29 May 2026
Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs
Re: National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations)
Bill 2026
Introduction
I am writing to submit my objection to the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026. I am an NDIS participant, and I have spent considerable time advocating for others in the disability community who have no one else to speak for them. The NDIS has been a genuine lifeline for me and for people I care about, and I am deeply concerned about what this bill will mean for our lives. I wish to begin by endorsing submissions made by People with Disability Australia (PWDA),
Disabled People Against Cuts Australia (DPAC Australia), OT Society Incorporated for Invisible
Disability (OTSi), and other advocacy and legal bodies. This is a broad issue that affects the entire disabled community, and all voices deserve to be heard. I also wish to note that the two-week window provided to make submissions is wholly inadequate for a bill that affects people who, by definition, have limited capacity. This timeframe effectively places the burden of response on advocates and carers rather than on disabled people themselves, whose voices should be heard directly on legislation that targets them. My position is clear: this bill should not be passed. Any future reform to the NDIS must centre disabled people’s quality of life as its primary measure of success, not financial targets.
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Ministerial Powers Are Excessive and Unaccountable Schedule 1, Part 4, Section 34A grants the Minister the power to reduce funding for entire groups of supports by legislative instrument, bypassing parliament. The only stated constraint is that the Minister “must have regard to the safety of participants.” Section 34A(5) makes explicit that a determination has effect even if it results in a participant’s funding falling below the total cost of their reasonable and necessary supports. In plain terms: the Minister can legally cut funding below what participants actually need, with no parliamentary approval and no requirement to consult disabled people. Schedule 3, Part 1, Section 45C further allows the Minister to set maximum amounts payable for any support or class of supports by legislative instrument. Section 59C then allows the Minister to expand the range of decisions that can be made by automated computer systems, again without parliamentary oversight. Together, these provisions concentrate enormous, largely unchecked power over the lives of disabled people in a single ministerial office. “Nothing about us without us” must mean genuine involvement from the very beginning — not a two-week consultation window after a bill has already been drafted. The Minister for Disability should be a disabled person, consistent with the principle that lived experience is a prerequisite for adequately representing a community.
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This Bill Targets Autistic People and Those with Invisible Disabilities The rhetoric framing this bill as “returning the NDIS to its original purpose” is misleading. The NDIS was designed to meet Australia’s obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and to provide choice and control over reasonable and necessary supports to all people with disability. There is no version of that original purpose that excludes autistic people or people with psychosocial disabilities. This framing is a thinly veiled attack on those groups, and it has caused measurable harm — sustained public and media rhetoric has created negative stereotypes and reinforced ableism, placing an already marginalised community in further danger. The legislative mechanism for this exclusion is Schedule 1, Part 8, which “tightens the meaning of permanence” by requiring that a person has undergone all “appropriate treatment” before their impairment can be considered permanent. New Section 25A defines appropriate treatment as treatment that is evidence-based and regularly performed in Australia — and critically, subsection 25A(2) states that treatment qualifies as appropriate even if the person’s individual circumstances
prevent them from accessing it (with a note that financial and geographical circumstances are included). For autistic people and those with psychosocial disabilities, this provision risks reclassifying conditions that are currently recognised as permanent as potentially reversible, stripping eligibility from people whose disabilities are real but under-researched or treatment resistant. This concern is compounded by new subsection 34(1E), which requires the CEO to prioritise peer reviewed published research when assessing whether supports are effective and beneficial. Subsection 34(1F) explicitly permits the CEO to deny a support even when there is personal evidence of benefit, if published research is limited. Many supports used by autistic people and those with invisible disabilities sit in exactly this gap — individually effective, but under-studied. This provision provides legal cover for their removal.
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Choice and Control Is Being Dismantled Choice and control is not a luxury — it is a safety mechanism. The ability to select one’s own provider is particularly critical for LGBTQIA+ participants and First Nations participants, for whom being placed with a religiously or ideologically misaligned organisation can create genuine risk of harm. The Disability Royal Commission found that provider-controlled funding, rather than individual-controlled funding, increases the risk of abuse and mistreatment. New subsection 34(1)(g) (Schedule 1, Part 6) introduces a requirement that supports not be funded if they would be “more appropriately provided or funded by another scheme or government service system.” This is the legislative mechanism for redirecting participants to state-based providers and services, removing the individual’s right to choose what is appropriate for their own life and identity. The “value for money” provisions (subsections 1A–1D) further pressure planners toward the lowest cost option rather than the most suitable one.
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State-Based Alternatives Are Not a Safe Landing Schedule 1, Part 9, Section 25B creates a new eligibility criterion allowing the Minister to declare, by NDIS rules, that a state or territory service constitutes an “alternative support” for a given impairment, rendering participants with that impairment ineligible for the NDIS. The bill contains no standards for what those state services must provide. Participants being redirected off the NDIS are not being given a soft landing — they are being removed from an individual, rights-based system and placed into a patchwork of state services that are inconsistent, under-resourced, and not designed to meet the same standard of care. For people without informal support networks, in regional and remote communities, or who have communication barriers, this is especially dangerous. Schedule 1, Part 7, Section 40A compounds this risk by allowing the CEO to suspend and ultimately revoke a participant’s status if they are deemed “not contactable,” with no requirement to consider why a person may be unreachable — including hospitalisation, mental health crisis, homelessness, or disability-related communication barriers. Isolated participants, those most in need of protection, face the highest risk of falling off the scheme entirely through this provision.
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The Real Cost of These Cuts Cuts to social and community participation supports will not reduce costs — they will shift them. Isolation, chronic stress, and depression are serious health risks with serious downstream costs to health, housing, and emergency services. The government cannot disclaim responsibility for these outcomes simply because the harm is indirect or chronic rather than acute. A human life has inherent value that is not determined by productivity or economic output. Legislation that places a cost threshold on the support a person receives is, in effect, placing a cost value on a human life. The framing of this bill as “securing the NDIS for future generations” is a political deflection that shifts focus from real disabled people who exist today to a hypothetical future population that cannot advocate for itself. I would urge the committee to seek an independent assessment of the economic value created by the NDIS — through workforce participation, reduced hospitalisation, and the social contributions of disabled people who are supported to thrive — before accepting the premise that the scheme’s current cost is unsustainable.
Requests
I respectfully request that the committee:
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Reject this bill in its current form.
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Ensure that any future reform is developed with disabled people as central participants from the outset, not as respondents to a fait accompli.
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Provide a full and transparent public account of which participants will be affected by each provision, including the 160,000 people at risk of losing NDIS access.
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Commission an independent assessment of the economic and social value generated by the NDIS before implementing any further cuts.
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Take into account the findings of the Disability Royal Commission and Australia’s obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
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Extend consultation timeframes to allow disabled people themselves, not only their advocates and carers, to participate meaningfully.
I am happy for this submission to be published and to appear before the committee if required. I would also ask that this submission be shared with the Minister’s office.
Yours sincerely,