possible for people with disability and their families. For many

of us, that includes the ability to work, care, parent, and keep our households functioning. Reforms that

reduce flexibility, ignore expert evidence, narrow review pathways, and prioritise standardisation over

lived reality will not secure the NDIS for future generations. They will simply shift cost and hardship back

onto families.

I ask the Committee to protect the core principles of the NDIS: individualisation, evidence-based

planning, participant choice and control, and meaningful rights of review.