Submission 3320 — Ms Victoria White — NDIS Future Generations Bill

A submission on the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

Submitted to: Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee

Submitted by: Victoria White B.Bus.,Grad.Dip.Psych.,M.S.W. E: M:

Date: 1st June 2026

My name is Victoria White. I am a Social Worker and have worked as a Specialist Support Coordinator since 2019. I support NDIS participants with complex disability-related needs, service system barriers and safeguarding risks. Before this, I worked in child protection, where I developed a strong understanding of statutory systems and risk. I make this submission in response to the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026. My submission focuses on two areas of concern: the proposal to treat My Aged Care as an alternative to the NDIS, and the proposed power for the Minister to reduce funding for groups of supports unilaterally. These provisions create untenable risks to participants unless stronger safeguards, evidence requirements and review rights are inserted into the Bill. In the submission I provide a basis for my concerns and make recommendations to reduce risks to participants.

My Aged Care

The Minister to declare other systems as “alternatives” to the NDIS by rule. The Explanatory Memorandum’s (Part 9) specifically names aged care.

The Bill frames My Aged Care as an appropriate alternative to the NDIS. The Bill should not conflate ageing with disability, nor use aged care infrastructure as a cost-containment mechanism. The two systems are built on fundamentally different foundations philosophically, legally, and operationally. Treating the two systems as interchangeable, risks serious harm to NDIS participants.

The NDIS is grounded in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and invests in capacity building, and long-term independence. My Aged Care is a needs-based institutionalised model responding to the universal process of ageing on the presumption that capacity will inevitably decline. NDIS plans are individualised and goal-directed, whereas My Aged Care packages are tiered and capped.

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The Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety’s Final Report stated that the My

Aged Care system is not set up or funded to provide disability care, [and] support (p.346). The My Aged Care work force is not required to hold disability-specific competencies and are not positioned to meet the complex needs of NDIS participants. It is structurally ill equipped to support people with complex or high intensity support needs. As NDIS eligibility thresholds rise, the remaining cohort will increasingly comprise of people with the most complex disability-related support needs, whose independence cannot be maintained without specialised, disability-informed supports. This is not the cohort My Aged Care was designed to support. The combined effect of narrowing NDIS eligibility while positioning My Aged Care as an off-ramp is that the people least able to navigate an inadequate system will be directed into it. This will create a highly vulnerable cohort falling between two systems: too complex for aged care, yet no longer eligible for the NDIS. The Government has not explained how this gap will be managed, nor what safeguards will prevent harm to those caught in it. The NDIA Quarterly Report 2025-26 Q3 states that there are 5,704 NDIS Participants aged over 65 living in a Supported Independent Living (SIL) home and a further 37,915 participants aged over 65 who do not live in a SIL (Appendices. Table D.4 D.6). Note that the average annual SIL budget is $488,600 (Table D.23 and D.24). The Support at Home’s highest funding package is $78,106.35 with co-payments expected. Therefore, most participants moved to My Aged Care will not be able to safely remain in their homes nor will it be financially viable to remain in SIL homes. This leaves Residential Aged Care as the option going forward. Residential aged care is overwhelmingly a service for people in their mid-to-late 80s, with 59% of residents aged 85 and over ( https://www.gen-agedcaredata.gov.au/topics/people using-aged-care ). Due to financial pressures, participants exited from the NDIA will likely be forced into residential aged care up to 15 years earlier. This would amount to a forced removal from home, not a neutral service transition. It contravenes the right to choose where one lives which is underpin by the UNCRPD; this right was the cornerstone of Kennedy vs NDIA and Boicovitis v NDIA. The impact of a forced move would be profound including the loss of trusted support networks, autonomy, and disability-specific supports. It will accelerate functional decline, increase distress, and deepen social isolation. The high rate of death in residential aged care settings also carries a psychological cost. NDIS participants relocated to these environments would face repeated, frequent loss of co residents, compounding trauma and undermining the stability that underpins wellbeing. The early aged care pathway for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged 50 and over must be understood as an equity-based aged care access pathway and not as evidence that aged care is an appropriate substitute for disability support. The Federal Court’s decision in NDIA v Sutherland is instructive here. It is deeply concerning that the NDIA sought to use a Closing the Gap-aligned measure to exclude a person from the NDIS. That approach weaponised an equity measure against the very community it was designed to protect, and the Bill must explicitly foreclose any such interpretation.

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The policy test must be functional and rights-based. Before excluding or transitioning a person from the NDIS on the basis that aged care exists, the NDIA must be required to establish that: aged care is available in practice for the individual in question, not only in legislation; that it can genuinely meet the person’s disability-related needs; that it will not impose unreasonable costs or loss of support; that it preserves the person’s will, preference, and right to choose; and that it does not expose the person to segregation, neglect, reduced community participation, or diminished safeguards.

Recommendations

1. The legislation should require the NDIA to prove for each individual NDIS Participant on evidence, that any alternative service system is available, timely, affordable, culturally safe, and capable of meeting that specific person’s disability-related needs to an equivalent standard and

2. The legislation should include an express safeguard that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged 50 to 64 cannot be refused NDIS access or exited from the NDIS because they are eligible for early aged care pathways.

3. The legislation should retain Merits Based Review Rights for access decisions Unilateral reduction of funding for groups of support 34A Determination reducing funding for groups of supports. (1) For the purposes of ensuring the financial sustainability of the National Disability Insurance Scheme, the Minister may, by legislative instrument, determine: (a) a percentage (lower than 100%) that is the percentage by which a funding component amount for a specified group of supports is reduced while the determination is in force; and

The bill indicates that the NDIS Minister will hold the power to unilaterally reduce funding component amounts for groups of supports to ensure scheme sustainability (S.34.A). The Government cannot credibly characterise scheme sustainability as a problem inherited solely from the Opposition; Labor introduced the NDIS and has been in Government since 2022. The relevant question is not about scheme sustainability, rather whether the proposed reduction is safe, evidence-based, proportionate, and consistent with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The Minister has announced that there will be a substantial reduction in Assistance with Social, Economic, and Community Participation funding from 1 October 2026 which will be applied unilaterally. This decision carries a deeply troubling implication, that NDIS planning and assessment processes have systematically overestimated participants’ needs and associated risk by an astonishing margin. The Government must explain the evidentiary basis for the reduction. What research informed it? What risk analysis was conducted? The Government must detail, with specificity, how it will prevent harm to NDIS participants. It is unsafe to place the consequences of alleged system-wide overfunding onto participants without individual assessment that accounts for individual risks. Participants should not lose access to participation supports where those supports are central to managing risk, reducing isolation, enabling employment, and connecting to one’s community.

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Funding of Social, Economic and Community Participation supports at the correct ratio are critical for NDIS participants, particularly participants with higher or complex support needs. Without adequate support, participants will become isolated at home and could feel forced to access the community in unsafe ways. This increases the risk of accidents, distress, exploitation, and preventable harm. Unilateral reductions are unsafe because they remove individual assessment from decisions that directly affect participant, worker, and the community’s safety. Assistance with Social, Economic and Community Participation is far broader than social outings. It supports participants to take part in community, recreational and economic activities, including access to work. Inclusive Employment Australia may help people with disability prepare for, find and maintain employment, but it cannot replace the individualised NDIS supports required by people with higher or complex support needs. Cutting participation supports and pointing to Inclusive Employment Australia does not create a safe bridge to work. It removes parts of the bridge. Participants who are significantly impacted by a unilateral funding reduction must retain the right to seek internal review and pursue an external merits review. Without those safeguards, the planned reduction will cause harm to participants, families, support workers, and the broader community. If the Government is confident that a reduction is safe, correct, and preferable, it should not feel the need to seek to remove review rights.

Recommendation

1. Remove from the Bill the Minister’s power to make such sweeping changes to any category of supports.

2. If it is agreed in the Senate that such changes to support categories can be made across the board then the proposed bill needs to be amended to require that

a. The Minister publicly demonstrates that the reduction is safe, evidence- based, proportionate, and consistent with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and

b. Require that any proposed percentage reduction to a funding category is supported by extensive research and risk analysis. The methodology, evidence base, assumptions, limitations, and results of that analysis should be made publicly available and

c. Apply carve outs for participants who are geographically isolated, have high or complex support needs and/or require intensive 1:1 supports to access their community and work safely and productively and

d. Engage in meaningful consultation with all stakeholders, including the disability community before the reduction is finalised and

e. Allow for robust parliamentary scrutiny, with enough time for stakeholders to examine the proposal, provide evidence and raise safety concerns before Parliament is asked to approve it and

f. Preserve the participants’ rights to internal and external merits review where a funding reduction compromises safety and inclusion.

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