Submitted by:
State: NSW
This submission is made in my personal capacity, informed by both lived experience as the parent of NDIS participants and professional experience supporting people to navigate the NDIS.
Submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee
Re: Securing the NDIS for Future Generations Bill 2026
I support reform of the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
I do not support reform that weakens legal safeguards while expanding broad executive discretion. In its current form, this Bill does exactly that.
The question before Parliament is not whether reform is necessary. It is. The question is whether this legislation creates an appropriate balance between flexibility, accountability and the protection of participants’ rights. It does not.
Throughout consultation, Government has repeatedly responded to concerns by explaining how it intends to exercise the powers created by this Bill. However, this is not the role of Parliament to assess.
Parliament’s responsibility is to scrutinise legislation, not ministerial assurances. A Minister cannot bind future Ministers. Governments change. Budgets change. Priorities change.
Legislation endures. Its purpose is to bind not only the current Government, but every government that follows. For that reason, legislation must be judged by the powers it creates, the safeguards it contains, and the foreseeable consequences it permits—not by assurances about how a particular government says those powers will be exercised. More than 5,000 submissions raised concerns about this Bill. More significant than the number is the consistency.
Disabled people, families, clinicians, lawyers, academics, representative organisations,
providers and state governments independently identified many of the same legislative
risks.
The consistency of those concerns is itself evidence.
When stakeholders with vastly different perspectives repeatedly identify the same
concerns, it is no longer credible to characterise those concerns as misunderstanding
or misinformation.
It is evidence that the legislation warrants particularly careful parliamentary scrutiny.
The Bill expands broad discretionary powers while leaving many substantive
protections, eligibility criteria and operational safeguards to future Rules and delegated
legislation.
Parliament is therefore being asked to confer broad statutory powers while leaving many of the practical safeguards to future delegated legislation.
That represents a significant transfer of practical policy-making from Parliament to the Executive.
The concerns raised throughout consultation have been remarkably consistent, including:
- expanded ministerial discretion without corresponding statutory safeguards;
- increased reliance on delegated legislation;
- functional assessments that risk failing to reflect the complexity of disability in real-world contexts;
- funding mechanisms capable of providing less than the actual cost of supports recognised as reasonable and necessary;
- reduced legal certainty for participants;
- diminished transparency and accountability; and
- the absence of comprehensive foundational supports before restricting access to The Scheme.
Government has largely responded to these concerns by explaining its intentions. Intentions are not safeguards.
Nor are they binding on future governments.
One of the most concerning features of this Bill is that foreseeable harm may arise even where decision-makers act entirely within the powers Parliament intended to confer.
Where legislation authorizes recognition of need without guaranteeing funding sufficient to meet that need, unmet need is no longer merely an implementation failure.
It becomes the foreseeable consequence of legislative design.
Likewise, where legislation deliberately grants broad discretionary powers without corresponding statutory safeguards, inconsistent decision-making ceases to be an administrative anomaly.
It becomes an inherent feature of the system Parliament has chosen to create.
That distinction is fundamental.
Poor administration can be corrected through improved practice.
Poor legislative design continues producing the outcomes it authorises.
Legislation should be designed to minimize foreseeable harm, not merely respond to it after it occurs. That is especially important where people’s health, safety, independence and participation depend upon those supports.
The disability community is repeatedly being told that concerns arise from misunderstanding.
Yet many of those valid concerns have been raised by people with extensive experience interpreting, administering and operating within the NDIS, including lawyers, clinicians, academics, former public servants, representative organisations and participants themselves.
Dismissing consistent legal and policy concerns as misinformation is not meaningful engagement with the substance of those concerns.
The purpose of consultation is not merely to invite submissions. It is to improve legislation.
Consultation should influence legislative design, not simply document opposition to it.
Good legislation
Good legislation is strengthened through rigorous scrutiny, meaningful co-design and genuine collaboration with the people most affected by it. Safeguards should emerge from that process—not be deferred to future assurances.
Had the consistent concerns raised by disabled people, families, clinicians, legal experts, representative organisations and state governments been meaningfully incorporated into the legislative design, many of the risks identified throughout this inquiry could have been substantially reduced.
Instead, Parliament is being asked to rely on future administration to solve problems that should have been addressed in the legislation itself.
Good legislation does not depend upon the goodwill of those administering it. It anticipates foreseeable failures, changing governments, fiscal pressures and inconsistent decision-making, then builds safeguards accordingly. That is the purpose of legislation.
Disabled Australians should not be expected to rely upon trust alone. Rights exist precisely because governments change.
The National Disability Insurance Scheme was established as rights-based legislation recognising that disabled Australians are entitled to the supports they require to participate in society. Those rights should not become increasingly dependent upon broad executive discretion, delegated legislation or future administrative policy.
I urge the Committee to recommend substantial amendments to strengthen statutory safeguards, restore legal certainty, appropriately limit broad discretionary powers, ensure meaningful parliamentary scrutiny of key protections, establish comprehensive foundational supports before restricting Scheme access, and ensure that supports recognised as reasonable and necessary are funded in a way that enables participants to actually obtain those supports in practice.
If those safeguards cannot be achieved, this Bill should not proceed in its current form. If the Government truly intends these protections, it should be willing to legislate them.
Assurances describe intentions. Legislation establishes protections.