National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS
for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submitted by: Dariane McLean
Date: June 2026
- Introduction I welcome the opportunity to make a submission to the Parliamentary Inquiry into the
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future
Generations) Bill 2026.
I make this submission in several capacities: as the mother of an adult son with intellectual disability and complex support needs; as a long-term disability advocate; and, importantly, as a Special Witness to the Disability Royal Commission (DRC).
My contribution to the Disability Royal Commission came at considerable personal cost. I shared deeply personal and traumatic experiences concerning my son, Hayden McLean, and his experiences living in group-based supported accommodation.
I did so because I believed Australia was finally prepared to listen to people with disability and their families about the consequences of systems that can prioritise convenience, efficiency and congregate care over safety, dignity, autonomy and human rights.
The proposed Bill therefore concerns me deeply.
I recognise the importance of ensuring the long-term sustainability of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). However, sustainability cannot be pursued at the expense of safety, rights, dignity, choice and genuine individualisation.
My central concern is that aspects of this Bill risk moving the NDIS further away from the lessons of the Disability Royal Commission rather than embedding those lessons into the future of the Scheme.
For people with disability and families who participated in the Royal Commission, this is profoundly distressing. People gave evidence in good faith. We revisited trauma, grief and systemic failures because we believed our experiences would contribute to meaningful reform.
The future of the NDIS must reflect that evidence.
- Why This Matters: My Family’s Experience
My son, Hayden, experienced significant challenges while living in group-based supported accommodation.
Without revisiting all of the deeply personal details that were provided to the Disability Royal Commission, our family experienced prolonged concerns about Hayden’s safety, wellbeing, quality of life and dignity.
We encountered systems that, at times, failed to recognise risk early enough, failed to respond adequately to concerns and failed to genuinely centre Hayden as a person.
These experiences fundamentally changed our understanding of what constitutes safe and appropriate support.
They also demonstrated to us that the problem is not necessarily an individual worker or provider. Harm can emerge from systems and service models that are not designed around the individual person.
For people with intellectual disability and complex support needs, group-based supported accommodation can create heightened risks, including:
- neglect and inadequate oversight;
- unsafe or incompatible co-residency arrangements;
- exposure to other people’s behaviours of concern;
- restrictive practices;
- loss of autonomy and choice;
- disruption to important relationships and routines;
- reduced quality of life; and
- organisational cultures that prioritise operational convenience over individual wellbeing.
These risks were repeatedly identified through evidence presented to the Disability Royal Commission.
As someone who provided witness testimony to the Royal Commission, I am deeply concerned that NDIS reforms could unintentionally create conditions that reinforce dependence on the very service models that many people with disability and their families have fought to move away from.
- What We Have Learned From Individualised Support Following our family’s experience of group-based accommodation, Hayden now lives in his own home with an individualised support model.
The difference has been profound.
Individualised living supports have provided greater stability, improved safety, more consistent relationships and a support environment that is genuinely tailored to Hayden’s needs.
This experience has demonstrated to our family that individualisation is not simply about preference or lifestyle.
For some people, it is fundamentally about:
- safety;
- prevention of harm;
- stability;
- communication;
- continuity of relationships;
- reducing exposure to incompatible environments;
- minimising restrictive practices;
- maintaining autonomy; and
- achieving a meaningful quality of life. A service-for-one arrangement allows the support system to be designed around the person rather than requiring the person to fit within an existing service model.
For people with intellectual disability, complex communication needs, complex support needs or histories of trauma, this distinction can be life-changing.
For some people, individualised living is not an optional premium service. It is the safeguard that makes their life possible.
- The Risk of Moving Back Towards Congregate Models One of my greatest concerns about the proposed reforms is the potential for changes to funding, definitions of supports and decision-making processes to create direct or indirect pressure towards standardised and shared service models.
This could occur even without legislation explicitly requiring people to live in group settings.
If individualised supports become harder to justify, harder to fund or subject to increasingly narrow definitions of what is considered reasonable and necessary, participants may effectively be left with fewer viable alternatives.
For people with complex needs, the consequence could be a return to arrangements that have previously failed them.
This would represent a significant step backwards.
The Disability Royal Commission did not call for a return to congregate care. Rather, its findings highlighted the need for disability systems to address violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation and to move towards approaches grounded in dignity, safety, rights, autonomy and personalised support.
The future NDIS must not unintentionally recreate institutional or quasi-institutional models under the guise of efficiency or sustainability.
- Key Concerns With the Bill 5.1 Narrower Definitions of Supports
I am concerned that narrower definitions of what constitutes reasonable and necessary supports may reduce access to genuinely individualised supports.
For people with complex support needs, support cannot always be neatly divided into discrete categories.
Safety, stability, relationships, communication, therapeutic consistency and quality of life are interconnected.
A support that may appear unnecessary when viewed in isolation can be essential when considered in the context of the person’s whole life.
For people like Hayden, flexibility and individualisation are not luxuries. They are safeguards.
Any reform to the definition or funding of supports should therefore explicitly protect access to individualised living arrangements, including service-for-one models where there is evidence that shared or congregate environments are unsafe, unsuitable or have resulted in poor outcomes.
5.2 Increased Ministerial Powers
I am concerned about proposals that expand ministerial powers to define, prescribe or restrict supports through delegated mechanisms.
Changes that materially affect the lives of people with disability should be subject to:
- meaningful consultation;
- transparency;
- appropriate parliamentary oversight;
- disability-led input; and
- consideration of lived experience.
People with disability and their families have experienced considerable policy instability over many years.
Greater concentration of decision-making power risks further reducing confidence in the Scheme and increasing uncertainty for participants whose lives depend upon long term, consistent and highly individualised supports.
The voices of people with disability and families must remain central to decisions about the Scheme.
5.3 Reduced Funding Flexibility
Flexibility is often what makes genuinely individualised support possible.
People with complex disability do not necessarily fit neatly into standard service categories. Their support needs can be dynamic, relational and highly individual.
Reducing flexibility risks disproportionately affecting participants who require customised living arrangements or service-for-one supports.
There is a particular risk that participants could be funnelled towards standardised service models because those models are easier to define, administer or cost.
A system that is financially efficient but results in people being placed in unsafe or unsuitable environments is not sustainable in any meaningful sense.
5.4 Lack of Genuine Co-design
The Disability Royal Commission reinforced the importance of listening to people with disability and those with lived experience of disability systems.
Meaningful reform cannot occur without lived expertise at the centre.
People with disability, families, advocates and people who have experienced harm within disability services should be directly involved in shaping:
- legislative reform;
- policy settings;
- implementation frameworks;
- funding rules;
- safeguarding mechanisms; and
- future service models.
Co-design must be more than consultation after key decisions have already been made.
People need to be involved early enough to influence the decisions themselves.
5.5 Risk of Reinforcing Congregate Models of Support
This concern weighs particularly heavily on me as a parent and as a witness to the Disability Royal Commission.
For many people with intellectual disability, congregate settings have not represented safety, belonging or community.
For too many, they have been environments in which abuse, neglect, poor oversight, incompatible living arrangements, restrictive practices and diminished autonomy can occur.
The Disability Royal Commission documented these experiences extensively.
Reform focused primarily on cost containment risks creating incentives that make group-based models more attractive to systems while making individualised arrangements more difficult to sustain.
The NDIS must not drift back towards institutional or quasi-institutional models because they appear administratively simpler or cheaper.
Instead, reform should actively support:
- individualised living arrangements;
- service-for-one arrangements where appropriate;
- person-centred planning;
- supported decision-making;
- independent safeguarding mechanisms;
- continuity of relationships and support;
- genuine choice and control; and
- the right to live in an environment that is safe and appropriate for the individual.
- Alignment With the Disability Royal Commission The Disability Royal Commission represented a significant national opportunity to listen to people with disability, families, advocates and others who had experienced failures within disability systems.
Its findings highlighted the need to address:
- violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation;
- inadequate safeguarding;
- institutional and segregated approaches to support;
- lack of autonomy and decision-making;
- inadequate access to individualised support;
- systemic failures in supported accommodation; and
- the need to uphold the human rights, dignity and inclusion of people with disability. The proposed NDIS reforms should therefore be explicitly assessed against the findings and recommendations of the Disability Royal Commission.
The question should not simply be:
Will these reforms make the NDIS more financially sustainable?
It must also be:
Will these reforms make the NDIS safer, more individualised and more consistent with the lessons of the Disability Royal Commission?
For those of us who provided evidence to the Royal Commission, this distinction matters enormously.
We gave evidence because we hoped future generations of people with disability would not experience what our families had experienced.
That commitment must remain at the heart of NDIS reform.
- Recommendations I respectfully recommend that the Committee consider amending the Bill to:
Recommendation 1 — Protect individualised living arrangements
Explicitly protect access to individualised living supports and service-for-one arrangements, particularly for participants with histories of harm, trauma, unsafe environments or poor outcomes in group-based settings.
Recommendation 2 — Prevent unintended pressure towards congregate living
Introduce safeguards against direct or indirect pressure towards shared or congregate living arrangements where these do not align with a participant’s preference, safety, support needs or wellbeing.
Recommendation 3 — Preserve flexibility
Preserve sufficient funding flexibility to enable genuinely individualised responses to complex and changing support needs.
Recommendation 4 — Strengthen oversight of ministerial powers
Limit or appropriately constrain expanded ministerial powers and ensure transparency, parliamentary oversight and meaningful disability community involvement in significant changes to supports and funding.
Recommendation 5 — Embed Disability Royal Commission lessons
Explicitly embed the findings and recommendations of the Disability Royal Commission into NDIS reform, particularly those relating to safeguarding, autonomy, supported decision-making and reducing institutional and segregated forms of support.
Recommendation 6 — Require genuine co-design
Require genuine co-design with people with disability, families, advocates and lived-experience experts, including people who have experienced harm within disability services and those who provided evidence to the Disability Royal Commission.
Recommendation 7 — Recognise service-for-one arrangements
Recognise service-for-one arrangements as legitimate and necessary individualised support models for people for whom shared or congregate arrangements are unsafe, unsuitable or demonstrably ineffective.
- Conclusion The long-term sustainability of the NDIS matters deeply.
However, sustainability must not be achieved by reducing choice, diminishing safety or increasing reliance on support models that have already caused profound harm to many people with disability.
As a mother, advocate and Special Witness to the Disability Royal Commission, I ask the Committee to listen carefully to those who have lived through the consequences of system failure.
The experiences shared through the Royal Commission were not shared so that Australia could simply acknowledge what happened.
They were shared because we believed those experiences would help change the future.
For my family, individualised support has demonstrated what is possible when a person’s life is built around who they are, what they need and what enables them to be safe, connected and included.
The NDIS should be strengthened in a way that protects and expands these possibilities—not one that unintentionally recreates the conditions that led so many people and families to seek justice through the Disability Royal Commission.
We owe future generations of Australians with disability more than sustainability alone.
We owe them safety, dignity, belonging, autonomy and lives built around who they are as people.
Submitted by:
Dariane McLean
Mother, disability advocate and Special Witness to the Disability Royal Commission
Many thanks,
Dariane McLean – She/her
Specialist Advisor - Complex Needs
Naam/Melbourne
I send emails outside office hours at times that work well for me. Feel free to reply at a time that works well for you. E: W: www.inclusionaustralia.org.au