Submission to the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

Attention: Committee Secretary, Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs Submitted by email: community.affairs.sen@aph.gov.au Date: Wednesday 8th July 2026

I welcome the opportunity to make a submission to the Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs about the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026.

I am an NDIS provider, and carer of an NDIS participant, as well as currently supporting another family member through an access request.

I want to outline the harm this Amendment Bill will cause if it passes Parliament. This Bill is too far-reaching to pass as it stands. I believe the Bill requires further scrutiny and amendment before it proceeds.

Parliamentary Scrutiny and Transparency

The initial consultation period for the Amendment Bill was two weeks, which is insufficient to allow for appropriate consultation, considering accessibility and communication needs. The Australian Government Guide to Policy Impact Analysis says consultation should occur for a minimum of 30 days where possible.

A two-week consultation period disadvantages the most vulnerable members of the disability community, including people with intellectual and psychosocial disability, First Nations people with disability, and those from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, who need more time to access information in accessible formats, seek advice from advocates and family, and prepare a considered response. The short timeline impacts me by placing extra pressure and strain on me at an already busy

• time of year, as a business owner and a carer of a PWD. Only with the extension
• have I been able to consider making this submission.

Recommendation: Ensure all consultation periods are the best practice minimum of

30 days, preferably longer to allow time for the most vulnerable people to access information and respond.

Key decisions left to ministerial instruments, not law

The issue: The Bill allows Ministers to change who gets NDIS support (Schedule 1 Parts 8 and 9) and how much funding people receive (Schedule 1 Part 4; Schedule 3) by signing an instrument, without going back to Parliament. The rules that will determine critical eligibility thresholds (Schedule 1 Parts 1, 8 and 9) have not yet been written.

How this affects participants: The decisions that shape the lives of participants, whether they qualify for the NDIS and what supports they can access, could be changed without parliamentary debate or public scrutiny. Participants may not know supports or eligibility rules have changed until their plan is affected.

I have seen and experienced first-hand the distress that fast, unexpected and poorly considered decisions have on NDIS participants and carers, who do not have the capacity to respond, whether that be because they are mentally burnt-out, or they do not understand the impacts until it is too late.

Recommendation: Require that all decisions affecting NDIS eligibility and funding levels be made through primary legislation subject to full parliamentary scrutiny, with mandatory advance notice to affected participants before any changes take effect, and consideration given to what impacts the participant will experience and who will support them with that.

Existing participants face narrower criteria and fewer rights

to challenge decisions

The issue: The Bill changes the rules for existing NDIS participants and makes it

harder to challenge some decisions about supports and funding. It also restricts

when you can request a reassessment, removes review rights for automatic plan

renewals, and makes funding reductions unreviewable (Schedule 1 Parts 1 and 8).

Combined with restrictions on reassessment requests (Part 2), automatic plan

renewals without review rights (Part 5), and unreviewable funding reductions (Part

4), existing participants face narrower criteria with significantly fewer avenues to

challenge decisions about their supports.

How this affects participants: This does not protect participants already on the

NDIS, who could be reassessed under stricter rules. If someone’s funding is reduced

or their plan renewed automatically, they may have limited or no ability to challenge

that decision. This could make it harder for people to get extra support when their

circumstances or disability change.

Participants with fluctuating, episodic or complex support needs, and those without

family or advocates to help them track regulatory changes, are least able to prepare

for or contest eligibility rules that can change without warning. These are consistently

the people most likely to be pushed out of the Scheme or left without adequate

supports.

Recommendation: Require a “no harm” safeguard ensuring no current participant loses access to supports unless equivalent supports are in place, with independent review rights before any exit decision and access to unscheduled reassessments preserved.

Unreviewable Ministerial Power to Cut Funding Across All Support Categories

The Minister can reduce funding for any support or group of supports by a specified percentage through an instrument that cannot be challenged (Schedule 1 Part 4).

This applies across all budget categories. Unspent funds will no longer carry over at plan renewal (Schedule 1 Part 5).

How This Affects Participants:

A participant’s community participation, capacity building or assistive technology funding could be cut without warning and without any right to appeal. Participants who save unspent funds across plan periods for high-cost items will lose that ability entirely.

Capacity building funding is where most participants access dietitians and other allied health professionals who support essential daily living needs such as safe eating, swallowing and nutrition. An unreviewable power to cut this funding by ministerial instrument puts participants with dysphagia, tube feeding needs or complex dietary needs at direct and immediate risk, with no avenue to appeal a decision that could affect their basic health and safety.

Recommendation:

Require that unspent funds carry over at plan renewal for participants saving for high-cost items and require independent review rights before any funding reduction takes effect.

How this affects participants

People with disability will need to prove their impairment cannot be treated before they access the NDIS. Once in the scheme, their supports will only be assessed against a single eligible impairment rather than their whole experience. A person’s individual circumstances will not be considered, including ability to pay for treatment, where they live or whether treatment is actually available to them.

This requirement disadvantages participants who cannot afford private treatment, live in rural or remote communities with no local specialists, or face long public waitlists, effectively making access to the NDIS conditional on wealth and postcode rather than need.

I have recently experienced a family member’s access request be denied, despite all documentation including specialist reports, GP letter and Functional Capacity Assessment stating that their impairment is permanent and there are no available treatment options. In the denial, there was no specification given for what treatment options the NDIS delegate felt were available, and why they felt the professional opinions of the specialist, GP and Occupational Therapist were not valid.

Recommendation:

Do not proceed with a requirement to exhaust “appropriate” treatment“ options – there are no safeguarding measures around participant harm due to side effects or complications, a participant’s financial ability to pay, or their geographic capacity to access treatments. Treatment options should be left up to treating specialists alone, based on their holistic view of the person. It should never be within the rights of anyone besides a medical specialist, or appropriately qualified health practitioner to make such determinations.

Unvalidated functional capacity assessment tool risks misidentifying need

The issue: The Bill shifts assessment from whole-of-person consideration to a single eligible impairment (Schedule 1 Part 3). Read together with the eligibility thresholds

Parts 8 and 9

The named assessment tool is the Instrument for Classification and Assessment of Support Needs (I-CAN). I-CAN requires validation to ensure it will sufficiently identify the needs of all people with disability, including those whose needs may be fluctuating or episodic and may not be captured through a point-in-time assessment, and to ensure it is culturally appropriate for First Peoples with disability.

How this affects participants:

• If the assessment tool does not accurately capture the full extent of a person’s disability, including needs that fluctuate or vary over time,
• A participant may be found ineligible or have their supports undercounted, with no guarantee the result reflects their actual experience.

An unvalidated, point-in-time tool risks systematically under-identifying the needs of participants whose disability is not visible in a single assessment, including people with psychosocial disability, autism and First Nations participants, who are already at greater risk of being found ineligible or under-funded.

Recommendation: Do not proceed with I-CAN as the functional capacity assessment tool unless it has been demonstrably validated to identify the needs of all people with disability, including those with episodic or fluctuating disability, and demonstrated to be culturally appropriate for First Peoples with disability.

Supports cut before replacement system is ready

The issue: From 1 October 2026, the government has announced funding for social, civic and community participation supports will be cut by 50 per cent and capacity building daily activities by 10 per cent for all participants, reductions that will be implemented through the ministerial instrument power in Schedule 1 Part 4. The Foundational Supports system intended to fill that gap has no confirmed implementation date and is not yet operational.

How this affects participants:

Supports that help participants connect with their community, build skills and maintain independence may be cut before anything exists to replace them, leaving carers and families with greater responsibilities and no additional support. These supports are often what help people stay visible, connected and safe.

The same 1 October 2026 timeline applies to the 10 per cent cut to capacity building daily activities, the budget that funds dietitians and other allied health professionals. Cutting this funding before Foundational Supports exist leaves the most medically vulnerable participants, including those who rely on dietetic support for safe eating and swallowing, with nowhere else to turn. The State Governments de-funded disability health supports at the outset of NDIS so no services exist to fill this gap anymore.

Recommendation:

Require that no reductions to community participation or capacity building supports take effect until Foundational Supports and/or State Government funded health services are fully operational, adequately funded and demonstrably able to meet the needs of those who will lose NDIS supports.

How This Affects Participants

Dietitians support one of the most fundamental activities of daily living: eating and drinking safely. For participants with dysphagia, tube feeding needs, complex feeding issues such as ARFID, or specialised diets such as those required by people with Inborn Errors of Metabolism or epilepsy, reduced access to dietetic support carries a real risk of malnutrition, dehydration, choking and hospitalisation. These risks fall hardest on participants who are already the most vulnerable and least able to self-advocate, including children, older participants and people with severe or complex disability, including those with an alternate decision maker such as a Public Guardian.

How this affects providers:

Dietitians Australia reports that dietitians are already reducing disability caseloads, limiting home visits and travel, and withdrawing services in rural and remote areas because current pricing does not cover the cost of delivering safe and quality care. Further funding caps and price cuts risk pushing more providers out of the NDIS market altogether, leaving participants, particularly those outside metropolitan areas, with even fewer options and longer waits for essential nutrition care.

As a dietitian who worked in disability services prior to the NDIS, it saddens me to see the regression of the NDIS back to the bare minimum services we had a decade ago. These services were chronically underfunded and had extensive waitlists. I was personally responsible for providing services to a large geographical area of Eastern NSW, with several hours travel between sites, and was only funded to provide this service in a 1-day/week capacity. My small business now currently supports several hundred participants with disability, across the same geographical area. These services didn’t exist before, PWD just went without.

The previous cuts from 2025 have already cost my small business over $100,000, and as we head into another year with further cuts, the future is grim. I have 13 employees, all women, whose jobs are now at risk, many of whom are also carers of family members with disability. My small business is able to provide them flexibility to

work around their caring needs, while providing high-quality care to PWD across

regional and rural areas.

Without dietitians, the NDIS is opened up to huge risk around management of High

Intensity Supports, part of the NDIS Commissions Practice Standards. Dietitians are

responsible for or play key roles in the management of participants requiring:

• 1. Complex bowel care – dietitians are highly skilled in the dietary management

  of complex bowel issues, and work in collaboration with doctors and other

  AHPs to provide multidisciplinary support. Dietary management reduces the

  cost of all other supports for complex bowel care.

• 2. Enteral feeding – dietitians are the only professional able to prescribe, modify

  and monitor an enteral feeding regimen, and are responsible for

  documentation of all Enteral Feeding Plans.

• 3. Severe dysphagia management – whilst Speech Pathologists are responsible

     for the diagnosis and treatment of dysphagia, dietitians are responsible for

     translating the Speech Pathologists recommendations into nutritionally

  adequate dietary plans, as part of the Mealtime Management Plan process.

• 4. Urinary catheter management – dietitians are responsible for assessing a

     persons daily fluid requirements which are often very different for PWD, and

     supporting people to manage their intake to help maintain their catheter,

     alongside a multidisciplinary team.

• 5. Complex wound management – nutrition is recognised as one of the biggest

     factors affecting wound healing time, and dietitians play a key role in not just

  managing wounds once they develop, but can also aid wound prevention

  through weight management (preventing pressure areas), and through

  optimising nutrition in people at high risk of wounds.

Recommendation: Exempt therapeutic supports that manage high risk services, including dietetic and nutrition supports, from blanket percentage-based funding reductions and intensity caps, and require an independent, evidence-based pricing review, developed in consultation with Dietitians Australia and the allied health 9

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sector, before any further changes to dietitian pricing or capacity building budgets take effect.