22 July 2026
Supplementary Submission to the Inquiry into the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the
NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
I made a submission to this inquiry on 29 May 2026 (Submission 333), setting out amendments developed with legal and disability policy experts and the findings of community consultation held in Kooyong. I write to update the Committee with further evidence about the potential impact of this legislation which has come to me from community members following my 29 May 2026 submission.
The Interim Report
I welcome the Committee’s interim report of 23 June 2026 and the extension of this inquiry to 14 August 2026. The extension responds to concerns that I and many others raised about the adequacy of the original two-week consultation period for a Bill of this scale and consequence.
I also welcome the Committee’s recommendation that the Government table a public roadmap setting out the timeline, funding and consultation requirements for foundational supports, and that state and territory governments fulfil their National Cabinet commitments to the $10 billion investment in supports outside the Scheme. This is consistent with the intent of Amendment (2) in my original submission, which sought a statutory guarantee — not merely a roadmap — that the substantive provisions of the Bill could not commence until foundational supports were demonstrably in place.
I continue to hold the view that a statutory pre-condition, enforceable in the ordinary course rather than being dependent on ongoing political action, offers stronger protection to participants than a roadmap alone. Accordingly, I urge the Committee to recommend the amendment in its final report.
Further community evidence
Since my initial submission I’ve received a substantial volume of further correspondence from constituents, participants, families, carers, health professionals, and service providers. I can provide a consolidated version of that feedback if required.
In summary, it reinforces and extends the concerns raised in my May submission:
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NDIS supports are consistently described not as discretionary services but as essential to daily functioning. This includes supports enabling personal care, nutrition, attendance at medical appointments and basic safety considerations. Constituents report that periods without adequate support have meant them being unable to get out of bed, going without showering, and poor nutrition.
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Social and community participation supports are described as fundamental to independence and mental health, not peripheral to it. Families are concerned that restricting Support Determinations to this category,
as the Bill permits, risks treating these supports as the first and easiest support components to cut, despite their significance.
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Carers report they are already at capacity, and that any further shift of responsibility onto informal care will produce carer burnout and reduced workforce participation, not savings to government.
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Parents and clinicians raised early intervention as a particular concern, citing the long-term costs — to children’s development and to future government expenditure — of restricting access during the years it matters most.
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Participants and providers again raised the administrative inefficiencies of the current system — repeated reporting requirements for permanent conditions, duplicated processes, and delays — as a more productive target for savings than reductions to individual supports.
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Concerns about the transparency and consistency of planning decisions, and reluctance to seek review for fear of losing supports altogether, were widespread.
These accounts corroborate the Kooyong consultation findings set out in my original submission and should be read alongside them.
Reinforcing the case for the amendments outlined in my original submission
Several other submissions to this inquiry independently reinforce the case for the amendments in my original submission, and I commend them to the Committee.
The Justice and Equity Centre’s supplementary submission (Submission 82-2, 10 July 2026) explicitly endorses Amendments (2) and (4) from my original submission — the foundational supports precondition and the statutory review — and observes that the government amendments made since June address some concerns but leave others unresolved, including the discretionary (rather than mandatory) exclusion of supports like employment-related transport from Ministerial support determinations. The Centre also draws the Committee’s attention to a submission by the State and Territory Disability Ministers warning that the Bill’s changes risk outpacing the development of foundational supports, “creating new service gaps” and “placing preventable pressure on other disability services. This is the precise risk my Amendment (2) is designed to prevent. The Centre further notes that the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights was unable to conclude the Bill’s limitations on rights are justified, given the Government has not clearly identified the objectives of individual measures, and that the Government’s response to that report has not yet been made public.
The Grattan Institute’s supplementary submission (Submission 276) provides an independent economic basis for the safeguards I have proposed around Ministerial support determinations. Grattan’s modelling shows the Bill’s short term cuts to individual supports contribute a shrinking share of total savings over time — around half of savings in 2026–27, falling to roughly a quarter by 2029–30 — and that the Government’s own stated long-term sustainability target would be met with or without them. This is directly relevant to Amendments (7)–(9): if the short-term cuts a Support Determination would authorise are not necessary to achieve the Bill’s stated sustainability objective, the case for subjecting them to affirmative parliamentary approval, rather than leaving them to Ministerial discretion, is stronger still.
Rare Voices Australia’s second submission (Submission 399) raises safeguards for the roughly 100,000 NDIS participants living with rare diseases, whose complex and multi-system conditions make them particularly exposed to the risks I have raised regarding Support Determinations, plan reassessment and automated decision-making. Its call for individual safety assessments before support reductions take effect, for participants at elevated risk of harm to be excluded from blanket determinations, and for decision-makers to weigh specialist clinical and lived experience evidence rather than defaulting to published, generalised research, all support the case for Amendments (7)–(10) in my original submission and for the additional safeguards recommended in the Justice and Equity Centre’s supplementary submission.
Conclusion
I support a sustainable, well-governed NDIS, and I welcome the steps the Committee and the government have taken since May to allow more considered scrutiny of this Bill. But the core concerns set out in my original submission remain unresolved by the interim report: foundational supports should be a statutory precondition to commencement, not the subject of a roadmap; Ministerial power to reduce funding should be subject to affirmative parliamentary approval, not disallowance; participants should retain a clear pathway to reassessment where their plan becomes insufficient; and the ‘appropriate treatment’ threshold for permanence should not override the Federal Court’s reasoning in Davis.
I urge the Committee to recommend that the fourteen amendments set out in Attachment A of my original submission be adopted in its final report.