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

Date: 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.

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

I am currently supporting the NDIS participant redacted 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 redacted is a polio survivor under the ongoing care of Dr redacted, 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 redacteds 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.

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.

• Amend Schedule 1, Part 2 to recognise cumulative or progressive deterioration, not only sudden change, as grounds for an unscheduled plan reassessment.
• Require published, binding guidance on the meaning of “directly” in Schedule 1, Part 3 before commencement, and explicit recognition of compounding and secondary impacts.
• Subject the ministerial funding-reduction power in Schedule 1, Part 4 to parliamentary disallowance, a sunset clause, and a mandatory individual exemption pathway.
• Insert an enforceable consultation requirement before any plan renewal that reduces a participant’s funding takes effect.
• That the Bill not proceed in its current form until these safeguards are incorporated.