SECOND SUPPLEMENTARY SUBMISSION TO THE SENATE COMMUNITY
AFFAIRS LEGISLATION COMMITTEE INQUIRY
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future
Generations) Bill 2026
The NDIS ‘Future Generations’ Bill: The government rhetoric and public
debate about the NDIS has become disconnected from the evidence.
Tracy Leigh, NDIS participant and disability and consumer advocate, WESTERN AUSTRALIA 10 July 2026
This is an opinion piece that I wrote for publication but haven’t sent out yet. The important section I want the Committee to note is the section on whether the provisions in the Bill are constitutionally sound. I submit that many of them are not, particularly those provisions that undermine rather than give effect to the UNCRPD.
The NDIS Was Never Meant to Be Cheap
Since the Albanese government came to power, Australians have been told a simple story about the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) and why it needs reform.
The scheme has “grown beyond expectations”. Participant numbers are too high. Costs have “blown out”. Fraud is “rampant”. Sustainability requires tough decisions. Stringent anti fraud measures will protect participants. The story has been repeated so often by politicians, commentators and sections of the media that it is now treated as fact.
But it is not what the Productivity Commission actually said when it designed the NDIS in
- And it is not what Parliament was told when it created the scheme. The public debate about the NDIS has become disconnected from the evidence.
The NDIS Was Designed as an Investment, Not Simply a Cost
The suggestion that the Productivity Commission only examined what the NDIS would cost is misleading. It did the opposite.
The Commission was expressly directed by government to examine the costs, benefits, economic impacts, workforce implications and broader social outcomes of a national disability insurance scheme. The resulting report contains an entire chapter titled The Benefits of Reform, examining workforce participation, economic productivity, reduced
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pressure on carers, reduced reliance on crisis services and improved social, community and economic participation.
The Commission’s conclusion was not that the NDIS would be cheap. Its conclusion was that the benefits would justify the investment. That distinction has largely disappeared from contemporary debate. Today, NDIS expenditure is often presented as though it were equivalent to government consumption. The original architects of the scheme viewed it more like infrastructure: an investment designed to increase participation, reduce long-term costs and improve economic and social outcomes.
The Productivity Commission did not ask whether disability inclusion was free. It asked whether Australia could afford the cost of exclusion. Lost productivity. Reduced workforce participation. Carer burnout. Increased pressure on hospitals and social services. Social isolation. Poverty. Abuse. The Commission concluded that the existing system was already imposing enormous economic and human costs on Australian society. The NDIS was not conceived as a new expense. It was conceived as an investment to secure better outcomes for people with disabilities, their carers, informal supports and the community as a whole.
That the question has now become focused on costs and fraud is a reversal of the original intention of the NDIS, despite government propaganda claiming that it is being put “Back on Track”, restored to its original intention and being saved for “Future Generations”. Sadly, current participants are being thrown under the sustainability bus for the illusory benefit to “future generations”, who may not even qualify for the NDIS under the ever more stringent permanence criteria.
The Productivity Commission Never Claimed Participant Numbers Would Stop at
410,000
One of the most common claims being peddled by the government and media is that the Productivity Commission originally expected around 410,000 people to be on the NDIS, and that anything above that figure represents a failure of the scheme. That is not what the Commission said.
The Commission estimated that approximately 410,000 people would receive individually funded supports under what became Tier 3 of the NDIS once the scheme reached full implementation around 2018–19. The figure was a planning estimate based on the best available data at the time, not a permanent cap on participation.
Indeed, the Commission devoted extensive sections of its report to demographic change, improved identification of disability, early intervention and evolving community expectations. The report contemplated that demand and participation would change over time because disability itself is not static. Treating the 410,000 estimate as though it were a legislated ceiling fundamentally misunderstands the purpose of the modelling.
No expert economist would treat a forecast made in 2011 as a permanent limit on a national insurance scheme fifteen years later.
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What the Per Capita Analysis Found
A decade later, independent economic analysis reached a similar conclusion to the original Productivity Commission findings. The benefits far outweigh the costs.
In 2021, Per Capita examined the economic effects of the NDIS and concluded that the scheme generated approximately $2.25 in economic benefit for every dollar spent. That figure was not based solely on disability supports.
The analysis considered:
- increased workforce participation by people with disability;
- increased workforce participation by carers;
- higher incomes and tax revenues;
- reduced spending elsewhere in government systems;
- economic activity generated through disability support services; and
- multiplier effects flowing through local economies. Whether one accepts every aspect of the modelling is almost beside the point. The important fact is that serious economic analysis consistently evaluates both sides of the ledger. Current political and media discourse on the NDIS only sees the costs and the allegedly rampant fraud. The benefits are treated as though they do not exist, or must be sacrificed for future sustainability.
The Human Story Behind the Numbers
If Australians want to understand what the NDIS was originally designed to achieve, they need look no further than disability advocates such as Dr George Taleporos. Dr Taleporos was part of the movement that helped bring the NDIS into existence. He has spent decades arguing that disability support should not be measured solely by its cost, but by its capacity to enable people to participate in society on equal terms.
The Productivity Commission envisaged a scheme that would allow people with disability to study, work, contribute to their communities, raise families and participate in civic life. It was never about just providing basic support needs for the most profoundly disabled Australians to survive. Success was never measured by how little government spent. Success was measured by whether Australians with disability could live ordinary lives with dignity, independence and opportunity.
That vision was shared by thousands of disability advocates, families and carers who campaigned through Every Australian Counts for a scheme that recognised disability support as an investment in human potential rather than a budget liability. It was shared by most of the Parliament in 2013, including the now Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Minister for the NDIS Mark Butler. How that has changed now they are in government.
What Parliament Intended
When Julia Gillard introduced the NDIS legislation in 2012, she did not describe it as a budget repair measure. She described it as a nation-building reform.
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She told Parliament that disability could affect any Australian and that the purpose of the scheme was to ensure people with disability could live with dignity, choice and security rather than being forced into poverty and crisis. The legislation enacted in 2013 reflected that vision.
The Act established a person-centred model built around individual needs, choice and control. It expressly states that one of its objects is to give effect to Australia’s obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD). The Convention itself is built upon principles of dignity, autonomy, participation, inclusion and equality before the law.
The NDIS was therefore never conceived as a conventional welfare program. It was designed as a rights-based insurance scheme intended to provide supports according to individual need to any Australian who needed it.
Politicians who once campaigned alongside disability advocates for the NDIS as an investment in improving the lives of people with disabilities, now speak about it primarily through the language of sustainability, expenditure and budget pressures. That shift represents a significant departure from the way the scheme was originally presented to the Australian public.
The NDIS was sold as a nation-building reform. It was presented as a social insurance scheme that would improve lives, strengthen communities, increase workforce participation and ensure Australians with disability could exercise the same rights, opportunities and choices as everyone else. Today, the dominant political question is not what the scheme achieves, but what it costs.
That shift is particularly striking because Australians themselves appear to have retained a far more positive view of the NDIS than political debate would suggest. In 2023, focus group research commissioned by the Government found that Australians regarded the NDIS as one of the best uses of taxpayer money, alongside Medicare. Participants repeatedly described it as a moral obligation, a source of national pride and a fundamental government service. Even when presented with stories of fraud, waste and multi-billion-dollar cost overruns, respondents did not support cutting the scheme. Their concern was not that the NDIS cost too much, but that fraud and inefficiency might be used as a justification to reduce support for people with disability. That concern now appears remarkably prescient.
That narrative has been turned on its head by a consistently repeated media campaign, fed through government channels, which has served to undermine the so called “social license” of the NDIS. Disability advocates and people with disabilities are reporting levels of abuse and vilification from community and social interactions never seen before, even prior to the NDIS.
Why the Constitutional Question Matters
This is where the current reforms raise difficult questions. The debate about the NDIS is often framed as a policy dispute about funding. In reality, it may be something much more fundamental. One of the most overlooked aspects of the NDIS is that its legal foundation is inseparable from Australia’s obligations under the UNCRPD.
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The Explanatory Memorandum to the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment
(Getting the NDIS Back on Track No. 1) Bill 2024 (NDIS Back on Track Bill) states:
“An NDIS support will only be an NDIS support, and therefore Constitutionally supported, if the participant has a need for that support as a result of their impairment. This is consistent with the recommendations of the NDIS Review around taking a needs-based approach to planning and budget setting.”(emphasis added); and
“This item inserts proposed new section 10 which provides a definition for NDIS support. The definition serves two purposes. First, it provides a constitutional underpinning for the new planning framework (see item 36) by setting out the kinds of supports that the Commonwealth is constitutionally capable of funding. This is primarily accomplished by engaging with Australia’s obligations under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).
“The definition also relies on the relevant aspects of the social welfare power under the Constitution.” (emphasis added)
These statements are significant because they link constitutional validity to individual impairment-related need. The NDIS Act does not merely acknowledge the UNCRPD. It was enacted to give effect to it. In the ‘Supplementary Explanatory Memorandum’ to the NDIS Back on Track Bill, the Commonwealth stated that constitutional support for the NDIS comes principally from the external affairs power under section 51(xxix) of the Constitution and Australia’s international human rights obligations. That has profound implications.
The constitutional foundation of the NDIS has always rested upon support being directed to individuals because of their disability. That is a fundamentally individualised concept. It is not a class-based concept; neither classes of supports nor classes of participants. As a result, legitimate questions arise when legislative instruments seek to exclude broad categories of supports or participants, or impose blanket restrictions that operate regardless of a participant’s individual circumstances.
Whether particular rules are legally valid is ultimately a matter for the courts. But the legal issue exists because Parliament itself repeatedly emphasised that the NDIS was intended to operate through individualised assessment and individualised support in compliance with Australia’s international treaty obligations.
The UNCRPD’s principles of dignity, autonomy, participation, inclusion and individualised support are not simply aspirational values. They form part of the legal architecture upon which the scheme was built. Without that foundation, the constitutional basis for a national disability insurance scheme becomes far less certain. The NDIS exists because Parliament chose to transform disability rights from an international commitment into domestic law.
That is why current debates about broad exclusions, class-based restrictions and the future direction of the scheme are about more than policy. They go to the question of whether the NDIS is continuing to operate in the manner Parliament originally intended when it enacted legislation to give effect to Australia’s disability rights obligations.
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We Need an Honest Debate
Reasonable people can disagree about how much the NDIS should cost. They can disagree about fraud prevention, market stewardship, pricing arrangements and administrative reform. What Australians should not accept is a debate built on myths.
The Productivity Commission did not design a scheme with a fixed participant cap. It did not assess costs in isolation from benefits. It did not recommend abandoning individualised support. And Parliament did not establish the NDIS as a narrow budgetary exercise. The NDIS was created because Australia decided that disability should no longer condemn people to poverty, exclusion and uncertainty.
Before governments remake the scheme in the name of sustainability, they should be honest about what the original scheme was designed to achieve and why they are not taking into consideration the full range of costs offsets and benefits. Only a whole of government sustainability analysis, particularly focusing on cost shifting to other Federal budget lines and State and Territory budgets, will expose the true cost/benefit position.
The tragedy of the current debate is that politicians now speak about the NDIS as though it were a budget burden. By implication, this invokes a perception that people with disability a burden the economy. That narrative is a far cry from the original intention of the NDIS, being to ensure people with disability could live with dignity, choice and security with individualised support packages, rather than being forced into invisibility, poverty and crisis.
The Productivity Commission, Julia Gillard’s government, disability advocates and Every Australian Counts spoke about it as a nation-building reform. As a result of the Albanese government’s so called “reforms” and careful manipulation of the public narrative, Australia stopped asking what exclusion costs the nation and started asking only what inclusion costs the budget.
Going by statistics, many of those asking that question will ironically need the very scheme they are attempting or supporting to dismantle. Tomorrow it could be you.
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