ecuring the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 ion 3699

Lifely

Lifely is a not-for-profit disability service provider with more than 40 years of experience supporting regional and rural people with disabilities, their families, and carers.

We have deep roots in the country. That’s why we’re passionate about providing caring, high-quality regional disability support that helps people feel supported, included, and empowered in everyday life.

As a registered National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) provider, we support children, adults, families, and carers across regional Victoria, Melbourne’s outer west and border communities in New South Wales and South Australia.

We believe everyone deserves access to quality disability services close to home, no matter where they live.

Contact

• Phone: 1300 799 421
• Email: info@lifelY..org.au
• Website: lifely.org.au
• Social media: @LifelyAu

Business development and Research Manager

Strategic Overview and Key Recommendations

Lifely is a not-for-profit, N DIS-registered exist locally. Providers absorb substantial amounts of unpaid crisis coordination work.

don than 1,500 people across regional Victoria, Melbourne’s outer west, and border communities in New South Wales and South Australia from offices in Ballarat, Bendigo and Mildura.

Many of the communities we support do not look remote on a map. They are not cattle stations in the outback but when it comes to accessing services, they can feel just as isolated.

We support people in communities where the nearest specialist may be hours away, public transport is limited or non-existent, and families often rely on relatives, neighbours or long car trips to access essential supports.

In these places, distance, workforce shortages and thin service markets can make everyday access to healthcare, disability services and community participation far more difficult than it appears from the outside.

However, the current reform process is becoming increasingly confusing, poorly coordinated and disconnected from what is happening in homes and communities across the country.

Governments continue announcing major reforms without:

• Clear operational detail
• Realistic timelines
• Proper regional impact assessment
• Practical transition planning
• Workforce and infrastructure investment
• Genuine co-design with people with disability and frontline providers

Regional and rural communities already face workforce shortages, thin markets, transport barriers and limited specialist access. Yet reforms continue to be designed around metropolitan assumptions.

Participants are funded for services that do not

customers:

This briefing paper outlines the growing risks facing regional and rural Australia under the current reform trajectory and proposes practical reforms focused on:

• Fixing thin market pricing, travel funding and regional outreach
• Protecting trusted regional not-for-profit providers as essential community infrastructure
• Releasing a clear national plan for Foundational Supports, Thriving Kids and Navigation before participants transition out of the NDIS
• Improving NDIA workforce, decision-making, transparency and accountability
• Ensuring participants can access real human decision-makers, advocacy and fair review processes.
• Improving oversight of Al-assisted planning and automated systems
• Ensure SIL, SDA and community participation funding reflects real regional delivery costs and real care ratios
• Supporting accessible housing, SIL, SDA and faster home modification approvals to prevent bed blocking in hospitals
• Preventing community participation reforms from increasing isolation or unsafe living situations
• Strengthening safeguarding, whistleblower protections and regulatory responsiveness
• Reducing unnecessary compliance burden on reputable regional providers
• Improving cross-border coordination between states

Strategic Overview and Key Recommendations

• Make funding periods more flexible during crisis, hospital discharge, safeguarding concerns, behavioural escalation and other significant life changes.

• Allow regional participants to access funding earlier when specialist or outreach services are only available at limited times.

• Create a rapid crisis funding pathway with approvals available within 24-72 hours.

• Rebuilding trust through more respectful and accurate public language about people with disability, carers and providers.

Lifely believes Australia needs calm, evidence- based and properly staged reform. This paper is not an attack on reform.

Lifely wants to help build a stronger disability support system that reflects the original vision of the NDIS and works in real communities, not just metropolitan policy settings.

We have practical solutions and frontline expertise. We want governments, Ministers and agencies to visit regional communities, hear what is happening on the ground and take regional knowledge seriously.

Come and see the realities of thin markets, workforce shortages and cross-border communities firsthand.

Regional providers are ready to help because country communities understand something simple: when problems emerge, you do not wait for somebody else to fix them. You get on with the job.

National NDIS Reforms Are Leaving

Regional and Rural Australia Behind

Lifely agrees the NDIS needs reform. Stronger safeguards, better regulation and long-term sustainability remain essential. However, successive governments continue designing reforms around metropolitan assumptions while regional and rural Australia absorbs the consequences. At the same time, political rhetoric surrounding the N DIS from both sides of the chamber increasingly portrays people with disability, families and ethical providers as a financial burden rather than part of the solution. That rhetoric damages trust in country communities where disability organisations often function as critical social infrastructure. In regional Australia, disability providers do far more than deliver NDIS supports. We employ local people. We stabilise vulnerable families. We coordinate crises. We support hospital discharge. We work alongside schools, housing services, mental health teams and family violence services. In many communities, disability providers effectively operate as the duct tape holding fragmented systems together.

Regional and rural participants already face:

• Severe workforce shortages
• Limited specialist access
• Long travel distances
• Inadequate public transport
• Thin markets
• Housing shortages. Even when participants receive funding, they often cannot access the supports in their plans because no workforce exists to deliver them and travel funding hasn’t been adequately planned. Unlike some metropolitan providers, regional organisations cannot simply withdraw from difficult communities and pivot to more profitable suburbs.

National NDIS Reforms Are Leaving

Regional and Rural Australia Behind

the NDIS or to new service models. Regional and rural communities cannot absorb disruption the way metropolitan areas can.

People with disability, families and providers in country communities cannot keep living in limbo, waiting to find out whether their towns will have access to Foundational Supports or Thriving Kids, or whether they will be worse off under a new system.

Cross-border communities such as Mildura, Swan Hill and Echuca face even greater complexity.

People naturally live, work and access services across Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia. Families use the services that exist - ot the ones that fit snugly inside government boundaries and departmental flowcharts.

Yet participants and providers still navigate duplicated paperwork, inconsistent rules and fragmented systems across disability, health, housing and mental health.

Without targeted regional investment, practical implementation planning and genuine co-design, current reforms risk increasing inequity, accelerating provider withdrawal and destabilising already fragile country communities.

Regional providers want to help governments avoid those outcomes. We encourage Ministers, NDIA leaders and policymakers to spend time in regional communities, meet participants and frontline workers, and use the expertise already sitting inside country Australia when designing reform.

Fixing the NDIA Is the Biggest Reform Australia Keeps Avoiding

Lifely believes one of the biggest opportunities Poor decisions can directly lead to: to improve NDIS sustainability is fixing the N DIA itself.

Yet national debate continues focusing on These failures also waste public money through: participant funding cuts, tighter eligibility and • Hospital admissions compliance measures instead of the enormous • Housing instability cost created by poor N DIA processes and • Carer burnout inconsistent decision-making. • Crisis escalation

• Service collapse Regional and rural providers repeatedly see: • Safeguarding risks
• NDIA staff with limited disability expertise • Avoidable appeals
• Failure to read specialist evidence • Repeated assessments
• Endless requests for more reports and • Administrative duplication assessments • Delayed hospital discharge
• Rushed planning meetings • Provider instability
• Inconsistent and contradictory decisions • Workforce burnout.
• Unnecessary reassessments Advocacy waitlists in regional areas often
• Plans built around city assumptions exceed 12 months. So, many participants now
• Participants funded for services that do not face reviews and appeals alone. exist locally Lifely believes long-term sustainability will not The process isconfusing, inconsistent and come from blunt cuts alone. Australia needs an disconnected from real life. NDIA capable of making practical, informed and consistent decisions the first time. Participants, families and providers often leave conversations frustrated and convinced the NDIA staff making life-changing decisions need: N DIA is not using common sense, or that pressure to cut costs is putting budgets ahead • Strong disability knowledge of people. • Trauma-informed capability
• Understanding of regional and rural service It is common for participants, families and delivery regional providers to explain to city-based • Awareness of thin markets and workforce planners that: shortages
• Rural communities may have no local • Smaller caseloads specialists, or waitlists stretching many • Enough time to properly assess evidence months The NDIS cannot become sustainable while the
• Accessible housing may not exist locally system itself continues creating avoidable
• Public transport is limited or non-existent bureaucracy, poor decisions and crisis.
• Many rural areas have little or no behaviour support workforce Lifely stands ready to work constructively with
• There is no backup provider ready to step governments, the NDIA and regulators to in when services collapse or withdraw improve decision-making, planning systems and regional implementation. When NDIA decisions fail in metropolitan areas, participants may still have other service Regional providers do not just want to identify options. In regional and rural Australia, they problems. We want to help build practical often do not. solutions.

Regional and Rural Pricing Settings Are Failing Thin Markets

Current NDS pricing settings continue Lifely also remains deeply concerned about the generating as though regional Australia enormous amount of unfunded crisis functions exactly like metropolitan Melbourne. coordination work regional providers absorb. It does not.

The Modified Monash Model (MMM) fails to reflect the real-world difficulty of delivering disability supports in thin markets that do not meet the formal “remote” criteria.

Many communities classified as “regional” or “rural” still experience:

• Severe workforce shortages • No public transport
• Long travel distances • Housing shortages
• Minimal specialist access. • Service collapse.

Regional providers routinely travel hundreds of kilometres each week delivering outreach across multiple towns.

At the same time, providers attempt to recruit workers in communities already facing housing shortages, workforce scarcity and rising living costs.

NDIS pricing has also failed to keep pace with rising SCHADS Award wages and operating costs. Many key support line items have seen little or no meaningful increase for around six years, despite rising costs for staffing, travel, insurance and service delivery.

Meanwhile, the NDIS Pricing Arrangements and Price Limits Guide has become overly complex and inconsistent, with too many line items, unclear rules and constant changes.

This complexity increases confusion, red tape and financial pressure on providers already operating in thin markets.

Participants often receive funding for support they cannot access because no workforce exists to deliver it.

Housing and Support Cuts Will Push

Country People Into Crisis

Current reforms to Supported Independent Living (SIL), Specialist Disability Accommodation (SDA) and community participation funding disproportionately impact regional and rural Australians with the highest and most complex support needs.

Regional communities already face severe shortages of:

• Accessible housing
• Support workers
• Specialist services
• Appropriate transport
• Behaviour support capacity

Yet reform continue focusing heavily on cost reduction rather than practical service realities. In regional communities, when support systems fail, there is often nowhere else for people to go.

People relying on SIL often require:

• 24/7 support
• Higher staff to participant ratios
• Clinical oversight
• Complex behavioural support
• Highly skilled workers

People who qualify for SIL have permanent and complex disabilities that mean they cannot safely live on their own without support. These supports are essential. They are not optional extras.

Governments often say the NDIS is meant to support people with the highest needs, yet many of these participants are now facing some of the biggest and most worrying funding cuts, including:

• Major cuts to SIL funding
• Funding based on staffing levels that are unsafe for the participant, residents or staff
• Not enough funding for people with complex support needs
• Funding that does not cover the genuine cost of care
• Recommendations for unstaffed hours even if it is not safe for the participant
• No SDA funding to go with SIL, even when accessible housing is needed

As a result, people remain trapped in:

• Hospitals
• Aged care
• Inaccessible housing
• Family homes
• Homelessness

Housing and Support Cuts Will Push

Country People Into Crisis

Younger people with disability still enter aged Smaller towns often have limited accessible care in regional and rural Australia because housing, workforce shortages and few support appropriate housing and supports simply do providers. not exist.

As a result, people may be forced to move away from their families, communities and support networks into larger regional centres just to access basic services and safe housing.

Without urgent improvements to NDIS planning and coordination, more regional and rural people with disability will be pushed into crisis, homelessness, hospital systems and unnecessary institutional care, placing greater pressure on overstretched services at a far higher cost than their original NDIS supports.

Many of these patients are people with disability waiting for NDIS housing, home
modifications or home and living approvals.

In regional and rural communities, the problem
can become even worse.

Case Study: Cocoon SDA Care and Regulatory Failure

The collapse of Cocoon SDA Care exposed major failures in NDIS safeguarding and regulation. Cocoon is alleged to have committed fraud, breached regulations and the N DIS Code of Conduct, provided unsafe care, used untrained workers, demonstrated poor governance, caused housing instability and operated SDA homes failing required standards.

Serious allegations, whistleblower concerns and warning signs were reportedly raised with the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission years before decisive action occurred. Earlier intervention and stronger regulation could have prevented much of the harm that followed.

In Bendigo, participants faced homelessness, support disruption and safeguarding risks following the collapse.

Regional providers were forced into crisis response mode with little warning or backup. Lifely stepped in to provide emergency accommodation, supports, coordination and risk management to keep several participants safe. As did our peers at other reputable services. There was no realistic alternative and no emergency response teams waiting to take over. Local, ethical providers acted because participants needed immediate support.

Regional providers absorbed major financial, operational and workforce costs during the response, with little recognition or system support.

The Cocoon collapse showed what can happen when city providers with inadequate oversight and unsafe practices enter regional communities and local organisations are left to clean up the damage.

Safeguarding and Regulation Must

Worl< in Regional and Rural Australia

Lifely supports stronger safeguarding, expanded registration and tougher action against fraud and exploitation. However, regulation must remain practical and workable for regional Australia.

Lifely maintains strict registration, safeguarding and auditing standards because participant safety matters.

At the same time, regional providers already operate under enormous pressure from:

• Workforce shortages
• Thin markets
• Rising compliance costs
• Outreach demands
• Housing shortages

Many smaller providers simply do not possess the administrative scale of large metropolitan organisations.

Meanwhile, unsafe and exploitative providers continue entering regional communities where participants often have little provider choice.

Regional workers and providers frequently identify fraud, neglect, unsafe housing and safeguarding concerns first. Yet many report slow, opaque and ineffective responses from regulators after raising serious concerns.

We want to participate meaningfully in reform design from the beginning because the success or failure of these reforms will play out in our communities first.

Safeguarding failures hit harder outside metropolitan Australia because local systems already operate under strain.

Strong whistleblower protections also remain essential.

In country communities, workers, providers and participants often know each other personally.

NDIS Funding Periods Are Increasing

Crisis Risk in Country Australia

Lifely understands why NDIS funding periods to access temporary intensive supports were introduced. The intention was to improve immediately, without lengthy reassessments or sustainability, prevent overspending and stop bureaucratic delays. participants exhausting budgets too early.

There is currently no genuine service of last resort in many regional and rural communities.

Until there is clarity around what Foundational Supports will actually look like, where they will operate and who will deliver them, local providers are often left responding to participant crises themselves - frequently unfunded - because we care about our communities and the people who live in them.

Disability, illness, trauma and crisis do not happen in neat three-month blocks.

Right now, the system too often waits for people to deteriorate until they present to hospitals, homelessness services, mental health systems or the justice system.

That is not early intervention. It is delayed crisis response.

This hits people with the highest and most complex needs hardest.

Regional and rural communities face additional barriers. Many areas rely on fly-in clinicians, visiting specialists and outreach services that are only available at specific times. Participants can miss critical therapy, assessments or interventions simply because funding has not yet been released in the current funding period.

Funding periods also create instability for providers trying to deliver safe and consistent supports. Supports may need to be reduced or paused when instalments run low, even when participant needs remain urgent.

Lifely is particularly concerned about the lack of rapid crisis funding within the NDIS. Participants experiencing safeguarding risks, behavioural escalation, homelessness risk, mental ill-health or family crisis should be able

Practical NNDIS and Disability Sector

Reforms Proposed by Lifely

Regional Access and Thin Markets

• Fast-track SIL, SDA and home modification approvals
• Redesign the Modified Monash Model to reflect real access to services in regional and rural communities
• Increase regional pricing and travel funding for thin markets and long-distance outreach
• Fund outreach, mobile and crisis services in isolated communities
• Recognise trusted regional not-for-profit providers as essential community infrastructure

Safeguarding and Provider Sustainability

• Improve the speed and transparency of safeguarding investigations
• Strengthen whistleblower protections for workers, participants and providers
• Reduce unnecessary compliance burden on reputable regional providers
• Involve regional providers in the design of future reforms

Foundational Supports and System Reform

• Release a clear national plan for Foundational Supports and Thriving Kids before people leave the NDIS
• Invest in regional workforce, housing and infrastructure before reducing supports
• Co-design reforms with people with disability, carers and regional providers
• Improve cross-border agreements between Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia

Funding Periods and Crisis Response

• Make funding periods more flexible during crisis, hospital discharge, safeguarding concerns, behavioural escalation and other significant life changes.
• Allow regional participants to access funding earlier when specialist or outreach services are only available at limited times.
• Create a rapid crisis funding pathway with approvals available within 24-72 hours.
• Ensure Foundational Supports include properly funded crisis responses in regional and rural communities before NDIS supports are reduced.

NDIA Decision-Making and Transparency

• Reduce planner caseloads and improve disability and regional training for NDIA staff
• Provide clear written reasons for decisions and review pathways
• Ensure participants can access real decision-makers and independent advocacy
• Improve oversight of AI-assisted planning and automated systems

Public Language, Respect and Trust

• Stop treating all NDIS providers like fraudsters. Most regional providers are ethical organisations working in difficult conditions
• Recognise that many NDIS problems stem from poor N DIA systems, inconsistent decisions and years of neglect from successive governments

Housing, SIL and Community Participation

• Ensure SIL, SDA and community participation funding reflects real regional costs
• Ensure SIL funding supports safe staffing ratios
• Increase access to accessible, social and transitional housing

Closing Reflections on Reform and

Regional Impact

Lifely recognises it is easy to throw stones at Lifely believes Australia can build a stronger, large, complex systems like the NDIS from the fairer and more sustainable NDIS. But sidelines.

That is not what this paper aims to do.

                                           Regional providers, participants and families

Lifely supports genuine reform. We support live these challenges every day. We understand stronger safeguarding, better regulation, thin markets, workforce shortages, cross-border improved transparency and action against service delivery, long-distance travel and what fraud, waste and poor practice. happens when services collapse and there is nobody left to step in. We also support a financially sustainable NDIS that protects future generations of Australians We are ready to help fix the problem. with disability. We want politicians, public servants, lobbyists, But sustainability cannot come from blunt cuts, advocates and decision-makers to work with rushed implementation or metropolitan us, visit regional communities and involve policymaking disconnected from regional regional Australia in shaping the future of the reality. NDIS before decisions are finalised.

Right now, regional and rural communities are We are not asking governments to stop reform. being asked to carry more risk with fewer We are asking governments to do reform supports, less certainty and limited properly. consultation. That is not genuine reform. It is cost shifting onto people with disability, The original promise of the NDIS mattered families, carers and already stretched country because it recognised that people with communities. disability deserve safety, dignity, independence and meaningful lives in their own communities. When governments reduce disability supports That vision is still worth fighting for. without fixing workforce shortages, housing shortages, thin markets and NDIA capability, Lifely wants to help build a disability system the pressure does not disappear. It shifts Australia can genuinely be proud of - practical, directly onto hospitals, mental health services, sustainable, human-centred and strong enough housing and homelessness systems, aged care, to work no matter where a person lives. families, carers and regional communities already operating at capacity. Regional providers are ready to roll up our sleeves and help build it. Regional providers are being asked to redesign services, absorb rising costs and prepare for Governments now need to listen. major structural reform while still lacking basic information about what is changing, when it is changing and what will replace the supports being removed.

No business, health service or community sector could plan properly under those conditions.

Thank you for

thinking about how disability reforms will affect regional and rural Australians.

Acknowledgements

We also thank the staff, participants, families, carers and community members whose experiences and frontline knowledge informed this paper.