Submission 3139 — Name Withheld — NDIS Future Generations Bill | External submission

Submission to the NDIS Amendment Bill 2026 Inquiry

I am writing as a concerned Australian citizen and as a parent of a child with disability. I support a sustainable NDIS. I support action against fraud, overcharging, unsafe providers and poor-quality services. I do not support reforms that make disabled people, children and families pay the price for failures in provider regulation, market design and government oversight.

The National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future

Generations) Bill 2026 is being presented as a way to protect the future of the NDIS. However, many of the proposed changes risk doing the opposite. They risk reducing support, increasing family stress, pushing people into crisis, and undermining the very purpose of the NDIS: to help people with disability live ordinary, included and digniﬁed lives.

My deepest concern is that the Bill appears to treat participant supports as the main place to ﬁnd savings, rather than focusing ﬁrst and hardest on fraudulent and exploitative providers. Fraud, rorting, overcharging and conﬂicts of interest should be targeted directly. Disabled people and their families should not have their therapy, capacity building, community access or plan ﬂexibility reduced because some providers have abused the system.

I ask the Government to substantially amend the Bill so that the reforms protect participants, strengthen integrity, and preserve the NDIS as a rights-based support system.

Reducing capacity building funding will harm children and families The proposed reduction to capacity building daily activity funding is especially concerning. Capacity building is not an optional extra. For many children and young people, it is the support that helps them learn communication, emotional regulation, mobility, daily living skills, social participation and independence.

As a parent, I know that therapy and capacity building are not just “sessions”. They are the foundation for a child’s future. They help children participate at school, build relationships, reduce distress, develop independence and avoid more intensive support later. Cutting capacity building funding may look like a short-term saving, but it risks creating much larger long-term costs.

For children, early intervention and capacity building can be life changing. If a child loses access to speech therapy, occupational therapy, psychology, behaviour support or allied health input, the effect is not limited to a spreadsheet. It can affect whether that child can communicate their needs, manage transitions, attend school safely, make friends, or participate in family and community life.

A 10% cut may sound small to policymakers, but for families already stretching plans across long waitlists, school transitions, reports, travel, cancellations and therapy blocks, it can mean the loss of critical support. For a child with disability, losing even a small amount of therapy at the wrong time can mean regression, family crisis, school exclusion, or increased reliance on parents and carers.

The Government should not reduce capacity building funding for children and young people. At minimum, children, young people, people with complex communication needs, people in regional and remote communities, and participants who rely on capacity building to maintain function should be protected from blanket reductions.

Cutting social and community participation will increase isolation Social and community participation is often described as if it is separate from “real” disability support. It is not. For many people with disability, support to access the community is the difference between isolation and inclusion.

Community participation helps people build friendships, practise skills, stay connected, volunteer, study, work, participate in sport and culture, and maintain mental health. For children and young people, it can be the bridge between therapy goals and real life. For adults, it can prevent isolation, decline and carer burnout.

Reducing these supports will not simply encourage people to use cheaper group activities. Some people cannot safely or meaningfully participate in group settings without individualised support. This is especially true for people with autism, psychosocial disability, intellectual disability, complex communication needs, sensory needs, behaviour support needs or trauma histories.

The NDIS should promote genuine inclusion, not force people into unsuitable group options because individualised support has been cut. Inclusion is not achieved by reducing support and hoping communities will ﬁll the gap.

Foundational supports and mainstream services must be in place before NDIS supports are reduced

The Bill relies heavily on the idea that mainstream services, community supports and foundational supports will absorb some needs currently met through the NDIS. That may be a valid long-term reform direction, but it is not safe to reduce individual NDIS supports before those alternatives exist, are funded, are accessible, and are proven to work.

Families already know that schools, health systems, mental health services and community programs are under pressure. Many children cannot access timely public allied health. Many schools are not equipped to meet complex disability needs. Many community activities are not genuinely inclusive. In regional and remote areas, options are even more limited.

The Government should not remove or reduce NDIS supports on the promise that another system might help later. No participant should lose support until an equivalent, accessible, funded and accountable alternative is actually available.

Restricting unscheduled reassessments may leave people trapped when life changes

The proposed tightening of unscheduled reassessments is another serious concern. Disability support needs do not always change neatly on government timelines. Families experience carer illness, separation, housing changes, school refusal, puberty, mental health crises, behaviour escalation, injury, bereavement, family violence, provider collapse and sudden changes in informal support.

For children with disability, needs can change quickly. A plan that worked six months ago may become completely inadequate after a school transition, a new diagnosis, a developmental change, or a change in family circumstances.

Restricting reassessments too tightly may prevent people from getting help until a crisis becomes severe. Extending decision timeframes also risks leaving families without support when they most need it. The system should prevent inappropriate provider driven reassessment requests, but it should not make it harder for participants and families to respond to genuine changes in need.

The solution is better evidence, triage and safeguards, not rigid barriers.

Families and carers will carry the cost of reduced supports When NDIS supports are reduced, the need does not disappear. It shifts to families, carers, schools, hospitals, crisis services and the community.

Parents already provide enormous unpaid care. Many reduce work hours, leave employment, use savings, burn through leave, or live under constant stress to support their children. Cuts to NDIS supports will increase unpaid caring responsibilities, especially for mothers and primary carers.

This has real consequences: reduced workforce participation, ﬁnancial pressure, mental health strain, family breakdown, and increased risk of carer burnout. A reform that saves money by silently transferring the burden to families is not fair, sustainable or humane.

Changes to eligibility and functional capacity assessments must not exclude people unfairly

Moving from diagnosis-based access to functional capacity assessment may sound reasonable, but it carries signiﬁcant risk if implemented poorly. Disability is complex. Functional capacity can vary across environments, over time, and depending on available supports. Many children mask at school and collapse at home. Some people

appear capable in one setting but cannot function safely without extensive support in another.

Functional capacity assessments must be administered by Occupational Therapists or equivalently qualiﬁed professionals who understand disability, development, daily living skills, sensory needs, communication, behaviour, fatigue, regulation, family context and the real-world impact of disability. These assessments should not be reduced to a checklist or a short administrative process. They must be completed by people with the professional training to understand how disability affects a person’s life across home, school, work, community and relationships.

This is especially important for children, people with autism, intellectual disability, psychosocial disability, acquired brain injury, complex communication needs, ﬂuctuating conditions and people whose needs are not always visible. A poor assessment could wrongly suggest a person is more independent than they really are, leading to support reductions that cause harm.

Standardised assessments must not become a blunt tool used to reduce participant numbers. They must be transparent, evidence-based, culturally safe, trauma-informed, developmentally appropriate and open to review. They must consider the real-world environment a person lives in, not an artiﬁcial snapshot.

Participants must have access to reasons, evidence, human review and merits review. Automated or algorithmic decision-making should never be used to deny or reduce supports without meaningful human oversight.

Tightening “reasonable and necessary” risks creating gaps between systems Many participants have complex and overlapping needs. Disability, health, education, mental health, behaviour, communication and daily living needs cannot always be separated neatly. If the NDIS narrows what it will fund while mainstream systems remain under-resourced, participants will fall through the cracks.

This is especially risky for people with intellectual disability, autism, psychosocial disability, chronic health issues, acquired brain injury and complex communication needs. Families should not be forced to ﬁght multiple systems while each one says another system is responsible.

The Government should strengthen system boundaries only after clear service guarantees are in place. There must be no gap where a person needs support but no system accepts responsibility.

Ending plan rollovers and reducing ﬂexibility may punish people for workforce shortages and access barriers

Participants do not always underspend because they do not need support. They may underspend because providers are unavailable, therapists have long waitlists, workers cancel, families are in crisis, children are unwell, reports are delayed, or suitable services do not exist locally.

Removing unspent funds without considering these realities may punish participants for problems outside their control. For children, therapy often happens in blocks around school terms, assessments, reports and capacity. A rigid approach to rollover and utilisation will not reﬂect real life.

The NDIS should remain ﬂexible enough to respond to individual circumstances.

Provider fraud and poor practice should be the main target The Government is right to be concerned about fraud, rorting, exploitation and unsafe providers. Those issues damage participants and undermine public conﬁdence in the NDIS. But the answer is to regulate and prosecute bad actors, not reduce supports for people with disability.

The Government should prioritise:

stronger provider registration and enrolment;
real-time payment monitoring and data matching;
stronger action against overcharging, inducements and conﬂicts of interest;
better auditing of high-risk providers;
penalties for fraudulent or unsafe providers;
stronger whistleblower protections;
participant-accessible complaints pathways;
public reporting on compliance action; and
support for ethical providers who deliver high-quality, participant-centred care. At the same time, provider regulation must be proportionate. Many excellent allied health professionals are sole practitioners or small providers who work directly with participants and families. These providers should be able to become registered NDIS providers through a simpler, lower-burden registration pathway that is appropriate for sole providers, while still maintaining strong standards for safety, qualiﬁcations, insurance, complaints handling and professional accountability.

The registration process for a sole Occupational Therapist, Speech Pathologist, Physiotherapist, Psychologist or other allied health professional should not require the same level of red tape as a large organisation with multiple employees, subcontractors

and complex governance structures. If the registration process is too expensive, slow or administratively heavy, good sole practitioners may leave the NDIS market or choose not to work with NDIS participants. That would reduce choice and control for families and make it even harder to access quality therapy.

The Government should make it easier for qualiﬁed sole allied health providers to be registered, while making it harder for fraudulent, unsafe or exploitative providers to operate. A fair system would reduce unnecessary bureaucracy for trusted professionals and increase scrutiny where the actual risks are highest.

If the problem is fraud, target fraud. If the problem is overcharging, target overcharging. If the problem is provider exploitation, target providers who exploit people. Do not solve provider misconduct by cutting therapy, capacity building and community participation from disabled people.

The Bill should be amended before it proceeds I ask the Government and Parliament to amend the Bill so that it:
removes or substantially limits broad powers to reduce support budgets by category;
protects capacity building funding, especially for children and young people;
prevents blanket reductions to social and community participation supports where they are necessary for inclusion, safety, mental health or independence;
ensures no NDIS support is withdrawn until equivalent mainstream or foundational supports are actually available;
keeps reassessment pathways accessible when needs genuinely change;
protects participants from unfair automated or standardised decision-making;
preserves choice and control, including access to appropriate providers;
strengthens anti-fraud, anti-rorting and provider regulation measures;
requires transparent public reporting on the impacts of reforms; and
embeds genuine co-design with people with disability, families, carers and disability representative organisations.

The NDIS should be sustainable, but it must also be safe, fair and humane. Sustainability cannot mean reducing the life chances of disabled children. It cannot mean isolating adults from their communities. It cannot mean shifting more unpaid care onto exhausted families. It cannot mean treating disabled people as the cost problem while fraudulent providers remain the target only in principle.

Please protect the NDIS by ﬁxing the parts of the system that are failing participants: fraud, provider misconduct, poor market oversight, inconsistent planning and lack of mainstream support. Please do not protect the NDIS by cutting the supports that disabled people rely on to live, learn, communicate, participate and belong.