Submission 3126 — Name Withheld — NDIS Future Generations Bill

30-june-2026

Committee Secretary

Senate Standing Committees on Community Affairs

PO Box 6100

Parliament House

Canberra ACT 2600

By email: community.affairs.sen@aph.gov.au

Re: Submission to the Inquiry into the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment

(Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

Dear Committee Secretary,

I am writing to make a submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee’s inquiry into the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 (“the Bill”). I make this submission as a support person and advocate for an NDIS participant, and I ask the Committee to consider the matters below as evidence of the real-world consequences of provisions currently contained in the Bill.

I do not oppose the principle of a sustainable NDIS. I do oppose specific provisions in this Bill that, in my direct experience, will entrench the very harms — unconsulted funding reductions, weakened reassessment rights, and diminished review pathways — that the scheme was established to prevent.

1. A case in point: an unconsulted 50%+ funding cut under the current framework

I am currently supporting the NDIS participant through an internal review of his 2026 NDIS plan renewal. That renewal was issued without consultation and resulted in a funding reduction of more than 50% from his prior plan, despite no improvement in his underlying functional capacity. Mr is a polio survivor under the ongoing care of Dr , Rehabilitation Physician and Pain Specialist, and the treating team at Polio Services Victoria’s Gait and Balance Clinic at St Vincent’s Hospital. A formal internal review has been lodged, referencing the National Disability Insurance Scheme Act 2013 and the NDIS Supports Transitional Rules 2024, supported by clinical evidence from his treating team. This experience occurred under the existing legislative framework. The Bill, if passed in its current form, would make this kind of outcome easier to produce and harder to challenge. I raise Mr ’s circumstances not as an isolated grievance but as a concrete illustration of how the specific provisions below operate in practice on a real participant’s life.

2. Schedule 1, Part 2 — tightened criteria for unscheduled plan reassessments

The Bill restricts unscheduled plan reassessments to circumstances involving a “significant and ongoing” change in functional capacity or an “unanticipated, significant and ongoing” change in

living, education, work or informal support arrangements. For participants like Mr , whose conditions — including post-polio syndrome — are characterised by gradual, cumulative or fluctuating deterioration rather than sudden, discrete events, this threshold is poorly suited to lived reality. A participant whose mobility and pain levels worsen incrementally over a plan period may struggle to demonstrate a single, ongoing, threshold-clearing change, even where the cumulative impact on their daily functioning is severe. I ask the Committee to recommend that the Bill be amended to ensure cumulative or progressive deterioration is explicitly recognised as a valid basis for an unscheduled reassessment request, not only sudden-onset change.

3. Schedule 1, Part 3 — supports must arise “directly” from an eligible impairment

The Bill changes the existing test from supports “arising from” an impairment to supports arising “directly” from an impairment for which the participant met access criteria, with no accompanying definition or guidance as to what “directly” means in practice. Many participants, including those with complex or post-viral conditions, experience secondary and compounding impacts — chronic pain, fatigue, mental health impacts of prolonged disability — that flow from but are not always neatly separable from their primary eligible impairment. Without clear guidance, this provision risks funding being stripped from supports that are genuinely necessary, simply because the causal chain to the original eligible impairment is not considered sufficiently “direct” by a delegate or an automated assessment tool. I ask the Committee to recommend that the Bill require published, binding guidance on the meaning of “directly” before this provision commences, and that it explicitly recognise compounding and secondary impacts of an eligible impairment as supports that may be funded.

4. Schedule 1, Part 4 — ministerial power to reduce funding for whole categories of supports

The Bill grants the Minister power to make a determination reducing funding for entire categories of support — the mechanism behind the announced 50% reduction to social, civic and community participation budgets and 10% reduction to capacity building daily activity budgets from 1 October 2026 — without individual assessment of any participant’s circumstances and without a parliamentary vote. Mr ’s experience shows what this looks like when it reaches an individual: a substantial cut applied with no consultation and no demonstrated link to his actual support needs. A power that can reduce funding across an entire category in one instrument, applied automatically on plan renewal, removes the individualised assessment that is supposed to be the foundation of the Scheme. I ask the Committee to recommend that any ministerial determination power of this kind be subject to disallowance, sunset, and a mandatory individual exemption pathway for participants who can demonstrate the reduction would compromise their health, safety or functional capacity.

5. Consultation and procedural fairness Mr ’s plan renewal was issued without any consultation, despite a significant adverse change to his funding. I ask the Committee to recommend that the Bill include an enforceable requirement that participants be consulted, and given a genuine opportunity to provide updated clinical evidence, before any plan renewal that reduces their funding takes effect.

6. Summary of recommendations

1. Amend Schedule 1, Part 2 to recognise cumulative or progressive deterioration, not only sudden change, as grounds for an unscheduled plan reassessment.

2. Require published, binding guidance on the meaning of “directly” in Schedule 1, Part 3 before commencement, and explicit recognition of compounding and secondary impacts.

3. Subject the ministerial funding-reduction power in Schedule 1, Part 4 to parliamentary disallowance, a sunset clause, and a mandatory individual exemption pathway.

4. Insert an enforceable consultation requirement before any plan renewal that reduces a participant’s funding takes effect.

5. That the Bill not proceed in its current form until these safeguards are incorporated. I thank the Committee for its consideration of this submission and would welcome the opportunity to provide further evidence, including Mr ’s clinical documentation, if that would assist the inquiry.

Yours sincerely,