Opposition to NDIS Bill based on philosophical shift and ministerial power (Individual advocacy) | External submission

National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

29 May 2026

Committee Secretary

Senate Standing Committees on Community Affairs

PO Box 6100

Parliament House

Canberra ACT 2600

Via web portal

Dear Committee Secretary

National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future

Generations) Bill 2026

Thank you for the opportunity to provide submissions on the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 (the Bill). The Bill would substantially amend the National Disability Insurance Scheme Act 2013 (the Act) and reshape the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS or Scheme) in ways that we consider fundamentally incompatible with its founding principles.

About Intrepidus Law Intrepidus Law is Australia’s foremost NDIS and disability rights law firm. The Principal and Founder of Intrepidus Law is Belinda Kochanowska, who was awarded the prestigious Queensland Law Society Solicitor of the Year Award in 2025 and was a finalist of the 2025 Australian Human Rights Commission Law Award.

Intrepidus Law has a practice focus on providing legal representation in NDIS appeals at the

Administrative Review Tribunal and Federal Court of Australia, and providing expert legal advice on NDIS law. Intrepidus Law is a private legal practice committed to reinvesting in our communities through our Systemic Advocacy Program.

Executive summary and contents Intrepidus Law opposes the passage of this Bill, which marks a philosophical shift from the founding principles of the Scheme. Participants’ choice and control over their lives would be transferred to a Minister with extraordinary powers absent meaningful safeguards or parliamentary oversight over almost every aspect of the Scheme.

Page 1 of 15

Intrepidus Law Pty Ltd ACN 663 530 498. Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation.

This consolidation of executive power is to be achieved by transferring power from different arms of government and citizens who have been promised a role in maintaining the NDIS. Our submissions are structured according to each stakeholder who loses out from this Bill:

 Participants ............................................................................................................................... 3

Women, families and informal supports ………………………………………………………………………. 5

 Marginalised groups ................................................................................................................. 6

 Providers and the NDIS market ................................................................................................ 7

 Parliament and committees ..................................................................................................... 8

The States and Territories......................................................................................................... 9

The courts and tribunal ……………………………………………………………………………………………. 10
The taxpayer …………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 11 Appendix – list of new or expanded ministerial powers …………………………………………………………… 13
Introduction What is presented as ‘reform’ in this Bill is in fact a fundamental philosophical shift away from the founding principles of the NDIS: that people with disability are entitled to individualised supports, and that they must have genuine choice and control over how, when and by whom those supports are delivered. The repealing of s 31 is a stark demonstration of this. The Bill would strip the Scheme of those principles and replace them with values repugnant to our national character, including powers to target or discriminate against ‘classes of people’, ‘classes of providers’ and ‘classes of impairments’. A disproportionate focus on ‘rorts’ and ‘fraud’ has overshadowed this core purpose and fostered a culture of presumption and suspicion against participants and providers. The Bill would legislatively entrench that culture and undo years of advancement in the community inclusion of disabled Australians.

This Bill flies in the face of the findings of the Disability Royal Commission, which identified isolation and segregation as key drivers of violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation of people with disability – and identified autonomy and inclusion as the key safeguards therefrom. 1 Under this Bill, the Scheme’s foundational value of participants’ choice and control over their own lives would be transferred wholesale to a Minister with extraordinary powers absent meaningful safeguards or parliamentary oversight over almost every aspect of the Scheme.

Our submissions track who has something to lose from the Minister’s extraordinary gains in unchecked executive power. It is participants who are directly targeted, and their families and informal supports who would be transferred responsibility for providing unpaid disability support. It is the once-thriving NDIS market, and the many women-led small businesses operating in it, that would be pushed out of an increasingly risky landscape. It is also other democratic institutions, who are being asked to sign a blank cheque. The Minister would be empowered to unilaterally implement almost any policy or financial change to the Scheme, without needing to: return to Parliament or its committees, secure agreement or even consult with state disability ministers, or comply with some future court or tribunal decisions.

1 Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability, Final Report

(September 2023). Page 2 of 15

Intrepidus Law Pty Ltd ACN 663 530 498. Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation.

No machine-readable text was extracted from this page.

Providers and the NDIS market We have made detailed submissions on the cumulative pressures already facing NDIS providers – particularly small, sole-trader and women-led businesses with lived experience of disability. This Bill compounds those pressures rather than relieving them.4

The NDIS was, by design, a market-based scheme, moving away from centralised block funding toward a diverse provider ecosystem where participants could choose who they work with and market forces could better drive quality. The accumulating red tape, risk of punitive and unforeseeable compliance action, and uncertainty around the expanding mandatory registration regime are making it increasingly commercially untenable for small and medium providers to continue operating.

Ministerial control of pricing The Bill gives the Minister power to set the NDIS Price Guide directly by legislative instrument (schedule 3, part 1). We support changes that allow the Minister, Agency and NDIS Commission to adjust pricing mechanisms to incentivise quality and enable sensible distinctions between large providers and sole traders. However, the Bill transfers near-absolute authority to the Minister – the officeholder least insulated from adverse public pressure – incentivising reactive decision-making. Providers need year on-year pricing predictability to invest in their business and sustain permanent employment.

Ministerial control of who counts as a provider The proposed s 10C allows the Minister to depart from the starting-point definition of an NDIS provider in both directions – prescribing operators as providers or excluding whole classes of persons from the market entirely. Under ss 9 and 73E, the Minister can also define a ‘related party’ and prevent them from acting as a plan manager. The placement of ‘related party’ in s 9 suggests it could pair with other ministerial powers for broader application (see “Appendix – list of new or expanded ministerial powers”). E.g. perhaps s 45A powers could ban a ‘related party’ from claiming funds – overriding caselaw that family members can in exceptional circumstances be paid as disability support workers. 5 These ‘Henry VIII’ powers (see below) significantly expand the risk of such unpredictable consequences.

Effect on the market These settings risk driving a structural shift away from sole traders and small businesses toward larger corporate and centralised providers. That shift may suit some industrial relations objectives, but larger providers are typically less able to offer the bespoke, flexible, relationship-based support that participants want and that the Scheme was designed to facilitate. The result is a market where participants are told they can choose, but face only a limited pool of large corporate providers. When participants lose choice, they lose control – and when choice and control are diminished, risks escalate significantly. Choice and control are not merely philosophical ideals; they are protective mechanisms by which a person with disability can select safe providers, avoid harmful service environments, maintain trusted relationships, and tailor supports to their lived reality. The Bill is shifting the Scheme toward a centrally controlled, block-funded system – placing risk on participants and providers, destabilising the provider market, and prioritising cost containment over participant outcomes and a thriving, diverse NDIS market.

4 Inquiry into the NDIS Amendment (Integrity and Safeguarding) Bill 2025, Intrepidus Law Submission #37; Inquiry into the administration of the National Disability Insurance Scheme, Intrepidus Law Submission #38; Inquiry into the Integrity of the National Disability Insurance Scheme, Intrepidus Law Submission # 57. 5 Brandon Trapezanidis by his Nominee George Trapezanidis and CEO, National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIS) [2025] ARTA 1674. Page 7 of 15

Intrepidus Law Pty Ltd ACN 663 530 498. Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation.

Parliament and committees The executive powers conferred by this Bill are so broad that almost any policy change to the Scheme could be effected without ever needing to return to the federal Parliament or its committees. A non exhaustive list of matters the Minister may determine without having to return to Parliament, includes:

reducing funding for any specified group of supports by up to 99 per cent (s 34A);
causing any alterations to participant plans without a right to review (s 50A);
ending plans early to enliven the renewal alteration power (transitional item 58 of sch 1);
prescribing the conditions under which NDIS inspectors and investigators may, or may not, exercise their powers (ss 73ZSL and 73ZSM);
setting the price guide (schedule 3 part 1; ss 45C and 34B);
determining who is and is not an NDIS provider (s 10C);
requiring claimants and participants retain certain records (s 45B);
prescribing circumstances in which a person is taken to be ‘fully treated’ (s 25A);
declaring any ‘class of persons’, ‘conditions’ or ‘excluded impairments’ which are ineligible to access the Scheme and can have participant status immediately revoked (ss 25B, 30); and
authorising automated decision-making by computer program, including for decisions involving the exercise of a discretion, the formation of a state of mind, or the making of an evaluative judgement (ss 59B–59E).

See “Appendix – list of new or expanded ministerial powers” for our complete list.

Each of these is a substantive policy lever. Together, they amount to a power to redesign the Scheme by ministerial fiat. Committees would be left in a reactive position, requiring the executive to provide answers on underway reform, rather than the Committee steering policy-design.

Henry VIII powers

The most troubling feature is the transitional rule conferring ‘Henry VIII’ powers. For any matter related to the changes this Bill would make to the Act, and which is of a ‘transitional nature’, the Minister can prescribe modifications to the Act itself, as if the text of the Act were being changed by Parliament. This power can be exercised for 12 months, with instruments to run up to 12 months further. The only express limits are matters that would clearly be unconstitutional in any event. In effect, Parliament is being asked to transfer a legislative function to the executive, for up to two years, to the greatest extent permitted by the Constitution. The Parliament should not sign a blank check to its responsible ministers.

The Government has justified this Bill on the basis of an apparent ‘pub test’ that the Australian public would not accept aspects of the present Scheme, based on a fraud and rorts narrative. We submit that the Government’s proposed solutions in this Bill fail that same test. The ordinary Australian, asked whether one Minister should be able to rewrite legislation and a statutory scheme without going back to Parliament, would answer no.

Why this matters Parliament is not a procedural inconvenience. It is the deliberative institution in which the trade-offs of public policy are tested, contested and refined. Removing Parliament from the NDIS reform process does not make those trade-offs disappear. It simply removes the best forum by which they are accountable to the public.

Page 8 of 15

Intrepidus Law Pty Ltd ACN 663 530 498. Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation.

No machine-readable text was extracted from this page.