Submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee
Inquiry into the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for
Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submitted by: Christopher Luke Hermann
Capacity: NDIS participant’s carer and family member
Date: July 2026
Introduction
I am writing as someone with long, direct, unpaid experience of the NDIS. For roughly fourteen years I was the primary carer for my mother, who is an NDIS participant. I also speak to the situation of my uncle, a participant with a lifelong intellectual disability. I am not a service provider or an organisation with an interest in the sector. I am a family member who has spent years navigating this scheme in practice, and who will watch the people I love bear the consequences of what this Committee recommends and what the government chooses to put into practice. This submission specifically addresses the operational timeline of the proposed amendments, the definition of NDIS supports, and the impact of automated decision-making on participant review rights.
I ask the Committee to recommend that the Bill not proceed in its current form. If it is to proceed, I ask that the support-determination reductions — in particular the cuts to social, civic and community participation — not commence until the functional-capacity framework and the replacement “foundational supports” are actually in place, funded, and independently evaluated. My reasons follow, grounded in two real situations.
- The category cuts strip supports that are essential, not discretionary My mother lives with a serious psychosocial disability, compounded by severe physical impairment that badly limits her mobility. In practice she can no longer safely manage a household, prepare meals reliably, use the toilet, do her shopping, or visit the doctor alone. The supports that keep her independent and safe are in-home assistance and a support worker who accompanies her when she goes out.
Under the current plan structure, much of that support sits in the social and community participation category. That coding reflects how the supports were approved, not what they actually are. Functionally, they are core assistance with daily living: without them she cannot self-care, feed herself properly, or leave the house safely. The label understates the need.
This matters directly to the Bill. The proposed support determination would cut the social, civic and community participation category by 50 per cent from 1 October 2026. For a participant like my mother, that is not the trimming of a lifestyle extra. It is the removal of the scaffolding that keeps her alive. A reform that reduces supports by administrative category, rather than by whether the support is functionally essential, will cut deepest into exactly the people who face a literal threat to their survival without it.
- The sequencing removes support before any replacement exists The cuts to participation budgets begin in October 2026. The functional-capacity assessment framework that is meant to determine future eligibility and need does not commence until January
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- The foundational supports that are supposed to catch what the NDIS drops are not yet designed, not yet funded in practice, and not yet operating anywhere in the country.
This is the heart of the problem. Support is being withdrawn on a budget timeline, while the systems meant to replace it sit years behind. For the period in between, there is simply a gap — a participant loses funded support with nothing standing behind it. No family should be expected to absorb a gap in care based on a vague promise of future state-funded support.
- This is cost-shifting, not saving Removing NDIS funding does not remove disability-related need. The need does not disappear; it moves. When my mother’s support is cut, the cost and risk transfer to unpaid carers, to Centrelink, to public hospitals, and to already-stretched state mental health services. That is not a saving to the public purse. It is a transfer of cost from a scheme designed to provide support efficiently to systems that respond later, in crisis, and at greater expense — and to families who carry it for free. For fourteen years I was one of those unpaid carers. Securing adequate NDIS funding allowed me to leave home and start a family. I have a son now and live overseas: I cannot simply go back to my previous role and have no siblings who can fill in any gaps this bill is likely to create.
The government’s projected savings should be read against what other systems, and unpaid carers, are expected to absorb. I would urge the Committee to insist on a whole-of-government cost analysis before any cuts commence, so that Parliament can see the true fiscal and human cost rather than only the line item removed from the NDIS budget.
- Weakened review and automated decisions will hurt those least able to fight back My uncle has an intellectual disability. He is largely non-verbal, cannot live independently, and has been cared for his entire life by my grandmother, who is now too old to continue. When his family sought an increase in his funding to secure adequate care, the increase was refused and his existing funding was cut instead. An appeal is possible in principle, but it requires specialist appointments and reports, and the family members who could coordinate it are elderly, working, or live too far away.
His situation is the rule, not the exception, for the participants most exposed by this Bill. Expanding automated decision-making and narrowing review rights will land hardest on people who cannot self advocate and whose carers cannot realistically mount an appeal. Strong, accessible, human review is not a technicality for these participants. It is the only thing standing between a wrong decision and a person who cannot contest it.
Recommendations
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That the Committee recommend the Bill not proceed in its current form.
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That, if the Bill proceeds, no support-determination reductions commence until the functional- capacity framework and the foundational supports are operational, funded, and independently evaluated.
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That the Bill be amended to prohibit the reduction of any support deemed functionally essential to a participant’s daily living and safety, irrespective of the administrative category it is budgeted under.
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That strong, accessible, human review rights be preserved, and that automated decision- making not be used to reduce a participant’s supports.
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- That a whole-of-government cost analysis be published — covering Centrelink, health, housing, state mental health services and unpaid carers — before any cuts take effect.
Closing
I understand the argument that the scheme must be sustainable. But sustainability cannot mean removing support from people who cannot live safely without it, on a timeline that arrives before any replacement exists, and calling the resulting transfer of cost onto families and other public systems a saving. I ask the Committee to protect the people this Bill puts most at risk — people like my mother, my uncle, and their family members — and to recommend that these cuts not proceed until the supports meant to replace them genuinely exist. Societies are often judged by how they treat their most vulnerable, and Australia’s should be judged harshly if the bill is permitted to pass in its current form.
Thank you for the opportunity to make this submission.
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