Submission on the Proposed NDIS Legislation
I am the primary carer for my partner and our two children, all of whom live with disability.
Because of my caring responsibilities, and the lack of appropriate support available, I have been forced to give up my AHPRA-registered career. My caring role extends well beyond what would reasonably be expected of a typical parenting role.
Like so many people with disability and their carers, I simply do not have the time or capacity to analyse complex legislation in detail. Caring is already more than a full-time job. However, what I have seen of this Bill deeply concerns me.
The proposed changes appear to increase parental and carer responsibilities at a time when many of us are already exhausted, overwhelmed and experiencing significant burnout.
Carer burnout is not simply fatigue. It affects physical health, mental health, employment, financial security and family relationships. Once carers reach crisis, the consequences extend far beyond the individual carer and often require significantly greater government intervention.
I no longer have the capacity to maintain friendships, pursue hobbies, exercise regularly or remain connected to my family and community. As a result, we have lost the informal supports our family once relied upon. Caring has become my entire life. I struggle to find the time to meet my own basic needs, including having regular showers or getting enough sleep.
I work harder now than I ever did in full-time employment, yet I receive none of the protections that come with paid work. I have no sick leave, no annual leave, no superannuation and no one to step in if I need a break.
If I were to become seriously ill or injured tomorrow—for example, if I needed to be admitted to hospital—there is no safety net for my family.
At present, one unpaid carer supports three members of my family with disability. Without that unpaid care, the government would need to fund a substantial amount of replacement support every day.
If I reach breaking point and can no longer continue in this unpaid role, the cost to the government would be far greater than the supports my family currently receives.
Informal supports are not an unlimited resource. Families eventually reach exhaustion. Policy should recognise the limits of unpaid care rather than relying upon it to compensate for reduced formal supports.
Australia’s disability system relies heavily on unpaid carers. Without them, the cost of replacing this care through formal services or residential care would be enormous. Any reform that increases pressure on unpaid carers risks shifting costs elsewhere in the health, disability and aged care systems rather than delivering genuine savings.
Investing in carers is not only the compassionate choice; it is also the economically responsible one.
I agree that the NDIS requires reform.
However, this Bill does not represent genuine reform. It primarily reduces supports and increases restrictions without first establishing the alternative services needed to protect people with disability and their families.
It represents cuts, increased restrictions and a failure to recognise the humanity of some of Australia’s most vulnerable people—both participants and their carers.
These changes have not been genuinely co-designed with the people who will be most affected, despite repeated recommendations from previous inquiries that disability reforms must be co-designed. People with disability, unpaid carers, frontline disability workers and treating health professionals. They threaten employment, informal supports, quality of life, and people’s safety and survival.
Many of these changes are already being implemented in practice. Clinical expertise should inform decisions, not be overridden by administrative assumptions or generic assessment tools.
AHPRA-registered health professionals are raising urgent concerns that participants are losing essential supports despite clear clinical evidence of need. Reports from treating professionals are frequently disregarded, resulting in care being significantly compromised through sudden funding reductions and unnecessary bureaucracy. We are talking about decisions that can have life-or-death consequences.
I do not support this Bill.
That said, the current NDIS system is also failing many families. It has become a bureaucratic nightmare that often feels designed to exhaust people who are already vulnerable.
The endless cycle of applications, reassessments, reviews, appeals, advocacy, paperwork and medical reports consumes time and energy that should instead be spent caring for our families and living our lives.
Families are repeatedly required to prove permanent disabilities. Medical reports often cost thousands of dollars, yet they are frequently ignored or inaccurately interpreted. Incorrect information and diagnoses can remain on a person’s record without any straightforward mechanism for correction, leading to unnecessary reviews, tribunal appeals and additional costs for both participants and taxpayers.
Living with disability should not require constant advocacy simply to access essential supports. The ongoing “disability tax”—financial, emotional and administrative—is exhausting.
Yet when access to essential supports is at stake, people with disability and their families have no choice but to keep fighting because the consequences can literally be life and death.
Early intervention and timely supports prevent crises. Delayed assessments, reduced supports and increased bureaucracy often result in deteriorating health, hospital admissions, family breakdown and greater long-term costs to the government.
I am also concerned about the way the NDIA communicates with participants.
Receiving calls from private numbers and asking participants to disclose personal information before the caller’s identity has been verified creates an unacceptable security risk.
Australians lost more than $2.18 billion to scams in 2025. People with disability should not be placed in situations that normalise providing sensitive personal information to unknown callers. More secure verification methods, such as voice authentication, secure digital identity or participant-initiated verification processes similar to those used by Centrelink, should be adopted.
The Australian Government has already invested significant public resources into major inquiries, including the Disability Royal Commission, the 2023 NDIS Review, the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme and the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety.
Many recommendations from these inquiries remain unimplemented.
Instead, this Bill appears to move away from key recommendations, including ensuring appropriate foundational supports are fully established before people transition away from the NDIS.
For example, “Thriving Kids” is expected to commence in October, yet there remains little public clarity about what services will actually be available, how they will operate or whether they will be consistently delivered across Australia.
Without clearly defined services, evidence of effectiveness and nationally consistent implementation, families cannot have confidence that these foundational supports will adequately replace existing NDIS supports or meet people’s basic needs.
This uncertainty undermines trust before the new system has even begun.
The Robodebt Royal Commission demonstrated the serious harm that can occur when governments rely on flawed automated decision-making without adequate safeguards, transparency or accountability.
Similarly, concerns have recently emerged regarding the Integrated Assessment Tool used in aged care, where assessment processes have reportedly resulted in older Australians receiving inadequate support while assessors were unable to override inappropriate outcomes.
These experiences demonstrate why people with disability are understandably concerned about any increased reliance on automated assessments or poorly defined decision-making systems.
Trust must be earned through transparency, accountability and genuine consultation.
At present, this Bill does not provide that confidence.
The NDIS was founded on the principles of choice and control. Many participants now fear those principles are being steadily eroded, while quality providers are leaving the sector because of increasingly burdensome and expensive registration requirements.
Recommendations
Recommendation 1 Implement the outstanding recommendations of the Disability Royal Commission and the 2023 NDIS Review before introducing further major reforms.
Recommendation 2 Ensure this legislation incorporates the lessons learned from the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme and the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety, particularly regarding automation, accountability, procedural fairness and human oversight.
Recommendation 3 Co-design reforms with the people who will be most affected, including people with disability, unpaid carers, frontline disability workers, AHPRA-registered health professionals, disability advocacy organisations and representative peak bodies.
Recommendation 4 Guarantee that no participant loses supports until equivalent or better foundational supports have been fully established, independently evaluated and are operational. Transitions must be staged, individually planned and supported over an appropriate period.
Recommendation 5 Recognise unpaid carers as an essential part of Australia’s disability support system by investing in practical supports, including respite, emergency contingency planning, mental health services and simplified administrative processes.
Supporting carers is not only the right thing to do—it prevents family breakdown, reduces long-term government expenditure and enables people with disability to continue living safely within their communities.
Recommendation 6 Give appropriate weight to reports prepared by AHPRA-registered treating health professionals who have an established therapeutic relationship with participants and are best placed to assess their functional capacity and support needs. Existing clinically relevant reports should continue to be recognised, reducing unnecessary duplication, cost and administrative burden.
People should not have to repeatedly disclose the most traumatic and personal aspects of their lives to strangers simply to access essential supports.
Recommendation 7 Reduce waiting times for eligibility decisions, reassessments and support approvals. People should not have to wait months for essential supports. Delays often result in deterioration, increased support needs and higher long-term costs.
Recommendation 8 Where a participant requests an internal review or seeks review through the Administrative Review Tribunal, existing supports and funding should remain in place until the review process has been finalised, to prevent serious risk, disruption of therapeutic relationships, and the unnecessary loss of established supports and workers.
Recommendation 9 Ensure foundational supports are evidence-based, independently evaluated, nationally consistent and fully operational before participants transition from the NDIS. Transitions should occur over an appropriate period—such as six months or longer where required—to prevent people falling into crisis and to allow any gaps in support to be identified and addressed.
Recommendation 10 Require the NDIA to communicate with participants using their recorded preferred communication method. For example, a Deaf participant should not receive standard voice calls if alternative communication methods have been identified in their plan or participant record.
Recommendation 11 Ensure that people found ineligible for the NDIS receive active assistance to identify, access and maintain appropriate alternative supports. No person should be left without essential supports simply because responsibility transfers between service systems.
Recommendation 12 Establish an independent mechanism to monitor the implementation of these reforms, publicly report outcomes, and evaluate their impact on participants, carers and providers. Legislative changes should be evidence-based and subject to ongoing review rather than implemented without transparent evaluation.
Recommendation 13 Require the NDIA to provide participants with clear, evidence-based written reasons for decisions, including how clinical evidence has been considered or, where it has not been accepted, the reasons for departing from that evidence. Establish a simple process to correct factual errors on participant records.
The success of the NDIS should not be measured solely by reducing expenditure. It should be measured by whether Australians with disability can live safe, dignified and meaningful lives, and whether the families who support them can continue to do so without sacrificing their own health, employment and wellbeing. I urge the Committee to reject this Bill in its current form and instead pursue genuine reform that is evidence-based, co-designed and centred on the rights, dignity and safety of people with disability and those who care for them.
People with disability and their carers are not asking for special treatment. We are asking for a fair, evidence-based system that recognises our dignity, values clinical expertise and provides timely supports. Genuine reform should reduce unnecessary bureaucracy, strengthen trust and improve outcomes—not shift greater burdens onto those already carrying the greatest responsibility.
The voices of people with disability, carers and treating professionals should not simply be heard during consultation—they should shape the future of the NDIS.