To the Community Affairs Legislation Committee
Submission to the Senate Inquiry into the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
My name is Daniel Baxter. I work as an individual disability advocate, and I am a parent to a teenager who is level 2 autistic who is on the NDIS. I am writing from a personal capacity who works as a professional in the sector, but also from personal lived experience of having a daughter on the NDIS and assisting members of my extended family with NDIS matters. I am also a neurodivergent person with ADHD and autism who, while I am not a recipient of the NDIS, have experienced government and societal systems that have not made adjustments for my own disability, which have caused significant distress.
Overview
I firstly acknowledge the need for sustainability in the scheme, as this is a significant government investment. There is a need for transparency and accountability in matters relating to all government expenditure. In my experience, the blame for unscrupulous spending within the NDIS space should not be shouldered by people with disability, nor do I believe that moving 160 thousand people off the scheme into a place of long promised but thus far undelivered “foundational supports” will do anything to hold unscrupulous service providers who use the scheme to exploit people with disability accountable.
It is my belief that the current government have lost sight of the first principles that the NDIS was established on. Those principles include choice and control, autonomy, reasonable and necessary supports, and the overarching idea that people with disabilities have the right to choose how they live their life, just like anyone else. Instead, we seem to have a government who has manufactured consent in the community to cut supports in an effort to fulfill the neoliberal imperatives of the media and political class. The idea that a government is willing to fund weapons that cause people to become disabled on the back of cutting supports to people with disabilities is morally reprehensible.
Schedule 1 Part 1 Defining functional capacity
My experience of these processes and how they have been assessed has largely overlooked FCA’s. In fact, the head of the NDIA recently admitted in a Senate Estimates hearing that assessors don’t often look in detail at FCA’s. Now, it seems that FCA’s will be the only thing that will be looked at, even with a diagnosis. Since these reports cost thousands of dollars, the government needs to guarantee that if these assessments are so pivotal for people to meet the scheme, they absolutely need to be read, by a real human and not determined by an AI algorithm.
The provisions for the CEO of the agency of the minister themselves to make decisions unilaterally without consultation with the person is gross overreach, which does not consider
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the context that a person lives in, their wishes, and denies them any sort of choice and control. To my knowledge, the minister responsible is not an OT, a GP, or any other sort of specialist, and thus does not have the expertise in making assessments regarding a person’s disability.
Part 2 – Limit unscheduled plan reassessments
In my experience, unscheduled plan reassassents occur because of several different reasons.
- A person’s circumstances, which includes the impact of a person’s disability changes as they age.
- The initial plan is not adequate to properly support a person.
- A plan has been rolled over and changed without the input of the person or their nominated representative. This includes the submission of reports from specialists. I have seen needed therapies cut from plans while the person is in the process of obtaining evidence of the effectiveness of said therapies.
- The incompetent management of plan managers and support coordinators who use up funding without notifying the person.
Note: all these reasons are not because of the choices made by people with disabilities. We need an agency that works collaboratively, that prioritises the person’s support needs, rather than the imperatives of budgets.
The language in section 48A is deliberately vague in terms of how these conditions are implemented by delegates. This will leave people with inadequate plans with no recourse for making amendments to these plans, which could have dangerous consequences for a person’s safety and well-being.
Part 4 – Support determinations
-This puts the so called “financial sustainability of the scheme” ahead of a person’s well-being. -Funds for essential and needed therapies are being cut without any consultation, either with the participant or with the documentation evidence provided. This essentially solidifies this deeply unethical practice that disempowers participants. -These determinations are made remotely and have the risk of being coopted by AI algorithms depending on the whims of the government of the day. Any changes to plans must be in collaboration with the participant and not driven by cost imperatives. This would actually save money in the long term, taking pressure off the hospital system, ensure that participants have access to their community, contribute to the economy and would save lawyers’ fees the government wastes to needlessly bully participants.
Part 6
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I have done advocacy with children with disabilities in my work. These children are one of the cohorts that are suspended at much higher rates. The care of these children disproportionately is done by women, particularly single mothers who often have no other support. There is a much higher risk for these children ending up in the child protection system because we are putting the load on parents who often don’t have support, who are living in poverty because they can’t work because of their caring responsibilities. To push children off their NDIS supports because they are considered “parenting responsibilities” do not take into account the broader risks to both the children and their carers.
Part 7
Participants considered “uncontactable” are often only called once or, in one case that I know of, not at all. People with disabilities are workers, have appointments, and don’t always have their phones on them.
This provision also disproportionately impacts CALD people, many of which don’t answer private numbers for safety reasons.
Part 8
This provision not only serves to deny people of support but also has the potential to force people into having surgeries they don’t want. For example, a deaf person who is forced into having a cochlear implant because the agency deems their disability to not be permanent because they have not had this invasive surgery.
Forcing people into medical procedures denies agency, and forces people into taking risks with their health that may be detrimental in other ways.
Medical interventions can also be subject to long wait lists in the public system, or are financially costly.
Part 9
The federal government is knowingly forcing participants off the scheme without other supports. Foundational support has been spoken about and promised for years, and simply don’t exist. The Federal Government has a moral obligation to ensure that people who rely on supports aren’t kicked off the scheme under the false pretense of support when that support doesn’t exist.