Submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee

July 2026

Inquiry into the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment

(Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

This submission is made in my individual capacity as a person with disability, carer and supporter. It is informed by longstanding work across disability rights, gender equity, social policy and international human rights frameworks. It is not intended to represent any organisation, agency or group.

The central question is not whether the NDIS should evolve, but whether the current reform package is designed and sequenced in a way that is lawful, evidence-based, transparent and safe for the people who depend on it.

The Bill has been framed as a package of amendments to clarify eligibility, define NDIS supports, strengthen integrity settings and improve sustainability. Those aims are legitimate. However, the legislation as drafted raises serious concerns about the breadth of delegated powers, the absence of fully developed alternative supports, the narrowing of access and planning settings, and the risk that fiscal discipline will override participant safety, dignity, participation and rights.

From a national perspective, these concerns are sharpened by thin markets, workforce shortages and unequal access to disability, health and community services across metropolitan, regional, remote and very remote settings. Reform that depends on well-functioning alternatives must be judged against the realities of place, not only the assumptions of central policy design.

Alignment with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Person’s with Disabilities (UN CRPD)

The proposed reform package in its current form is incompatible with Australia’s obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).

The CRPD requires States Parties to progressively realise rights to independent living, community inclusion, equal recognition before the law, access to justice, health, habilitation and rehabilitation, and an adequate standard of living and social protection. A legislative scheme that narrows access, removes or reduces supports before alternatives exist, increases institutional and crisis pathways, and shifts the burden of care onto families, particularly women, moves in the opposite direction: it erodes existing enjoyment of rights rather than advancing them. It also undermines key CRPD principles of respect for inherent dignity, individual autonomy including the freedom to make one’s own choices, full and effective participation and inclusion in society, and equality of opportunity.

When core decisions about eligibility, supports and transitions are left to delegated instruments with limited transparency or accountability, people with disability cannot reliably know or challenge the rules that govern their lives, which is inconsistent with the CRPD’s requirements for accessibility, legal certainty and effective remedies.

In my opinion, the current reform is at odds with the below articles of the CRPD:

Article 4 General obligations: The reform risks regression by reducing existing access to disability-specific supports before replacement systems are in place, which is inconsistent with the obligation to take appropriate measures to realise CRPD rights in practice.
Article 5 Equality and non-discrimination: A framework that disproportionately excludes people with psychosocial, fluctuating, complex or gendered disability experience risks indirect discrimination, even if the criteria are drafted in facially neutral terms.
Article 6 Women with disabilities: The likely transfer of care, advocacy and financial burden onto women with disability and women in families is misaligned with the obligation to ensure the full development, advancement and empowerment of women with disabilities.

Article 9 Accessibility

Heavy reliance on future rules, administrative complexity and inaccessible decision-making processes is inconsistent with the requirement to ensure access to information, systems and services on an equal basis with others.

Article 12 Equal recognition before the law

Reforms that make it harder to navigate the scheme without embedding supported decision-making safeguards risk undermining the right of people with disability to exercise legal capacity with appropriate support.

Article 13 Access to justice

If adverse decisions are shaped by opaque rules, automation or restrictive reassessment pathways, participants will face greater barriers to understanding, challenging and reviewing decisions that affect their rights.

Article 19 Living independently and being included in the community

Reducing or narrowing supports before equivalent alternatives exist is directly at odds with the right to choose where and with whom to live, and to access the supports necessary for community inclusion.

Article 21 Freedom of expression and access to information

Where people cannot readily understand the rules, evidence requirements or reasons for decisions in accessible formats, the reform risks undermining the right to receive information in accessible forms.

Article 23 Respect for home and the family

Reforms that shift disability support responsibilities onto families without adequate formal support will interfere with family life and intensify unsustainable caring arrangements.

Article 25 Health

If support reductions lead to missed treatment, poorer daily functioning or increased crisis presentations, the reform is misaligned with the obligation to ensure people with disability can attain the highest standard of health without discrimination.

Article 26 Habilitation and rehabilitation

Narrower access to supports and underfunded plans may interrupt the services that enable people to attain and maintain maximum independence, participation and quality of life.

Article 27 Work and employment: Cuts to participation, transport or daily living supports

will reduce the practical capacity of people with disability to prepare for, obtain and maintain employment on an equal basis with others.

Removing supports or shifting costs onto individuals and families is inconsistent with the obligation to safeguard access to disability-related assistance, social protection and an adequate standard of living.

Article 29 Participation in political and public life:

Increased exclusion, isolation and administrative burden greatly reduce the practical ability of people with disability to participate fully in civic and public life.

Article 31 Statistics and data collection:

Proceeding without transparent public modelling and impact analysis is misaligned with the obligation to collect appropriate information to formulate and implement policy that gives effect to the Convention.

Sequencing and Foundational Supports

A core weakness in the current package is sequencing. The Bill creates the architecture to narrow access to the NDIS and to redirect people towards other forms of support before those replacement systems are fully described, funded, established and operating. That is a profound policy risk. If foundational supports remain aspirational or uneven across jurisdictions, people will not move into a coherent new system, they will fall into the gaps between systems. In practical terms, that means greater pressure on families, primary care, hospitals, schools, housing, community legal services and already overstretched state systems. Any transition away from NDIS-funded supports should therefore be contingent on public reporting that shows foundational supports are funded, established and operational in every jurisdiction, with clear information about what is available, who is eligible and how continuity of support will be maintained.

Executive power and parliamentary scrutiny

The Bill leaves too much of substance to future rules, determinations and administrative instruments.

In disability policy, the most consequential decisions are often not found in the broad statement of principle but in the detail: who qualifies, what supports are excluded, how budgets are set, what evidence counts, how transitions occur, and when funding can be reduced.

The proposed support determination power is particularly concerning.

Government material confirms that the Minister will be able to reduce funding for some types of supports in plans through a support determination. This is incredibly dangerous and should not be allowed to take place. If however, this power is retained, it should be tightly constrained in primary legislation and accompanied by mandatory public reasons, impact analysis, financial and actuarial justification, and a summary of consultation before any reduction takes effect.

This matters because participants should not discover that eligibility or funding criteria have changed only when their plan is cut. Reform of this scale requires legislative clarity, not retrospective revelation through administrative practice. People’s ability to live the lives of their choosing should not be subject the political will of the Minister of the day.

Functional capacity, whole-of-person need and access

The proposed access and planning framework risks constructing disability too narrowly.

In practice, many people live with disability that is fluctuating, episodic, psychosocial, chronic, pain-related, trauma-shaped or compounded by multiple impairments and environmental barriers.

A framework that assesses function in an abstract or decontextualised way will systematically misread need. People do not live as a “naked” measure of impairment. They function with and through support, assistive technology, communication access, environmental adjustments, family networks and formal services. A rights-based scheme should assess need in the real world, not in an artificial one.

The planning framework must also preserve a whole-of-person approach to supports. Decisions about what is reasonable and necessary should not be artificially narrowed so

that supports addressing secondary impacts, co-occurring conditions or broader functional consequences are excluded simply because disability does not present in a single, neatly bounded way.

New planning framework and support determinations

The new planning framework gives rise to a related concern: the potential disconnection between assessment tools, needs reports and the actual supports required for everyday life. If a budget is derived from a standardised needs assessment without a clear statutory requirement for the decision-maker to be satisfied that the budget actually meets the participant’s support needs, the framework may prioritise consistency over adequacy.

This is particularly concerning where support determinations and funding caps can operate together. A planning system should be capable of reflecting individual circumstances rather than forcing people into pre-determined categories of support intensity. Sustainability is important, but it cannot become a shorthand for downward pressure on supports without individualised reasoning and review.

Social and community participation

The proposed power to reduce funding for categories of supports is especially troubling in relation to social, civic and community participation. These supports are sometimes treated as peripheral, but in practice they are often what enables people to leave the house, maintain relationships, attend appointments, participate in education and employment, fulfil cultural and family responsibilities and live as equal members of the community.

Reducing access to these supports is likely to have broad consequences. Greater social isolation, poorer mental health, reduced educational and employment participation, increased reliance on unpaid carers, and increased pressure on health, housing and community services are all foreseeable consequences of the proposed reform. For participants in regional, remote and very remote communities, participation may also

#include connection to Country, kinship obligations, ceremony and community life. These

are not optional extras but central aspects of social inclusion and wellbeing.

If support determinations are used to reduce funding in this area, Parliament should

require a published impact assessment that addresses effects on participation, social

inclusion, employment, education, family and community connection, and cohorts likely to

face compounded disadvantage. Any impact assessment must be independent and lead

by the people likely to be impacted by the changes.

Gendered impacts

The Bill should also be examined through a gender lens. Women, girls and gender- diverse people with disability already face heightened risks of poverty, violence, housing insecurity, dismissal in health systems and exclusion from employment and leadership. When disability support is narrowed, delayed or made harder to access, the effects are not gender-neutral. Women with disability may lose supports they rely on for safety, parenting, community participation and economic participation. At the same time, women in families are more likely to absorb the unpaid labour created when formal support is withdrawn.

A comprehensive public gender impact analysis should therefore be a precondition for proceeding with the Bill. Without it, Parliament cannot be confident that the reforms will not deepen existing structural inequality.

Reassessments, procedural fairness and review

The reforms also raise critical concerns about reassessments and review rights. If thresholds for unscheduled reassessment are set too high, participants may be left with plans that are plainly inadequate but not reviewable until their situation deteriorates further. That is inefficient, harmful and inconsistent with early intervention and person- centred administration.

Procedural fairness becomes even more important where the Bill also expands the use of automated decision-making. There should be a clear legislative prohibition on automated

A further concern is the increasing administrative burden embedded in the reform package. Shorter claim timeframes, tighter record-keeping expectations, expanded compliance powers and more rigid evidentiary demands may appear technically manageable, but they are not experienced equally.

People with disability who face communication barriers, cognitive barriers, fluctuating conditions, executive functioning difficulties, trauma impacts or reliance on supported decision-making may be disproportionately exposed to non-payment, debt, suspension or loss of support because of disability-related barriers to compliance rather than any misuse of funds.

The legislation should therefore include explicit safeguards against automatic or punitive outcomes where non-compliance is linked to disability-related barriers, and should require proportionate, accessible and humane administration.

All substantive decisions affecting eligibility, support categories, funding levels and

transition settings should be set out in primary legislation rather than left

predominantly to ministerial instruments and administrative rules.

If support determinations are retained, they should be subject to statutory

safeguards including public reasons, impact assessments, financial analysis,

consultation requirements and meaningful parliamentary scrutiny before

commencement.

Access and planning provisions should reflect real-world functioning, including the

role of support, assistive technology, environment, fluctuating conditions,

psychosocial disability and supported decision-making.

The planning framework should require decision-makers to be satisfied that a

participant’s plan and budget genuinely meet their support needs, taking into

account the assessment report and any other relevant information.

Social, civic and community participation supports should not be reduced without

transparent evidence, published impact analysis and demonstrably equivalent

alternatives that are already in place.

A comprehensive public gender impact analysis should be completed before

passage, and reforms should be redesigned where they are likely to deepen gender

inequality or shift care burdens onto women and families.

The Bill should prohibit fully automated adverse decisions and require mandatory

human review before any decision that reduces access, funding or rights takes

effect.

10.Independent review through the Administrative Review Tribunal should be explicitly

preserved, with no reduction in procedural fairness or review rights.

11.The legislation should include safeguards to prevent people from losing support,

incurring debt or being penalised because of disability-related barriers to record-

keeping, communication or administrative compliance.

12.Implementation should include place-based analysis for regional, remote and thin-

market contexts.

Closing

The NDIS does require reform. But reform that is under-specified, over-delegated and poorly sequenced will not secure the future of the Scheme; it will destabilise confidence in it. It will not save the taxpayer, instead, it will push people into other systems and ultimately cost everyone.

A sustainable NDIS must also be rights-based, transparent and accountable. It must recognise disability in all its complexity, protect participation and review rights, and avoid shifting risk and cost onto people with disability, their families and already stretched service systems.

On the evidence currently available, the Bill does not yet meet that threshold. Parliament should require a more transparent, better sequenced and more rights-responsive model before these changes proceed.

Accessible summary / Easy Read companion

About this summary

This is a plain language summary of concerns about the NDIS Bill 2026. It explains why the Bill could create problems if big changes happen before new supports and safeguards are ready.

What is the Bill meant to do?

The Australian Government says the Bill will:

Be clearer about who can get the NDIS.
Be clearer about what supports the NDIS funds.
Make it harder for people to do the wrong thing.
Help make sure we can have the NDIS in the future

Important details about rules and decisions are being left till later. This means they

are not being put in the law now.
New supports outside the NDIS may not be ready before people lose NDIS

supports.
Some people with psychosocial, fluctuating or complex disability may be treated

unfairly.
Community participation supports may be harder to get even though they help

people stay connected, healthy and included.
More paperwork and tighter rules may make the system harder to use.
Automated decisions could cause harm if there is not always a human check first.
Women and families may end up doing more unpaid care.[3]

Why participation supports matter

Community participation supports are not just about recreation.

They can help people go to appointments, stay connected with family and community.

They can help people take part in education or work, and avoid isolation.

If these supports are reduced, people may become more isolated and families may have

to fill the gap.

Gender impacts

These changes may affect women with disability in specific ways.

They may lose support they rely on for safety, parenting, work and community life.

Some women in families might end up doing more unpaid care when paid support is cut.

What should happen next?

Slow the Bill down.
Show the full detail of new supports before major changes begin.

Put important decisions in the law, not mostly in later rules.
Protect community participation supports.
Check how women will be affected before the Bill passes.
Make sure harmful automated decisions cannot happen without humans checking them.
Keep full rights through the Administrative Review Tribunal.