Submission 3305 — Name Withheld — NDIS Future Generations Bill

Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs

Re: NDIS Amendment (Securing the NDIS) Bill 2026

I am writing as the parent and primary carer of my child, who is autistic and lives in Queensland. I am submitting this to the Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs in response to the NDIS Amendment (Securing the NDIS) Bill 2026.

I hold serious concerns regarding several elements of the Bill, specifically detailed below.

1. Schedule 1: Assessment of Functional Capacity “Without Assistance”

The Bill requires functional capacity to be assessed “without assistance” from supports, assistive technology or environmental adaptations, as far as possible. My child currently relies on a support workers, trusted individuals and sensory supports to manage their life. Without these supports, their ability to access the community, pursue future employment and manage basic self-care (eventually living alone, cooking for oneself) or manage transitions (especially around self-care) are profoundly compromised. These supports are not optional extras. They are what make life possible.

If my child is assessed as though these supports do not exist, the NDIA could determine they have low support needs - and then remove the funding that creates that stability. This is circular and dangerous logic. A person appears to have low needs precisely because the support is working. Furthermore, removing supports during an assessment risks misinterpreting situational mutism or distress as non-compliance. My child rarely says any more than a handful word answers to strangers even with trusted support person present.

The assessment of how a person functions in their daily life - with their environment, their supports, and their routines in place - is the core expertise of occupational therapists and allied health professionals. The Occupational Therapy Society for Hidden and Invisible Disability (OTSi) has noted that the NDIS Review itself recommended that assessment processes allow for evidence from a range of sources, including treating professionals. The Bill moves in the opposite direction, favouring standardised snapshot assessments that cannot capture fluctuating needs, masking, or the invisible work that keeps an autistic person stable. My child’s treating team understand their functional capacity. A brief administrative assessment does not.

2. Schedule 1, Part 3: Requirement for Supports to Arise “directly” from a Specific Impairment

This clause requires every funded support to arise “directly” from the specific impairment a person was assessed for.

With a lot of disabilities (including Autism) presenting with comorbid conditions, I fail to see how these can be separated into neat categories. The support my child needs from Speech Therapists to help understand meanings in the written world and to help with executive function, behaviour support to manage anxiety around public places, confrontations, refusal of certain necessary tasks (just to name a few) all address comorbid conditions such as ADHD and anxiety.

Under this Bill, the NDIA could determine that this vital support does not ‘directly’ arise from the autism diagnosis and therefore not be funded. My child’s presentation would not change; their needs would not change. But their funding could be removed.

This is not a theoretical risk. Many autistic people are already being told their co occurring conditions are not part of their NDIS-recognised impairment. Research published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders (Guan et al., 2021) confirms that most autistic people have at least one co-occurring condition. These are not separate issues. They are part of the same person.

3. Schedule 1, Part 8: Mandatory “Appropriate

Treatment” for Eligibility

The issue requires that a person demonstrate they have completed all “appropriate treatment” to remain eligible for the NDIS. Alarmingly, the Bill allows treatment to be considered “appropriate” even if a person cannot afford it, cannot access it locally, or considers the therapy to be ineffective or harmful (in the case of Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA)).

4. Schedule 2, Part 1: Mandatory Registration and

Auditing of Independent Workers

Classifying independent support workers as “NDIS providers” will subject them to cost prohibitive registration and audit compliance. All of my child’s support workers are independent and often have other jobs (and hence a wide range of experience) in the disability sector. All of this experience is vital in supporting my child. My child is very selective in who they trust (and talk to) and this trust takes a long time to build.

The National Disability Insurance Scheme Act 2013 (Section 3) explicitly states its main object is to “enable people with disability to exercise choice and control in the pursuit of their goals”. Forcing Independent Support Workers out of the industry due to unviable compliance costs will decimate the workforce, stripping participants of their right to choice and control.

5. Schedule 1, Part 4: Ministerial Power to Reduce Funding for Groups of Supports

This provision gives the Minister power to make a legislative instrument reduce funding component amount for a specified group of supports by any percentage less than 100%.

This allows for broad, non-evidence-based, unlimited funding reductions that blend individual participants diverse needs. These reductions would apply regardless of actual individual costs, plan values or whether alternative supports exist at the time of the cuts.

The socioeconomic fallout of such cuts can’t be overstated. This part of the Bill will push more primary carer’s (such as myself), predominantly women, out of the workforce entirely as the primary carers will have to pick up (as was prior to the NDIS) where the previous supplied supports are removed.

The NDIA’s own quarterly data (March 2025) shows that carer employment rose 6 percentage points - from 46% to 52% - with access to the NDIS. This is not a coincidence. Formal support enables primary carers (majority of which are women) to participate in paid work and contribute to the economy. Withdrawing support reverses this participation. This is the direct, documented relationship between NDIS funding and workforce participation for carers.

In 2018, there were an estimated 860,000 primary carers of people with disability in Australia. The majority are women. These carers consistently report reduced or ceased paid work, reduced superannuation, physical and mental health decline, and long-term financial disadvantage they do not recover from.

The deaths of autistic children in Perth in January 2026 and Campbelltown in May 2026 are evidence of what happens when support is withdrawn from families who have no capacity left. These deaths are not limited to autistic people either but the disabled community. This Bill must not make that more likely.

What I am asking from the committee:

1. Amend Schedule 1 (Functional Capacity): I ask the Committee to remove the requirement that functional capacity be assessed ‘without assistance,’ Mandate instead that assessments reflect real-world functioning with their existing supports in place. I also ask the Committee to protect primacy of clinical evidence and the role of allied health and treating professional evidence in all NDIS access, planning and reassessment decisions, and to ensure that no automated or administrative assessment can override clinical evidence from a qualified practitioner. I also ask the Committee to ensure all assessments from allied health and treating professionals be read and understood by assessing parties (rather than just be required, however unread or not understood).

2. Amend Schedule 1, Part 3 (Direct Impairment): I ask the Committee to remove the word “directly” from the Bill and restore the NDIA’s obligation to fund support for the whole person, not just an isolated diagnosis.

3. Amend Schedule 1, Part 8 (Appropriate Treatment): I ask the Committee to amend the Bill so that treatment only counts as ‘appropriate’ if it is genuinely accessible to that person given their location, finances and medical circumstances (not force into treatments the person deems harmful). I also ask the Committee to explicitly recognise in the legislation that autism is a permanent, lifelong neurological condition for which no curative treatment exists.

4. Amend Schedule 2, Part 1 (Provider Registration): I ask the Committee to amend the Bill so that independent support workers are specifically prescribed as an exempt class within Section 10C(2) and the forthcoming NDIS rules. Failing this, I ask the Committee to amend the Bill to include that any registration and audit process be a financially viable tiered solution so all Independent Support Workers (including those with very small client basis) can comply.

5. Amend Schedule 1, Part 4 (Ministerial Powers): I ask the Committee to amend the Bill to remove the power to issue blanket, percentage-based, category-based budget cuts. Alternatively, I ask the Committee to amend the Bill to set strict statutory safeguards; such as capping the percentage cut to a maximum of 5%, implementing strict frequency limits and requiring individual risk and safety-net assessments before any reduction occurs.