Submission 3125 — Your Best Life Disability and Health Services — NDIS Future Generations Bill | External submission

Your Best Life Disability and Health Services

Submission regarding the NDIS Amendment (Securing the

NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

Debbie Blumel CEO

About Your Best Life Disability and Health Services (YBLDHS)

YBLDHS provides SIL/CP, Allied Health, Mental Health and Behaviour Support services through six service outlets in the Sunshine Coast, Moreton Bay and Gympie regions. YBLDHS is a not-for-profit company that has operated for 37 years, initially as a children’s therapy service. The company is governed by a skill-based board and has been registered, with no non-conformances, since the NDIS started in this region. Our revenue sources include NDIS, Medicare, grants, private fees, and donations.

Overview

This submission distinguishes between the Bill not containing a dedicated SIL commissioning scheme and the Bill nevertheless enabling commissioning through new planning, funding, support-category and rule-making powers. This matters because the real policy impact sits in future NDIS Rules, procurement settings and administrative design that are enabled by the Bill.

The submission addresses a major unresolved tension in the Bill - that SIL commissioning may address “a market that isn’t working,” but that it could also narrow participant choice and successful market models. The risk is that reform intended to improve quality and sustainability could unintentionally reduce genuine choice unless safeguards are built into the model. The most important issue in the Bill is the failure to require clear separation between SIL, SDA/tenancy arrangements and Support Coordination.

This submission refers to the Disability Royal Commission Recommendation 7.41(a) and NDIS Review Recommendation 9.7, then contrasts those with current SIL Practice Standards that enable these functions to co-exist within the same organisation. This is the significant concern because it links participant rights, market fairness, safeguarding and provider incentives in one issue.

YBLDHS acknowledges the strategic importance of regulation, but it also warns that commissioning could entrench dominant providers (many with poor performance histories) unless conflicts and market concentration are addressed.

YBLDHS has successfully established as a regional provider that separates SIL from housing and Support Coordination, aligning itself with the DRC and NDIS Review. We recommend that SIL Commissioning acknowledge that smaller or regional providers can continue to be successful if commissioning is designed fairly including the mandatory separation of SIL, tenancy and Support Coordination services, independent referral pathways, and safeguards against closed provider blocs.

Submission

The NDIS Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 does not in itself establish a SIL commissioning scheme or contain a dedicated “SIL commissioning” part. Rather, the Bill creates enabling powers and a new planning/funding framework that the Government has indicated will support future commissioning reforms, including for Supported Independent Living (SIL). This is the main matter addressed in this submission.

The Department of Health, Disability and Ageing (DHDA) has explicitly stated that consultation on “the design of a commissioning approach for home and living supports for Supported Independent Living (SIL) participants” will occur from July to October 2026.

This is important because it suggests that SIL commissioning is intended to be developed subsequent to the Bill through rules, administrative arrangements and reform implementation, rather than being fully prescribed in the Bill itself. However, the Bill’s provisions have clearly envisaged and provided for these administrative processes.

The provisions most likely to enable a commissioning model are those that:

Create the new framework planning architecture The Bill restructures participant planning and budget arrangements, giving the NDIA greater ability to specify support categories, budgets and funding mechanisms.
Provide regulation-making powers for classes of supports The Bill expands the use of NDIS Rules to define and manage support categories and funding arrangements, which could be used to establish commissioned home and living support arrangements.
Strengthen provider oversight and market regulation The reforms are linked with mandatory registration of SIL providers and new SIL Practice Standards commencing from 1 July 2026. A commissioned market would almost certainly depend upon these regulatory mechanisms.
Enable more direct NDIA stewardship of service delivery The broader reform package is intended to address market failure, quality concerns and sustainability issues, creating a legislative basis for more active market management. Commissioning would be consistent with this policy direction.

Current Government and sector commentary suggests commissioning may involve:

A panel or list of approved SIL providers
NDIA-directed procurement or contracting arrangements
Geographic or cohort-based market management
Participants choosing from commissioned providers rather than the entire SIL market
Stronger quality and performance requirements for SIL providers At present, the Government has not yet published a final SIL commissioning model. However, Government reform documents, the NDIS Amendment Bill 2026 reform package, and associated provider regulation reforms provide strong indications of the likely approach.

It is reasonable to expect that commissioned SIL providers would meet the following basic requirements:

Demonstrate client choice and control and achievement of participant personal goals
NDIS registration
Compliance with SIL Practice Standards
Financial viability
Workforce capability
Quality and safeguarding performance
Evidence of participant outcomes
Management of Conflicts of Interest
Separation of inherently conflicting intermediary roles from SIL service provision The new SIL Practice Standards provide a framework from which many of these measures could be derived. However, the new SIL Practice Standards actually enable the provision of SIL, tenancy and

Support Coordination services to co-exist within the same organisation. The Practice Standards only require:

separate documentation for the SIL and tenancy arrangements
that participants be supported to understand the distinction between the two documents through simple language policies
that the SIL provider’s own SIL workers assist participants to access advocates when issues arise.

This is shocking as it flies in the face of the recommendations of the Disability Royal Commission (DRC) and the NDIS Review 2023.

At Recommendation7.41(a), the DRC addressed transitioning away from the same provider offering SIL and SDA, with only an interim arrangement for monitoring Conflicts of Interest.
At Recommendation 9.7, the NDIS Review recommended that the NDIS Quality and Safeguards strengthen regulation of SDA and mandate separation of SIL and SDA.

In the three years since the Review report was published, the time for “interim arrangements” has clearly passed and the SIL/SDA Conflicts of Interest are even more entrenched - particularly among the largest providers with vested commercial interests. In a further affront to SIL providers, such as YBLDHS, that are not compromised by COIs, the largest SIL providers have developed internal Support Coordination services whose role is to act in the best interests of the SIL provider that pays their wages.

Further, in an act of apparent defiance against the Disability Royal Commission’s recommendations, the largest SIL providers have borrowed money against their housing stock asset base, effectively prohibiting the Government from implementing a plan to require the separation of SIL and SDA services. These companies are regarded as “too big to fail” because if they did fail, the Government and Australia’s hospital acute care and mental health wards would be the provider of last resort.

In Minister Butler’s press club speech, the Minister said: “The deeper reform – rebuilding how the NDIS will operate into the future – will be done through genuine and respectful work with the States, and with the community. Beyond the eligibility rules I just discussed, that engagement will include:

Commissioning supported independent living, plan management and support co-ordination – rather than relying on a market that isn’t working.”

Subsequently, the Market Stewardship Disability Senior Officials Working Group was tasked to

develop a coordinated national response to NDIS market viability risks, including identifying priority gaps for future action with a report back to Disability Ministers by October 2026. This includes the proposed approach to consultation and design of commissioning of Supported Independent Living (SIL).

At the Disability Reform Ministerial Council (19 June 2026) Ministers noted the importance of a collaborative approach across governments to SIL commissioning and the ongoing work to address SDA eligibility for transitioning participants living in aging housing stock.

At the same time, Australia’s largest 25 not for profit NDIS service providers formed Ability First Australia as a lobbying bloc, around their interests in SIL Commissioning among other things. Membership of AFA is closed to other NDIS providers. Of significant concern, a number of AFA member companies were identified by the Disability Royal Commission for their significant failings. These included sexual assault, failure to address staff misconduct, restrictive practices, failure to

maintain medical records, failure to prevent resident-to-resident violence, inappropriate rules impacting participant rights, and other serious and potentially criminal offences. The DRC revealed how these failings can fester in large organisations where the point of service delivery is more perfunctory than values based.

Conclusion

As a regional SIL provider, Your Best Life Disability and Health Services has been impacted by Support Coordinators in large companies who funnel participants to their employer organisations, despite attractive and financially viable placements with YBLDHS being available. We have adhered to the DRC and Disability Review 2023 report recommendations in our organisational development.

We liaise with SDA and other accommodation providers but do not provide housing. Similarly, we liaise with independent Support Coordinators but do not provide Support Coordination. We have survived financially despite the uneven playing field caused by the internally compromised structure of the large SIL providers.

Recommendation

We recommend that the Bill move forward from the “interim arrangements” for separating SIL, tenancy and Support Coordination services, and explicitly provide for the separation of SIL, tenancy and Support Coordination services as recommended by the DRC and the NDIS Review.

This will protect the Government from being held to ransom by the largest SIL/tenancy providers demanding higher fees and threatening to transport participants to Australia’s hospitals if the Government does not meet their demands. The Government is at high risk of becoming the provider of last resort. As a former Board member of the Sunshine Coast Hospital and Health Services (2019-2026) and Chair of its Safety and Quality Committee, I am very aware of the cost shifting impacts of Long Stay Young People on hospital operational efficiency and waiting lists.

Trusted, registered, high-quality regional providers like Your Best Life Disability and Health Services are ready, willing and able to expand our regional services if the largest providers are unwilling to comply with the direction of reforms set by the DRC and the NDIS Review 2023. We are registered for High Intensity Supports, provide nurse oversight of care arrangements, and are a preferred partner for other NDIS providers in our regional network. We are very concerned about the direct access that Ability First Australia members have to ministers and government bureaucrats about SIL Commissioning and related matters. We recommend that lobbying positions be made transparent to ensure that the administrative bureaucracy is not drawn into the self-interested narrative that is promoted by the largest providers.