Submission to the
Community Affairs Legislation Committee
Inquiry into the NDIS Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submitted By:
9th July, 2026
Submission by parent/nominee of an NDIS Participant
The life of our 36-year-old son with complex multiple disabilities has been transformed by the NDIS. The scheme’s opaque, and potentially punitive bureaucracy is a major source of stress for us as his sole informal supports and plan nominees, but the ability for us to self-manage his plan has made a huge difference to his life. With support from the NDIS is its current form, we can tailor his individualised supports to his unique needs and find the right people to support him. We have taken to directly employing key support workers, as we have experienced very disappointing supports from large registered providers. For example, a large registered organisation has had no trouble informing us an hour before a scheduled shift that they have no one available to support our son or offering us a complete stranger. By contrast, we are often able to retain great quality unregistered support workers for many years. This is both cost effective for the government and optimal for forging a committed team with a shared focus on the best interests of our son.
While negotiating the bureaucracy and its lack of accountability and transparency, we have at least to this point had some sense of reassurance from the fact that the NDIS has been the core mechanism for enshrining the principles of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Disabled People in Australian legislation. This Bill threatens everything that has been beneficial in the NDIS and lays the foundation for a return to poor outcomes and segregation of people with a disability.
We strongly urge the Committee to recommend the Bill be not passed in its current form.
The Bill’s stated aim is to ensure sustainability and preserve the original intent of the scheme. Instead, it jettisons core principles of “reasonable and necessary” individualised supports and of people with a disability having “choice and control”. As lifelong Labor supporters, we are deeply dismayed that the party of historic nation-building reform would present a Bill that undermines its own legacy. The NDIS is a visionary scheme akin to the Superannuation scheme or Medicare. However, this Bill gives carte blanche any future Minister and CEO of the NDIA to undermine the scheme’s benefits for short-term budgetary priorities. The Bill entrenches automated and semi-automated decision making. It shifts the priority from individual need to a budget bottom line. Then it removes any rights to transparency, appeal or accountability. The Bill fails completely to address the real sources of fraud and waste, instead targeting the actual support needs of people with a disability. It will cause harm and risk lives.
Key Concerns:
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Social And Community Participation Funding A key purpose of the NDIS is inclusion. Our son has benefitted from the ability to tailor activities in the community around his limited capacity and particular interests. We regard it as a success that someone with little functional communication is recognised personally by many community members and greeted by his name. He maintains his health with regular swimming, extends his tolerance of new environments by eating out or shopping in town and learns skills of social engagement and reciprocation in individualised music sessions. Without individualised Social & Community Participation funding his life would look very different. Congregation with other people with a disability would segregate him from the broader community and lose the focus on his unique interests and needs. He does not engage in and derives little benefit from grouped activities. He would lose the safety provided by community recognition and instead be at risk of isolation and harm. We consider the blanket funding reductions proposed in the Bill one of its most harmful aspects. We strongly oppose any effort to formulate Community Participation funding without direct consideration of a person’s individual support needs.
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Functional Capacity Assessments We’re always told by providers and others that they have never met anyone like our son. Of course, all disabilities and circumstances are unique, but some people have a very complex mix of disabilities, needs, interests and skills. Our son is someone that cannot be fit into a ‘category’ of need that is formulated by an automated or semi-automated assessment process. Human judgement, including judgement of professionals familiar with a participant, must be retained as the final decision-maker. A person’s needs are very dependent on their personal relationships, home and living arrangements, and the quality and continuity of their supports. Assessments cannot be conducted without consideration of these, as this Bill proposes. Considering the regrettable outcomes of Robodebt, the introduction of any kind of automated decision making absolutely must be accompanied by enhanced accountability measures, increased transparency and guaranteed rights of appeal. This Bill does the opposite. An independent NDIS complaints body with investigative powers is needed. Access to timely reassessment when needed must remain available to participants to prevent crisis situations and family breakdown. The Bill creates additional barriers to people who experience changes in circumstances, and extending the decision-making time frames from 21 to 90 days is dangerous for participants.
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Power of the Minister The concentration of administrative power in the hands of the Minister is CEO is very alarming, and one of the most disappointing elements of the Bill. The only reason we can imagine for giving so much discretionary power to the Minister and CEO is to by-pass established principles of individualised planning and limit transparency and accountability. It’s disturbing enough for this power to be in the hands of a Labor government but terrifying for that power to be wielded by a conservative government, or worse, one with any reliance on parties such as One Nation. The real life experience of vulnerable people with a disability is subject to change, not by the legislation itself, but via NDIS rule changes, ministerial determinations and processes that are not yet written, and that won’t need to be consulted on or agreed to. Changes that materially affect the well-being of people with a disability must be clearly stated in the Act and subject to parliamentary scrutiny.
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Need to Safeguard Self-Management Enforcing registration of all providers is intended to increase accountability and reduce fraud. This ignores the fact that much of the poor quality practice comes from large registered providers. The most cost-effective and best quality supports are often those driven by a participant or their families via self-managed plans, services for one and direct employment. Self-management makes good budgetary sense, but it must also be safeguarded because it provides the greatest protections to vulnerable people. The best support workers our son has had, and those with the most continuity and depth of familiarity with his needs have been those that are unregistered, sourced directly by our family and either directly employed or engaged via independent contract. He simply cannot receive the same quality of care from large, impersonal registered providers, where he becomes just another ‘client’ among many to staff with an unacceptably high burnout rate and turnover.
Potential Impact on Our Son:
Our son needs support workers who can develop a nuanced understanding of his limited functional communication, and his individual needs and preferences. His plans have generally acknowledged the complexity of his support needs. This is because planners have met with him in person, and have been able to access detailed reports from professionals with long-term understanding of his needs. Automated decision-making cannot sufficiently capture that nuance or detail in his individual circumstances and may leave his actual needs unmet. If a plan fails to meet his needs, we need to retain the right to timely appeal that this Bill seeks to remove.
His quality of life depends on supports to participate in everyday activity in his area, where he can become known and receive the protection of a welcoming community. Reduction of social and community participation funding will shrink his life into a more isolated and vulnerable one.
It is terrifying to us, and to thousands of families like ours, that the individual need of participants will no longer be the guiding principle of the NDIS if this Bill passes. The provision that any future Minister or CEO can arbitrarily, on budgetary grounds, cut people’s lifelines does not make the scheme more sustainable; it completely destroys its vision, principle and spirit.