Submission 408
Attention: Committee Secretary, Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs
Submitted by email: community.affairs.sen@aph.gov.au
Date: 01.06.2026
Thank you for the opportunity to make a submission to the Senate Standing
Committee on Community Affairs about the National Disability Insurance Scheme
Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026.
The NDIS represents a vital social reform for Australia. At its best, the scheme is life changing—granting people with disability dignity, independence, and true community participation. Furthermore, it empowers carers to pursue employment and recognises the central role of psychosocial peer work. Ultimately, the social and economic benefits of a successful NDIS are undeniable.
Most people explicitly recognize the necessity of making the NDIS sustainable. We just plead that these changes be carefully structured through genuine co-design, and focused on the actual drivers of rising costs rather than targeting the participants themselves. A special feature of this submission is the way NDIS already practically precludes the most marginalised demographics from access - and an urgent plea to consider the impact of this in your reform.
On behalf of my community, I urge the Committee to consider implementing these insights and recommendations. We support efforts to create a fairer, more efficient, and sustainable NDIS while fully preserving the quality, diversity and choice of supports that allow people with disability to live fulfilling lives and acknowledging that financial responsibility means a consideration of domino effect these reforms will have on other sectors – specifically healthcare, welfare services and justice.
Systemic barriers to access for those most vulnerable:
I am a person with a disability and also provide small amount of specialised sole trader support to people on NDIS. I have previously been a carer to loved ones.
I include many concerns with the Amendment Bill below.
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Chiefly however, is a concern that these changes will be the nail in the coffin for any chance of equitable NDIS access for Australians most in need of support. I speak of those primarily with psychosocial disabilities which we know are often much harder to access treatment for, especially to those who cannot afford private health and people who have experienced criminalisation and/ or incarceration due to their psychosocial disabilities – frequently linked to self-medication and / or substance dependence.
In my work at a statewide AOD service, I see people who are barely hanging onto life, whose lives are revolving doors of homelessness, psychiatric stays, and incarceration due to the unrelenting nature of their schizophrenia, Bipolar or PTSD/CPTSD or dual diagnoses. However, this entire underclass of people are currently systematically prevented from accessing NDIS – the Bill would ensure they are more or less prohibited from access.
The few who are fortunate to access support to apply are often rejected and told they ‘have not tried every treatment available’. One person was told she was rejected due to never having ECT (electric-shock therapy) – she had a pacemaker (ECT would have killed her). Another was told that his nearly life-long Bipolar could have been caused by his substance use and that ‘we’ll never know so unfortunately you aren’t we have to reject your application’.
To say that these inequities and purposeful exclusion of those most in-need is infuriating is an understatement – this goes to the core of who we are as a nation who purports to care deeply about the most vulnerable in our society.
Most importantly, the purposeful inclusion of the demographic I speak of would not impact the budget in any significant way. If the government is really concerned about money, target the providers who prey on NDIS participants, enable a smoother complaints and oversight pathway – but don’t make it harder for the very people who the NDIS was designed to support.
Requirement to exhaust treatment options before eligibility
The issue: A person with disability will need to exhaust treatment options before they can be eligible for the Scheme (Schedule 1 Part 8). There will also be a removal of
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whole-of-person assessment, replaced by single eligible impairment consideration (Schedule 1 Part 3). The note that previously acknowledged environmental factors and other ineligible impairments could affect support needs will be removed (Schedule 1 Part 3).
How this affects participants: People with disability will need to prove their impairment cannot be treated before they access the NDIS. Once in the scheme, their supports will only be assessed against a single eligible impairment rather than their whole experience. A person’s individual circumstances will not be considered, including ability to pay for treatment, where they live or whether treatment is actually available to them.
How this affects me and my community:
Again, this will affect the most vulnerable more than anyone else. This affects the person with chronic schizophrenia who has never been able to afford or access private healthcare or psychiatrists. The person with CPTSD who has self-medicated with drugs or alcohol and experienced criminalisation and therefore a marked lack of access to treatments, let alone documentation of such.
The NDIS currently privileges those with wealth, family, carers and resources above those less fortunate. These reforms go even further to ensure those who with high psychosocial needs miss out on the one scheme that enhances stabilisation, increases health and wellbeing and community participation and connection – evidence-based antidotes to substances dependence and criminalisation.
The cost of this to society is huge economically but also socially, and the healthcare sector and justice sector would save money exponentially if NDIS was made more equitable and inclusive in this sense. Whilst hospital and healthcare sectors must also be better resourced, the demographic I have outlined herein, require support far beyond that which hospitals are designed to provide.
Retaining the need to consider the whole person is essential to maintain any shred of equity and would enable so many to access life-changing supports. If money saving is truly the goal of this bill, this would be a no-brainer and a non-partisan decision.
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As with many things in NDIS, ‘invisible’ psychosocial disabilities will be affected the hardest as this is the disability that most often causes episodic destabilisation which is equally as damaging and life-limiting as other more visible disabilities.
Recommendation: Do not proceed with a requirement to exhaust “appropriate treatment” options – there are no safeguarding measures around participant harm due to side effects or complications, a participant’s financial ability to pay, or their geographic capacity to access treatments.
I also believe the Bill requires further scrutiny and amendment before it proceeds.
Provider Registration and Impact on Recovery Coaches, Peer Support
workers, Independent Support Workers and graduates of Certificate 4 Mental Health Peer Work.
While there is general support for expanding registration in high-risk environments like group homes, our community does not want a one-size-fits-all registration mandate which could force small, high-quality independent providers and sole traders out of the market, leaving participants with only large corporate entities as options.
Many people with psychosocial disabilities specifically request people with lived experience of mental health, substance dependence and systems navigation experience so they can be assured they can access genuine peer support relevant to their own support needs and recovery goals.
Recovery coaches and peer workers have a genuine occupational requirement to utilise their lived experience as part of the support they provide the person – requiring registration would eliminate a large number of highly valued and specialised recovery coaches whose recovery from drug and alcohol dependence (and associated criminalisation) is a core part of their value.
Certificate 4 in Mental Health Peer Work and criminalised people:
Many graduates of the Certifcate 4 in Mental Health Peer Work – a course specifically designed to train people with lived experience of mental health challenges to provide peer support - are unable to register as NDIS providers due to
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having criminal histories and thereby being unable to access the worker screening clearance required for registration. They have frequently practised and lived years of recovery and rehabillitation, studied in the area they’re passionate about, and by all accounts often make excellent psychosocial support workers and recovery coaches, who are able to offer unique insight and guidance around complex mental health recovery, dual diagnoses, and using their own stories of recovery as roadmaps for others. By requiring registration, you are prohibiting people with criminal histories – no matter how small - from ever being able to provide support on NDIS.
Removal of choice and increase in cost to participant:
This also removes the level of choice available to participants, in favour of larger providers. It is already shown that registration itself is no barrier to fraud, yet this reform would have the chilling effect of reducing competition within the support market, ironically increasing participant costs. Many independent workers charge below the maximum hourly rates – often less than registered providers – eliminating independents also eliminates the incentive to remain competitive and risks monopolisation by corporate entities.
Additionally allied health professionals specifically pointed out that they are already strictly regulated by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA). Forcing them to undergo further NDIS registration processes can cost over $10,000, which threatens their financial viability without actually improving service safety or quality.
Impact on sole traders and specialist providers
The workers most capable of supporting participants with severe behaviours of concern are often sole traders or small specialist providers.
These individuals:
- have the skill and willingness to work with complex clients
- build long-term, trusting relationships
- provide continuity that prevents crises and restrictive practices
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However, they are also the providers least able to absorb the cost and administrative burden of registration, audits, and reporting. The proposed changes will drive many of these workers out of the sector entirely.
This will disproportionately harm participants with complex needs and severe psychosocial disabilities, who already face increasingly reduced markets and further reduce available support workers in rural and remote areas.
Reform Must Not Shift Costs to Other Systems
Numerous stakeholders—including healthcare professionals, advocates, and families with firsthand experience in the health and justice sectors—emphasized that cutting NDIS funding does not make the underlying needs disappear. Instead, it merely reallocates expenses to public schools, hospitals, mental health programs, aged care, and the legal system, ultimately resulting in much higher overall costs to taxpayers.
As People With a Disability Australia noted, underspending on individuals with disabilities is a ‘false economy’, especially since these families and carers already bear significant daily burdens. When evaluating the Bill, the Committee must look past short-term financial savings and consider the long-term economic benefits generated by early intervention, reduced hospital stays, community inclusion, diversion away from criminalisation and incarceration (regarding some people with psychosocial and/ or cognitive impairments) and tailored individual supports.
Parliamentary Scrutiny and Transparency
The consultation period for the Amendment Bill is two weeks, which was insufficient to allow for appropriate consultation, considering accessibility and communication needs.
The Australian Government Guide to Policy Impact Analysis says consultation should occur for a minimum of 30 days where possible.
The short timeline impacts me as most people in my community require longer than normal timeframes in order to be able to properly communicate and write out our
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concerns. Many in the disability community did not know this bill was passing until recent social media coverage and news got around the community.
Recommendation: Amend the consultation period for a best practice minimum of 30 days.
Key decisions left to ministerial instruments, not law
The issue: The Bill allows Ministers to change who gets NDIS support (Schedule 1 Parts 8 and 9) and how much funding people receive (Schedule 1 Part 4; Schedule
- by signing an instrument, without going back to Parliament. The rules that will determine critical eligibility thresholds (Schedule 1 Parts 1, 8 and 9) have not yet been written.
How this affects participants: The decisions that shape the lives of participants, whether they qualify for the NDIS and what supports they can access, could be changed without parliamentary debate or public scrutiny. Participants may not know supports or eligibility rules have changed until their plan is affected.
Recommendation: Require that all decisions affecting NDIS eligibility and funding levels be made through primary legislation subject to full parliamentary scrutiny, with mandatory advance notice to affected participants before any changes take effect.
Existing participants face narrower criteria and fewer rights to challenge decisions
The issue: The Bill changes the rules for existing NDIS participants and makes it harder to challenge some decisions about supports and funding. It also restricts when you can request a reassessment, removes review rights for automatic plan renewals, and makes funding reductions unreviewable (Schedule 1 Parts 1 and 8). Combined with restrictions on reassessment requests (Part 2), automatic plan renewals without review rights (Part 5), and unreviewable funding reductions (Part 4), existing participants face narrower criteria with significantly fewer avenues to challenge decisions about their supports.
How this affects participants: This does not protect participants already on the NDIS, who could be reassessed under stricter rules. If someone’s funding is reduced
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or their plan renewed automatically, they may have limited or no ability to challenge that decision. This could make it harder for people to get extra support when their circumstances or disability change.
It is already difficult to access reviews – pleased don’t remove the only option we have for review when circumstances change.
Recommendation: Require a “no harm” safeguard ensuring no current participant loses access to supports unless equivalent supports are in place, with independent review rights before any exit decision and access to unscheduled reassessments preserved.
Unreviewable ministerial power to cut funding across all support categories
The Minister can reduce funding for any support or group of supports by a specified percentage through an instrument that cannot be challenged (Schedule 1 Part 4). This applies across all budget categories. Unspent funds will no longer carry over at plan renewal (Schedule 1 Part 5).
How this affects participants: A participant’s community participation, capacity building or assistive technology funding could be cut without warning and without any right to appeal. Participants who save unspent funds across plan periods for high cost items will lose that ability entirely.
It is very easy for the plan to result in the incorrect perception by NDIS that the participant has not been requiring a certain aspect of their funding when it is often they have been unable to access it, or their workers have been billing under the incorrect item number. (Eg. in the case of self-care vs social and community access – a participant whose workers were accidentally billing under self-care for all their support hours led to the NDIS believing the participant was not using their social and community access funding. Under the new process, their access to social and community funding would be cut).
Recommendation: Require that unspent funds carry over at plan renewal for participants saving for high-cost items and require independent review rights before any funding reduction takes effect.
Submission 408
Unvalidated functional capacity assessment tool risks misidentifying need
The issue: The Bill shifts assessment from whole-of-person consideration to a single eligible impairment (Schedule 1 Part 3). Read together with the eligibility thresholds in Parts 8 and 9, the tool used to conduct functional capacity assessments must be capable of sufficiently identifying whether a person meets the threshold for that single impairment.
The named assessment tool is the Instrument for Classification and Assessment of Support Needs (I-CAN). I-CAN requires validation to ensure it will sufficiently identify the needs of all people with disability, including those whose needs may be fluctuating or episodic and may not be captured through a point-in-time assessment, and to ensure it is culturally appropriate for First Peoples with disability.
How this affects participants: If the assessment tool does not accurately capture the full extent of a person’s disability, including needs that fluctuate or vary over time, a participant may be found ineligible or have their supports undercounted, with no guarantee the result reflects their actual experience.
Recommendation: Do not proceed with I-CAN as the functional capacity assessment tool unless it has been demonstrably validated to identify the needs of all people with disability, including those with episodic or fluctuating disability, and demonstrated to be culturally appropriate for First Peoples with disability.
Different tools or assessment pathways should be available for different disability types and age groups. A single standardised tool cannot adequately capture the diversity of presentations across the scheme.
The functional assessment tool must be co-designed with people with lived experience, disability researchers and allied health clinicians.
Algorithmic programs should inform, not determine, eligibility and planning decisions and human professional judgement is essential as an override mechanism. The government must learn from Robodebt.
Timely and accessible appeal rights must be established and resourced before the new eligibility framework commences.
Submission 408
Supports cut before replacement system is ready
The issue: From 1 October 2026, the government has announced funding for social, civic and community participation supports will be cut by 50 per cent and capacity building daily activities by 10 per cent for all participants, reductions that will be implemented through the ministerial instrument power in Schedule 1 Part 4. The Foundational Supports system intended to fill that gap has no confirmed implementation date and is not yet operational.
How this affects participants: Supports that help participants connect with their community, build skills and maintain independence may be cut before anything exists to replace them, leaving carers and families with greater responsibilities and no additional support. These supports are often what help people stay visible, connected and safe.
Cutting this support will once again pull the rug from under families and PWD who had incorporated this essential part of life into their routines.
Recommendation: Require that no reductions to community participation or capacity building supports take effect until Foundational Supports are fully operational, adequately funded and demonstrably able to meet the needs of those who will lose NDIS supports.
These MUST be co-designed by people with lived experience of disability – across a diversity of disabilities, including psychosocial.
Plan Renewals:
The Government should introduce a structured mechanism for participants to voluntarily return unspent funds without fear of being punished by drastic cutting of funds, rather than relying solely on automatic noncarry-over, to avoid unintended
Crisis / “not contactable” rules
People in crisis, hospitalised, incarcerated, homeless, fleeing violence, or experiencing mental health collapse are the most likely to miss calls or deadlines. The Bill risks pausing or removing supports at the exact moment they are most
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needed. As a support worker, I see this frequently among homeless clients with psychosocial disability.
Lastly, I would challenge the government’s claim that the NDIS is “unsustainable” when the recent 2026 budget decision allocated more than $50 billion in new defence spending. This highlights that the issue is not solely financial capacity but about priorities.
People with disabilities should not absorb the cost of the Governments poor planning and chronic underfunding of other systems. For example, the bill does not address:
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Chronic underfunding of mental health – the Medicare Mental Health Hubs are solely low-moderate intensity support
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The impact of the housing and affordability crisis on a generation • Underfunding of care for DFSV and CSA
• Inaccessible psychology, social work and psychiatry (huge out of pocket costs trauma-informed
to access these in community)
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Primary care being unable to support complex needs and lack of bulk billing GPs
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Australian suffering from chronically high rates of Domestic and family violence
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Underfunding of early intervention and community-based supports
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Underfunding of public health system and drug and alcohol services. Thankyou for consideration of these points and reach out for any further information.
Sincerely,
(BA Soc., Cert IV MH Peer Work).
Email:
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