National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 354
Submission Date: 1 June 2026
Dear Community Affairs Legislation Committee,
Senate Inquiry: National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
We appreciate this opportunity to provide a submission to the Community Affairs Legislation Committee as part of the Senate Inquiry into the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 (the Proposed NDIS Bill).
Who we are
The Protect Our NDIS Alliance is a volunteer-only grassroots alliance of disabled people and allies from across Australia, formed on 26 April 2026 to protect our National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) in response to the alarming speech given by Disability Minister Mark Butler at the National Press Club on 22 April 2026. We called for a National Day of Action on Saturday 9 May 2026, and organised 10 in-person actions, and 1 online action. Thousands of people in every state and territory across Australia turned out to oppose cuts to the NDIS with less than 14 days’ notice. You can find more information here.
Our key messages: ● Protect our NDIS ● Cuts harm people ● Disabled people deserve dignity ● NDIS benefits us all
Our demands:
● Stop the cuts, don’t put a price on our rights ● Don’t kick people off the NDIS, expand safeguards ● Tax the gas corporations and billionaires ● Expand disability services, human rights belong to all
We secured 60 organisational endorsements from across Australia for our National Day of Action and the above demands, in a 7 day period. You can find the full list of endorsements here.
Limitations of this Submission
Given the extremely short timeframe of less than 13 business days to provide submissions to this Inquiry (including the extension), it has been impossible for us as an Alliance to consult with all of
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the disabled people and allies who organised with us for the National Day of Action on Saturday, 9 May 2026. As a grassroots alliance of volunteers, we have done our best to obtain input from as many of our cohort as possible to prepare this submission. However, because of the timeframe limitations imposed it cannot be a complete or full account of the experiences of disabled people, carers, parents, or disability workers on the impact of the Proposed NDIS Bill.
This submission has been prepared by multiple disabled volunteers from across Australia, to the best of our capacity, in the frankly inaccessible and deeply inappropriately short timeframe for Inquiry. We do not claim to speak for all of the disabled people and allies involved in the National Day of Action, but have done our best to include as many perspectives as possible when compiling this submission.
Likewise, as we can only speak to our own collective experience, this submission must be read in conjunction with and as part of the wider body of work of other disabled people and professionals who have given their time and energy to make their own submissions to this Inquiry. We would also encourage the Committee to be mindful of the financial benefits that some providers or organisations may receive from the Proposed NDIS Bill, when reading those submissions. For the avoidance of doubt, the Protect Our NDIS Alliance receives no funding from anywhere.
While we have not had capacity to read all submissions already made to the Committee, and therefore this is not an exhaustive list, we particularly support the recommendations and input provided in the following submissions:
● Submission 19: Jarrod Sandell-Hay ● Submission 32: Occupational Therapy Society (OTSi) ● Not yet available on the submission website: ○ Submission from The Australian Neurodivergent Parents’ Association (ANPA) ○ Submission from Our Fair Go ○ Submission from Children and Young People with Disability Australia (CYDA) - particularly the evidence included from disabled children directly ○ Joint submission by Sisters Inside and National Network of Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls ○ Submission from Nicole Moran titled “The Line We Hold”
Please note that due to the extremely short timeframe, and our capacity as disabled people, there is less consistency in style in this submission than we would like. We appreciate the Committee’s understanding.
Recommendations
You can find supporting evidence for each recommendation by reading further in this submission. This is not an exhaustive list of recommendations, as we have not had sufficient time to consider all impacts. However, these are at least some of the recommendations that we would like the Committee to action.
Recommendation 1: The Proposed NDIS Bill must be rejected in full.
The government must engage with the findings of the Disability Royal Commission Final Report delivered on 29 September 2023, noting that barely any of the 222 recommendations have been implemented, and none have been implemented in full. Disabled people provided lived expertise in raw, traumatic and vulnerable ways to fully engage with the Disability Royal Commission process in good faith. Many of the recommendations directly affect the subject matter of the Proposed NDIS Bill, and the government has not provided any indication of including this evidence as part of
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developing reform of the NDIS or in preparing the Proposed NDIS Bill. We have identified only some of the egregious proposals in this Bill in this submission, any one of which will lead to real risk and harm (including death). The government must engage in full co-design with disabled participants and those directly affected to develop a plan to properly and safely reform the NDIS, and must do this by starting from the basis of the findings of the Disability Royal Commission. Proceeding with the Proposed NDIS Bill is an irresponsible and dangerous course of action, with real risk and harm (including death) a guaranteed outcome.
If the Proposed NDIS Bill is not rejected in full, we make the following recommendations.
Recommendation 2: The time period for Inquiry must be long enough to ensure that full and accessible input from communities directly affected has been obtained, and at minimum several more months of fully participatory engagement must be undertaken before any support is provided to the Proposed NDIS Bill.
This time period was too short to allow for full and accessible engagement with the Inquiry by communities who are directly affected by the Proposed NDIS Bill.
Recommendation 3: The Proposed NDIS Bill must be amended so that no participants are removed from the NDIS, regardless of whether participants are redirected to alternative supports.
You cannot remove disabled people off the NDIS until there are culturally safe, accessible, and appropriate alternative supports in place developed through co-design, and fully tested and independently assessed by expert professionals and disabled people. There are no such alternative supports available. There is no collective agreement from the States and Territories to even start developing such alternative supports.
Recommendation 4: The Proposed NDIS Bill must not give the minister unilateral powers.
The Proposed NDIS Bill gives the minister sweeping powers to decide funding caps, price guides, remove entire categories of support, and more, with no Parliamentary oversight. Given that many people depend on the NDIS for their survival, this will kill a lot of people. The minister is not required to have relevant experience, knowledge or lived experience of disability. It is beyond irresponsible to give one person the power to make sweeping changes like this. This is a role that will change depending on the government of the day, with no safeguards in place to protect against harm and misuse.
Recommendation 5: The Proposed NDIS Bill must continue to fund one-on-one support work.
Support workers provided their input in full below, linked here. In particular, like many other changes in the Proposed NDIS Bill, this change will shift costs, rather than save costs. Many support workers would be reliant on income support payments such as Jobseeker through Centrelink were it not for their shift work as support workers. Removing jobs for support workers will shift costs from the economy to Centrelink, and cause some small businesses to close down entirely.
Recommendation 6: Functional capacity assessments must not be standardised, and must be carried out by an appropriately qualified assessor who is part of the disabled participant’s treating professional team.
We explain below the many and varied reasons why this change must be opposed stridently.
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Recommendation 7: NDIS participants must retain access to a timely right to appeal National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) decisions at all stages.
The right to appeal is a fundamental human right to safeguard access, and minimise harm.
Recommendation 8: The NDIS must not transform from a disability support framework into a highly conditional compliance regime.
Provisions in the bill grant the NDIA vast powers of search and seizure, apparently without warrant, the ability to issue fines and incarcerate people. This criminalises disabled people on the innate and immutable basis of our disability.
Recommendation 9: NDIS participants must not lose the timely right to review.
The proposed new timeframe for the NDIA to decide whether to complete a plan reassessment will be extended from 21 days to 90 days; if the Agency fails or refuses to answer either way, this lack of decision cannot be reviewed. This strips participants of our right to appeal to the Administrative Review Tribunal where over 70% of the NDIA’s wrongful decisions have been overturned.
Further recommendations
Given the extremely short time frame, and our lack of capacity as disabled people, we have not been able to succinctly describe any further recommendations from the detailed response below. We encourage the Committee to read our detailed response with a view to identifying further recommendations from the content. We appreciate the Committee’s understanding.
Detailed response to the Proposed NDIS Bill
We have identified some of the changes proposed in the Proposed NDIS Bill and provided more comments below. This is not an exhaustive list of the harms and impacts of the Proposed NDIS Bill.
CONTENTS
● Access and Planning including functional capacity assessments and automation of decision making processes ● Permanence, Appropriate Treatment and Bodily Autonomy ● Require direct link between impairment and support need ● Restrict eligibility based on access to other services / family ● People losing support without alternative systems being established ● Increase in Ministerial Powers ● Changes to Reasonable and Necessary Criteria ● Focus on Cost Savings ● Reviews, Appeals and Participant Rights ● Compliance, Administration and Safeguards, including mandatory registration
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Access and Planning
Functional Capacity and Whole-of-Person Assessment The bill makes functional capacity, assessed via a one-off standardised assessment, a key eligibility test for initial access to the NDIS. We oppose this change.
● Most NDIS participants have already provided functional capacity assessment reports, sometimes multiple times, to the NDIA in order to obtain access, and often throughout the life of their plan. Those recommendations from professionals like occupational therapists, and other specialists and allied health professionals have been ignored or overruled, and sometimes not even read by the NDIA. These professionals are experiencing a moral injury from the NDIA when it ignores their expertise and this has led to professionals making hard decisions to not conduct assessments for disabled participants as they know the NDIA will disregard them or dismiss their clinical experience and qualifications. ● We have no faith that functional capacity assessments are currently being understood or implemented by the NDIA, and this will only become a greater problem if a standardised assessment tool is used. We know that automated systems are at high risk of error, and disability is a complex interacting experience that is highly individualised not just between different disabilities, but also between people with the same disability. A standardised model would end up providing dramatically insufficient supports for some, and potentially unnecessary supports for others. ● The delivery of the assessment by a non-allied health professional means that the person cannot properly assess impairment. The suggestion of a one off three-hour session will not be accessible for many disabilities, particularly energy and focus-limiting disabilities. ● Critical to effective assessment of functional capacity is having an assessor who has a contextual and historical understanding of the individual disabled person’s experience. This can only be obtained by engaging with the individual’s treating professionals who have often years of knowledge of the individual’s history, disability, and impairments. In relation to communication challenges, a shared language is only obtained over the course of a therapeutic relationship, and an assessor with contextual and historical understanding of the disabled participant is able to properly interpret the information provided to them. An external assessor without an existing clinical relationship cannot interpret their observations within the full clinical picture. The snapshot at one specific point in time is not necessarily representative of the needs of the participant. ● Our experience is that: ○ The quality of support received by the participant at that time will directly affect the way the participant presents themselves to the assessment. For example, dressing, showering or other self care, will impact regulation, appearance, ability for participants to attend, and to engage on the day. ○ The requirement for the participant to demonstrate the level of impairment that is their day-to day reality, at the specific time of the assessment, often places the participant at high risk of crisis, and leads to extreme recovery periods. ○ Standardised assessments cannot be delivered in the varied ways needed to properly communicate to participants with intellectual disabilities, or other cognitive impairments, and will necessarily provide false data as a result. ○ Capacity is built over time, and fluctuates even over a day, so a short one-off standardised assessment cannot capture the reality of an impairment. ○ Capacity assessments must take in environmental, financial and other contexts, because these directly impact the level of impairment experienced.
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○ A one size fits all functional capacity test will not be culturally sensitive to Aboriginal or migrant communities. It will have implicit Eurocentric bias, further entrenching discrimination in the NDIS. ○ A one size fits all test that is not cognisant of fluctuating disabilities or fatigue will exclude a majority of disabled people, including the large numbers of people with Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), Long Covid and Fibromyalgia and related conditions. This is inappropriate at this time. When more and more people are getting Long Covid, now is the time to expand the NDIS to accommodate the large numbers of newly disabled people.
Functional capacity assessments may not adequately capture fluctuating or non-apparent disabilities (s9B)
● Long Covid and ME/CFS are fluctuating disabilities for many people. At a time when Covid is unleashing fluctuating disability across the population, it is important for the NDIS to recognise fluctuating disability. If our government is going to fail to implement strategies to prevent Covid transmission, they at least need to provide disability support for all the people impacted by their negligence. ● Many disabilities are dynamic and fluctuating, and many disabilities are invisible.
Whole-of-person It is absolutely critical to assess the whole person. The Proposed NDIS Bill is a direct response to a recent Federal Court decision which confirmed through extensive professional expert evidence from specialists, allied health professionals and others, that disability cannot be isolated from the environment and personal circumstances of the disabled person, in the same way that the impact of the “primary disability” cannot be separated from the impact of comorbid disabilities. (We separately criticise the NDIA’s use of “primary disability” to assess access and supports.) Assessing impairment without considering the full picture of poverty, housing, transport, family supports, family violence, culture, geography and access to services will risk drastically underestimating support needs.
Reassessing current NDIS participants
a) Obtaining reliable supports is harder than accessing Voluntary Assisted Dying Since the Proposed NDIS Bill was made public, more NDIS participants have sought assistance from their support coordinators and support workers and other advisory bodies to access the Voluntary Assisted Dying program, as reported by mainstream media most recently on 26 May 2026. It is easier to access Voluntary Assisted Dying than it is to obtain supports to live. This is appalling, and the risk of pressuring people into an assisted death is too high.
NDIS participants were already required to unfairly and onerously provide ongoing evidence of their permanent disabilities and capacity levels, and have been facing unfair and unfounded cuts to supports for some time. Some NDIS participants have had the energy to appeal these unfair decisions, which has led to cases before the Administrative Review Tribunal, where in the vast majority of cases, the NDIA has been required to reinstate the cut supports. However, in that intervening time, the NDIS participant has to survive without the supports they need to live. NDIS participants were already considering suicide and accessing Voluntary Assisted Dying processes, not because of the impact of their disability itself, but because their NDIS supports were being cut or the NDIA were ignoring their treating professional’s reports and evidence of need.
The Proposed NDIS Bill includes a requirement that every NDIS participant, regardless of circumstance or evidence already provided as to permanence of their disability and
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impairments, will be reassessed using the new eligibility requirements. We have already elucidated the serious problems with the proposed eligibility requirements, and in particular the mandatory standardised functional capacity assessment process. What this means, is that it is a guarantee that NDIS participants who deserve access to the NDIS, will be improperly cut from the NDIS.
b) Waste of cost and time The explanatory rhetoric underlying these proposed changes has been fully focused on fraud and rorts alongside a need to cut costs. A process that asks participants to repeatedly prove permanence is a waste of time and money, while imposing repeated extreme hardship on disabled participants and their treating professionals.
c) Contrary to the intent of the NDIS Requiring repeated reassessment of eligibility also runs counter to the intention of the NDIS to build and maintain overall capacity through proactive access to supports. It was a foundational ideal of the NDIS that once a disabled participant is provided with NDIS support, they would be able to more equitably engage with work, care for their families, and participate in community life to the enrichment of all around them.
In this regard, functional capacity assessment after access to NDIS supports will likely show an improvement of capacity. For those that do improve with the supports provided, the intended outcome of previously accessed formal support must not be used punitively to remove ongoing access to formal support. This improvement is solely due to access to NDIS supports themselves, and is proof that these support should continue, not proof that this participant should be rejected from the NDIS.
Ceasing support that has already been successful in increasing capacity will create huge costs to the economy. Disabled workers who rely on NDIS support to access work will be forced to leave their jobs, and cost shifts all of these support needs to hospitals and other systems. This will also perversely influence NDIS recipients to avoid improving too much, for fear of losing the supports we need to live and thrive.
Permanence, Appropriate Treatment and Bodily Autonomy
The Proposed NDIS Bill adds requirements that require a person to prove the ‘permanence’ of their disability. Disabled people are also required to exhaust ‘all appropriate treatment’ to be NDIS eligible.
Our experiences: ● Bodily autonomy and informed consent must be preserved as a priority. Participants are already pressured to undertake harmful treatments under the existing NDIS rules. The proposed bill, if passed, will make the situation significantly worse. People should not be compelled to choose between undertaking treatments that are harmful, experimental, or radical (like Cochlear implants, bleach treatment, or Graded Exercise Therapy) and accessing essential disability support through the NDIS. Shouldn’t it be our bodies, our choice? ● Who currently makes the decision about what is considered appropriate treatments? At the moment, individualised specialist, allied health and other professional evidence is provided to the NDIA to demonstrate what constitutes an appropriate treatment for our personal medical, social, and whole of person context. Our experience has been that even when we have undertaken and documented all appropriate treatment, the NDIA still may not recognise the expert evidence that we provide. This new Bill will further
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entrench systemic bias and inequity while reducing autonomy. NDIA staff and the minister are not qualified to independently decide what appropriate treatments may be, or to make decisions about permanence of our disability support needs.
Require direct link between impairment and support need
● This proposed change is directly responding to a Federal Court decision that the NDIA must consider the whole person when assessing their support needs. In practice, it is impossible to separate comorbid disabilities from each other, as impairments often increase due to multiple disabilities, and it is this full picture that must be used to form eligibility decisions regarding access. The NDIA is currently ignoring this reality, and this Bill will formalise the unrealistic separation of impacts into law. Separating functional impact between comorbid disabilities ignores all expert and peer reviewed professional evidence about how multiple disabilities impact overall function, in direct opposition to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). ● It will be especially difficult to determine which support needs “arise directly” from a singular disability in cases of disabilities that are not yet well understood by science due to insufficient research funding. ● It is deeply alarming that the Proposed NDIS Bill seems designed to overturn Court decisions which have revealed systemic errors, problems in process and implementation and extensive harm to NDIS participants. We would encourage the government to instead consider how to address the systemic errors, problems in process and implementation and extensive harm to NDIS participants, rather than propose legislation which entrenches them. This specific change must be opposed. ● Our experience is that the NDIA is already informally implementing the dangerous approach of: ○ identifying a primary disability (against evidence that there is very rarely one primary disability, as comorbid disabilities interact); and ○ refusing to fund supports for impairments that they have decided are caused by a disability that is not the primary disability. ● NDIA is already restricting access to supports even in situations where disabled participants have demonstrated need through expert evidence. This Bill further entrenches this incredibly harmful practice and makes it legal. ● Our experience is: ○ The NDIA has already provided plans where funding is allocated for some facets of their disability while not funding other facets. This includes plans which allocate funding for Supported Independent Living (SIL) and Specialist Disability Accommodation (SDA) supports and support workers (on the basis that these are required supports for a wheelchair user), but not funding the actual wheelchair itself. There is no evidence based justification for funding support to mitigate the impact of a recognised impairment (cannot walk) but not funding a critical mobility aid. ○ Funding in plans is often provided for treatment that is not needed for the participant, but which the NDIA has decided is needed for that type of disability, while refusing funding for supports or treatment that is needed and evidenced for that participant. There is no basis in evidence for this approach, but this experience has been shared by many participants. When there is a department wide focus on cost cutting, it would make sense to only fund the supports a participant actually needs! ○ The NDIA sometimes claims that treatment is duplicate treatment and therefore will not fund the second treatment, despite supporting evidence and despite expert recommendation. Individual professionals each have different capabilities and specialties, and therefore cannot interchangeably provide the same 8 of 16
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treatment. All recommendations made by an individual participant’s treating professionals need to be funded. Costs can be saved by funding appropriate treatments without expensive legal battles, and not insisting on funding treatments that are inappropriate for the participant. ○ Current decision making already does not conform to the existing legislation and rules. Implementation of the rules and law is inconsistent between planners, some have understanding of the rules, many do not. They report training provided internally has required them to take certain decisions, without any basis in law. Unless sweeping cultural changes within the NDIA are made alongside legislative changes, there is a strong likelihood that planners and the NDIA will continue this error of implementation and increase systemic errors of people falling through the cracks.
Restrict eligibility based on access to other services / family
Experience shared by current support workers: ● Without support workers working alongside them, disabled participants do not have the support to grow their capacity. Unpaid carers and families can provide some support, but informal support systems are overwhelmingly exhausted and have all the other aspects of life to manage. A paid support worker is required to properly provide disabled participants the help they need to live and thrive. ● One-to-one support work is a necessary part of the full support picture. There are some circumstances where group environment support is appropriate. However, this should never be a unilateral decision and must be made with agency by the disabled participant as recommended by the disabled participant’s treating professionals. Support workers must also have the appropriate training and experience in providing group support care. ● Support workers are already operating at the limits of their capacity, as are carers and families- the workload they are expected to complete is continuing to increase, and funding periods shortening reduces the time in which they can complete these tasks. Requiring support workers to solely provide group supports, especially where there are many high support needs’ participants within that group scenario, will risk the health and wellbeing of participants and workers. Most training programs for support workers are trained in one-to-one support, and group support is an entirely different skill from individual one-to-one support. This skill set does not automatically transfer, which leaves the worker at higher risk of harm in these group environments. ● Support workers also gain valuable on the job training and experience which better prepares them for future allied health professional roles. Allied health fields often require unpaid placements, but paid support work provides additional opportunities for more diverse experiences within the field of care work. This is a win-win because you are getting partially trained people able to provide their knowledge during this period. Significantly limiting the opportunities for individualised paid support work to the extent proposed by the Proposed NDIS Bill will lead to a lessening of expertise in the allied health field, and other disability fields. This proposed change will seriously damage the workforce, and Australia’s pool of skilled workers, across the disability and care industries. ● Additionally, like many other changes in the Proposed NDIS Bill, this change will shift costs between public systems, rather than reduce costs overall. Many support workers would become reliant on income support payments such as Jobseeker through Centrelink in the absence of flexible shift work as support workers. Removing jobs for support workers will shift costs from the NDIS to Centrelink, and cause some small businesses to close down entirely.
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Requirement to pursue access to other services or schemes Workers compensation and motor vehicle collision insurance are difficult and often traumatic to access. People should not be excluded from the NDIS on the basis of theoretical entitlement to compensation: in reality many people will not be able to gain access to all theoretically available programs, or the process of seeking access could in itself cause them severe harm and worsening of impairments. These systems impose high administrative and emotional burdens, and often delay or deny necessary treatment, until the insurer is taken to court years later. What are NDIS participants supposed to do in the meantime?
Our experience is that NDIA is currently demanding that participants go through, for example, the Mobility Aid Subsidy Scheme (MASS) in Qld to seek funding for mobility aids instead of obtaining funding from the NDIA. The reality is that the Qld state-based MASS will not accept applications from NDIA participants, and in addition do not have funding available to fund the full cost of a suitable wheelchair. Participants cannot personally afford the full cost of $50,000 power wheelchairs, nor the partially subsidised $25,000 of the cost that would theoretically be covered by programs such as MASS. How else can a disabled participant be expected to access this lifesaving mobility aid?
The expectation that external programs be accessed in parallel to NDIS funding demonstrates that the NDIA has a fundamental misunderstanding of what alternative schemes are realistically available to participants. Changing the NDIS to require that participants exhaust all alternatives, or obtain alternative sources of funding, must be opposed.
Increased reliance on parental responsibility arguments. ● This is a serious attack on women’s rights. Women will overwhelmingly be the cohort expected to take on additional carer burden. Other submissions have outlined this impact in greater detail. We would direct you to the submission from the ANPA.
Increased reliance on informal supports and unpaid carers ● Increasing reliance on informal support systems will increasingly trap disabled people in abusive situations. The reality of our formal support systems outside the NDIS is that they are inaccessible for disabled people. Often it is the lifesaving formal supports funded by the NDIS that have allowed a disabled person to escape domestic and family violence. Removing these supports leads to increased risk and harm. ● Many people do not have informal supports or access to family supports. What happens to these people? They suffer alone, or they die.
People losing support without alternative systems being established
Disabled children and adults increasingly directed toward Foundational Supports / Thriving Kids pathways ● Directing disabled children towards these pathways will create unnecessary additional strain on our school system. There is a teacher shortage. Teachers are already under enormous strain. Teachers are not properly trained to do disability support work. ● There is no collective agreement from states and territories to fund or implement Thriving Kids or any other “foundational supports”. There has been no communication about the way this will be implemented, no commitment to fund or progress development of the programs, there is no smooth transition in existence, and removing participants from the
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NDIS without fully tested and appropriate replacement supports will harm participants to an extreme degree. There is nowhere for them to go.
Increase in Ministerial Powers The Proposed NDIS Bill gives the power for the minister to make unilateral decisions, including:
● Funding changes to entire support categories. ○ For example, it has been proposed by the government that a 50% cut to social and community participation funding, and a 10% cut to capacity building funding be put in place from 1 October 2026. However, the Proposed NDIS Bill allows the minister to declare arbitrary cuts to funding for entire support categories. ● Greater reliance on legislative instruments and delegated rules. The minister may temporarily modify how parts of the Act operate (Schedule 5 transitional powers). ● The minister also has greater influence over pricing arrangements.
Overall comments
Given that many people depend on the NDIS for their survival, this will kill a lot of people.
The minister is not required to have any relevant professional experience, knowledge or lived experience of disability. It is beyond irresponsible to give one person the power to make sweeping changes like this. This is a role that will change depending on the government of the day, with no safeguards in place to protect against harm and misuse.
The first proposal is a perfect example: the government is proposing a 50% cut to social, civic and community participation funding. This has no basis in evidence or even in alignment with the intentions of the NDIS itself. The goal of cutting this funding is to re-institutionalise disabled people and lock us in our homes. This is founded in eugenics, and opposition to this was one of the founding reasons for creation of the NDIS.
There is a fundamental misunderstanding of the foundational intent of the NDIS. The social, civic and community participation funding is a requirement to fulfil Australia’s obligations under the CRPD. Other submissions have examined the breaches of the CRPD obligations in closer detail, and we direct you to Jarrod Sandell-Hay’s and Our Fair Go’s submissions as an example.
Proposal: The minister may impose support caps
Response: These funding cuts are just straight up eugenics, and will push more people into group-based arrangements.
Proposal: 50% cut to social and community funding
Response: We have a right to participate in public life. Under the Covid lockdowns heaps of people were angry and upset about not being able to leave their houses. Why is it considered acceptable for disabled people to be held under lockdown forever?
Changes to Reasonable and Necessary Criteria
The Proposed NDIS Bill changes the tests planners must apply when deciding whether a support is funded. Cost, informal supports and parental responsibility may play a larger role in funding decisions.
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This is a fundamental rewrite of the intentions of the NDIS. This change is in direct opposition to the CRPD and must be opposed in entirety. We refer to Jarrod Sandell-Hay’s and Our Fair Go’s submissions which deal with this area well.
Focus on Cost Savings
Changes proposed include: ● Greater emphasis on lower-cost alternatives when funding supports ● Move toward more standardised planning and assessment-driven budgets ● Unspent funds removed at plan renewal (s50A) Cost must not be a consideration of whether a support should be funded. The efficacy and suitability of the support for the individual disabled participant should be the marker for assessing funding support.
We have already outlined very clearly the errors with standardised planning and assessment-driven budgets in our above comments on the proposed change to eligibility and access. Does the government want another Robo-debt? This is a real and serious risk and must be opposed.
The change to remove unspent funds at plan renewal is not in line with the justifications for this Bill. This will severely impact fluctuating and dynamic disabilities, where the support needs vary over time.
A focus on reducing cost as a primary consideration is already in evidence in the NDIA processes. Our experience is that:
● The NDIA has been amending plans removing 1:1 supports and requiring support to be delivered at a 3:1 ratio. The functional impact of this is that people are forcing people into group homes. We note that the NDIA claims that 3:1 ratio is not a group home, but this is a meaningless technical distinction. You are forced to live in a shared living arrangement with other people in order to obtain the supports you need to live. ● Many disabled people have fought for independence, and live alone in order to properly and safely manage their health and wellbeing. This is also regularly listed as a goal in NDIS plans! This is part of the foundational goals of the NDIS - for disabled people to work towards independence, through obtaining access to supports. Other disabled people have carefully built a living environment that meets their needs, either they own their own home, or have healthy rental arrangements with housemates, or similar. However, in order to obtain the supports that they need, the NDIA is requiring these people to uproot their lives at great cost to move to institutionalised SDA/SIL environments. This is not sustainable financially. ● SDA/SIL living environments are extremely difficult to access, and concerns with the delivery model have been well established. Many SDA/SILs are also intentionally leaving one of the three spaces vacant to reduce their own costs. At a time when the government claims that they wish to reduce costs, we suggest that the government investigate and address the rorts and cost blowouts evidenced in the investment model of the SDA/SIL. We encourage the government to review the original financial modelling completed at the time the NDIS was introduced which revealed that this was not an efficient or cost-effective way to provide lifetime support. ● In order to qualify for and receive SDA/SIL living environments, disabled participants are required to leave their families and their children because families are not allowed in SDA/SIL living environments. Location of work, other informal supports, or formal
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supports are not considered when allocating group homes. Our experience is that the NDIA is not considering the financial and social cost of rebuilding an entire support team, or to engage new treating professionals accessible from the new living environment. ● There are many and recent accounts of fraud, and neglect leading to death, by SDA/SIL providers, and yet the Proposed NDIS Bill does not address this in any way. In fact, the changes will only encourage SDA/SIL providers to continue to operate in a profit-driven manner, which fuels the fraud and neglect.
Reviews, Appeals and Participant Rights
Restricting ability to request unscheduled plan reassessments
Other submissions have explained the reasons for unscheduled plan reassessments due to life changes, death of a support worker or carer, and other important factors. We also note that often there is an “unscheduled” plan reassessment, because there has been no scheduled plan reassessment and instead the existing plan has been rolled over without review. However, we would like to focus on a different aspect of this proposed change.
Our experiences are that: ● The information held by the NDIA is regularly incorrect and not updated. Participants are not able to ascertain the information the NDIA holds, and despite repeated requests are not provided the information in writing. When we are advised of the information being relied on, we discover errors. Plans are being developed based on this outdated information, without any input from the participant. It is absolutely critical that participants have the right to appeal plans as plans are regularly wrong: both on the information that the NDIA have recorded incorrectly, but also on their mathematical calculations, and other critical elements. ● When professional evidence from specialists, from allied health professionals or support workers’ impact statements, or similar, are provided to the NDIA to give evidence for plan development, NDIA regularly does not follow the recommendations, or even consider this evidence. There is usually no information provided by the NDIA about what evidence they have considered, but it is very clear from the plan issued that the actual treating professionals’ evidence has not been used. ● The NDIA is also relying on outdated evidence that has been superseded to make decisions about funding allocation. It is absolutely critical that participants can appeal these errors. ● The NDIA also needs to provide written statements to list what evidence they are relying on to make decisions. There is no accessible pathway to obtain what is on your file, or what is being used to make decisions. ● Not all disabled participants have access to family or informal supports, this is particularly the case for marginalised communities and for disabled participants that have been impacted by trauma or family domestic violence. These disabled participants rely on their funded formal supports in order to survive, and if a plan that cuts those supports cannot be appealed, there is nowhere to go, and that disabled participant is left isolated and at high risk of death. ● It is critical for participants to be given the timely right to appeal these critical errors in judgment, as the impact is life or death.
Restricting ability to appeal decisions
As we have explained above, it is a common experience of NDIS participants that NDIA decisions are wrong, harmful, or ignore evidence. It is absolutely imperative that participants retain the right to appeal those decisions.
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National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 354
The NDIA have demonstrated extreme cost wastage through spending over $72 million on lawyers to fight individual disabled people in Court, and for the vast majority of cases have had an adverse finding against them. Instead of actually addressing the errors and harms the NDIA has committed, the Proposed NDIS Bill removes the right to appeal from participants. These harms will continue, this Bill reinforces the harms, and goes further by removing any possibility of minimising this harm. This must be opposed.
Compliance, Administration and Safeguards
Administrative Process Changes
Below we list the proposed changes, and our comments in dot point under each one.
Proposal: Only the participant, plan nominee or child representative will be able to request reassessment (as opposed to your plan manager or support coordinator).
Response: ● It’s harder for many disabled people to do this due to their disability! We often need other people to advocate for us. ● Many people do not have access to other people to support them and rely entirely on their formal supports to do this. ● The NDIA often ignores requests from participants.
Proposal: Claims must be made within 90 days (currently 2 years). Commencing 1 December 2026.
Response: ● This is completely disregarding the functional impairment a participant must have in order to access the NDIS, particularly when it comes to impairments like fatigue, brain fog, cognitive load, or working memory. This also leads to penalties for disabled participants when they are unable to meet these deadlines. ● Additionally, it is impossible to obtain specialists’ appointments even in city locations in a 3 month period, so if the NDIA asks for more evidence, this does not allow the time to obtain it.
Proposal: Timeframe for the NDIA to decide whether to complete a plan reassessment will be extended from 21 days to 90 days.
Response: ● People’s needs are urgent. People will die in this time frame. ● Additionally, after the NDIA decides whether to complete a plan reassessment, they have another 90 days to decide on the reassessment itself. That is 6 months to determine people’s needs. ● If the NDIA fails or refuses to decide on the plan reassessment, it is no longer a reviewable decision to the Administrative Review Tribunal. This removes rights of appeal, and disabled participants’ human right of access to justice.
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National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 354
Proposed: Increased record-keeping obligations and debt recovery powers
Response: ● Many people, due to their disability, cannot easily keep track of paperwork. This is punishing people for their disability. ● This is discriminatory against people with cognitive disabilities (including intellectual disabilities, learning disabilities, attention disabilities, dyscalculia, dyslexia). ● People incarcerated in prisons and psychiatric facilities will not be able to comply with the proposed changes. ● See below for our comments on the debt recovery powers.
Proposal: Plan suspension and revocation for non-contact (s40A / s30(1A))
Response: ● As above, this is punishing people for their disability. The NDIA has repeatedly failed to provide accessible communications to NDIS participants. ● Our experience is that the NDIA will ignore the participant’s communication needs. ○ The NDIA has often called Deaf participants directly, without recognising the irony that they can’t hear the call. ○ The NDIA regularly makes unscheduled telephone calls, which are then revealed to be serious plan determination meetings. ○ The NDIA often refuses to allow participants to rely on their support coordinator or other support people to assist or facilitate communication, even when full written consent and authority has been provided to the NDIA. ○ The NDIA will not provide findings in email written form, and instead relies on physical post, ignoring participants’ requests for alternate communication methods. ○ Regularly, the NDIA will exclusively inform a participant of a new plan or of a request for more information or contact, through written post, despite communication preferences or access needs. Most of us have received significantly delayed (by weeks or more) communication by post from the NDIA. ● There are too many failures in communication by the NDIA to place such significant burdensome consequences on the participant. ● We also note that in situations of domestic or family violence, the threat of removal of support can be weaponised against already vulnerable disabled participants.
Proposal: The Agency can require participants, nominees, providers and others to provide documents, answer questions or attend a meeting with the Agency within 14 days’ notice.
Response: ● Due to their disability, many people will not be able to attend a meeting with only 14 days notice. For example, many energy limiting disabilities and disabilities with fluctuating capacity are unpredictable and do not work on the NDIA’s timeline. ● It is critical to provide sufficient leeway for disabled people to meet obligations imposed on them by the NDIA. ● We also note that this requirement is added at the same time as the Proposed NDIS Bill intends to remove the very supports that allow disabled people to leave the house, and prepare documents. ● Additionally, it is impossible to obtain specialists’ appointments even in city locations in a 3 month period, so if the NDIA asks for more evidence in 14 days, this does not allow the time to obtain it.
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National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 354
Mandatory Registration Mandatory registration must be opposed. ● Mandatory registration will not address the safeguarding concerns or improve safe service delivery for participants. ● Our experience has been that neglect and abuse is more prevalent from registered providers. ● Registered providers are less flexible and less likely to be able and willing to provide culturally safe support. ● Further limits options for those living outside metro areas, where we already face less choices for support. ● Increased costs for providers means that smaller organisations or sole traders will have to leave the industry if they can’t afford registration costs or meet administration and compliance requirements. ● Not equitable, and does not provide participants choice and control. ● Does not necessarily improve actual training or quality of support.
Stronger Enforcement and Compliance Powers
The NDIS must not transform from a disability support framework into a highly conditional compliance regime.
● Provisions grant the NDIA carceral investigative powers, broadening the NDIA’s functions to explicitly include assisting in the prosecution of criminal activity, and the integration of the Regulatory Powers Act 2014, granting NDIA investigators sweeping new powers including entry, search, and seizure, and the ability to force individuals to decipher encrypted computer data. The NDIA will be able to issue fines and incarcerate people for up to 2 years for refusal, and this will be directed both at participants, and at support workers (who will obviously leave the industry in droves). ● This will criminalise disabled people for being disabled, and it will disproportionately affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, Muslim people, previously criminalised people, people of colour, and other segments of our community. ● This will be extremely harmful for people with disabilities like PTSD, where stress exacerbates the disability.
Conclusion
We finish this submission rather abruptly because we have reached the end of our capacity as disabled people. It is necessarily incomplete, despite our best efforts, as a result of the extremely short timeframe for submissions.
We repeat our recommendation that the Proposed NDIS Bill must be rejected in full. The real risk of harm (including death) to disabled participants is too high.
Yours faithfully
Protect Our NDIS Alliance
Primary Contacts (all disabled volunteers): ● Mx Oriela Williams ● Ms Rowena Specht-Whyte ● Mx Nibs Cooper
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