Submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee

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

Submitted by:

Role: NDIS Participant, Current NDIS Participant Reference Group Member, Disability Activist and sector expert.
Date: 01/06/2026

Executive Summary

This submission acknowledges the importance of ensuring the long-term sustainability of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). However, sustainability should not be achieved through measures that reduce access to disability supports, undermine participant rights, or weaken the foundational principles of choice and control.

The National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 introduces significant reforms affecting access, planning, funding, participant rights and administrative decision-making. While some measures seek to improve consistency and integrity, several provisions risk narrowing access to the Scheme, reducing support levels, limiting participant autonomy and prioritising expenditure control over individual need.

This submission is particularly concerned about:

The introduction of standardised functional capacity assessments.
Requirements that participants undertake “all appropriate treatment” before accessing supports.
Provisions allowing access to be restricted where another service system exists.
Restrictions on plan reassessments and participant review rights.
The removal of the whole-of-person approach to disability support needs.
Ministerial powers to impose funding caps and support determinations that may reduce funding below assessed need.
Increased reliance on automated decision-making.
The shift in legislative principles away from participant-centred decision-making and toward financial sustainability as a primary consideration.
The limited consultation period afforded to people with disability and the broader community.

While there are aspects of the Bill aimed at improving consistency, integrity and accountability, Parliament should ensure that reforms strengthen rather than weaken the rights, inclusion and participation of people with disability.

About the Author

I am a person with multiple disability types who has also worked in the Disability sector for several decades, across a range of roles including within both State and Federal Governments (including with the NDIA), private sector, NGO’s and advocacy bodies. I work for Team DSC and volunteer my time to assist others in understanding how to self-advocate, uphold their rights and utilise supported decision-making mechanisms.

I am a current NDIS Participant Reference Group member and serve on several health, disability and community-based committees and boards. I rely heavily on the NDIS for my day-to-day needs and have been fortunate enough to re-enter the workforce because of the supports funded by my plan. My continued economic and social participation will be at risk given the proposed changes in this Bill.

I have utilised an AI platform to synthesise my points into a cohesive submission, as my disability impacts my executive function.

1. Introduction

This submission proceeds from the principle that sustainability, economic participation and human rights are complementary objectives, not competing ones.

The long-term sustainability of the National Disability Insurance Scheme depends not only on managing expenditure, but on ensuring people with disability receive the supports necessary to participate in education, employment, family life and community life. Supports that prevent crisis, maintain independence and promote inclusion should be understood as investments rather than costs alone.

The NDIS has transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Australians with disability. It has enabled increased workforce participation, greater independence, improved wellbeing and stronger community inclusion.

Research by Per Capita has demonstrated that every dollar invested through the NDIS generates approximately $2.25 in economic activity [^1]. The Scheme therefore represents not merely an expenditure program, but a significant social and economic investment in Australia’s future.

While the Scheme must remain financially sustainable, reforms that reduce access to supports, narrow eligibility, delay intervention or provide funding below assessed need may reduce expenditure within the NDIS while increasing costs elsewhere across health, mental health, housing, aged care, justice and income support systems.

A sustainable NDIS is not one that simply spends less. It is one that delivers supports effectively, prevents avoidable crises, supports participation, protects rights and creates long- term social and economic value.

2. Functional Capacity Assessments and Access to the Scheme

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The Bill proposes a framework for standardised functional capacity assessments and allows assessment criteria and tools to be prescribed through Rules.

While consistency in decision-making is desirable, disability is complex and cannot always be accurately measured through standardised assessments. People with psychosocial disability, neurological conditions, chronic illness, autism, acquired brain injury and multiple intersecting impairments often experience support needs that vary significantly over time and circumstance.

The Justice and Equity Centre has identified concerns that standardised assessments may fail to capture the full diversity of disability experiences and could potentially be used to remove existing participants from the Scheme if they fail to meet prescribed thresholds.2

For example, a participant with psychosocial disability may experience fluctuating capacity and present very differently on different days, despite having substantial and ongoing support needs.

The Committee should ensure that any assessment framework is co-designed with people with disability and includes safeguards for fluctuating, episodic and complex disabilities.

The Requirement to Undertake “All Appropriate Treatment”

The Bill introduces provisions requiring individuals to undertake all appropriate treatment before they may qualify for NDIS access.

These provisions raise concerns regarding fairness, accessibility and autonomy.

Treatment availability varies significantly across Australia. Many people face barriers relating to cost, location, waiting times, workforce shortages, cultural considerations, trauma histories or personal circumstances.

A person should not be denied access to disability support because a treatment exists in theory while remaining inaccessible in practice.

The proposed provisions may also interfere with an individual’s right to make informed decisions regarding their own healthcare and bodily autonomy.

For example, a participant living in regional Australia may be unable to access specialist treatment because of workforce shortages yet still be denied access to the NDIS because that treatment theoretically exists. Proceeding with the Bill in its current form would create a ‘postcode lottery’ and increase the inequity for those from lower socio-economic backgrounds.

The legislation should explicitly recognise circumstances where treatment is unavailable, inaccessible, ineffective, inappropriate or reasonably declined.3 4

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The Bill introduces provisions that may prevent access to the NDIS where another support system is considered available.

The existence of another service system should not automatically exclude a person from receiving disability support where significant unmet disability-related needs remain.

People with disability frequently rely on multiple systems simultaneously. The NDS was established because mainstream systems often failed to meet disability-specific support needs.

The proposed provisions risk recreating service gaps by shifting responsibility between systems while leaving participants without adequate supports. 5 6

This is particularly concerning for older people with disability, First Nations communities and individuals whose support needs span multiple service systems.

5. Restrictions on Plan Reassessments

Participants’ lives and support needs change over time.

The proposed restrictions on reassessment requests, together with longer decision-making timeframes and increased procedural requirements, risk reducing the Scheme’s ability to respond to changing circumstances.

Of particular concern is the proposal that participants who exhaust their funding due to inadequate budgets may be unable to seek reassessment if their formal support needs have not changed.

Participants must retain meaningful rights to seek reassessment when their plans no longer meet their needs.

Recent Administrative Review Tribunal (ART) caseload data indicates that approximately 60-75% of NDIS decisions taken to external review are ultimately changed or overturned, suggesting significant issues with accuracy of many original NDIA decisions. This figure alone points to systemic issues within the Agency itself, rather than Participants and their supports driving review requests out of greed or mismanagement.

6. Moving Away from a Whole-of-Person Approach

The Bill proposes to reverse the practical effect of recent Federal Court decisions and remove the whole-of-person approach to disability support needs.

Disability is not experienced in isolated categories. Support needs often arise through the interaction of multiple impairments, environmental barriers and social circumstances.

Restricting funding only to supports that arise directly from a qualifying impairment risks creating artificial distinctions that do not reflect the reality of participants’ lives.

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The NDIS should continue to recognise the interconnected nature of disability and support needs.

7 Reversal of Established Legal Protections

A signiﬁcant concern regarding the Bill is the extent to which it seeks to overturn recent Federal Court decisions that have clariﬁed and strengthened the rights of people with disability under the NDIS.

The Justice and Equity Centre notes that the Bill would effectively reverse several important decisions, including Davis, Sutherland, Eastham and McGarrigle.9

These decisions reﬂected participant-centred interpretations of the Scheme and provided important safeguards against unfair outcomes.

Taken together, these proposed reversals represent a signiﬁcant shift away from established legal protections and may weaken participant rights.

8 Funding Caps and Sustainability Measures

The Bill introduces support determinations and funding caps that may result in participants receiving less funding than what has been assessed as reasonable and necessary.

This represents a signiﬁcant departure from the individualised approach that has characterised the NDIS since its inception.

If a support has been assessed as reasonable and necessary, participants should not be denied access to that support because of broader funding restrictions.

Financial sustainability is important, but it should not override assessed need.

9 Economic Sustainability Requires Investment, Not Retrenchment

A central premise of the Bill is that tighter controls on access, planning and funding are necessary to secure the future sustainability of the NDIS.

However, the NDIS is not merely a government expenditure program. It is a major social and economic investment.

Research by Per Capita found that every dollar invested through the NDIS generates approximately $2.25 in economic activity.

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The Scheme supports workforce participation by people with disability, parents, carers and family members.13 It has also created substantial employment throughout metropolitan, regional and rural Australia.

Importantly, disability-related costs do not disappear when support is withdrawn. Rather, those costs are frequently transferred to other systems, including:

Public hospitals
Mental health services
Homelessness services
Aged care
Income support programs
The justice system

Measures that restrict access to supports may therefore reduce NDIS expenditure in the short term while increasing expenditure elsewhere.

The Committee should carefully consider whether provisions that reduce supports genuinely improve long-term sustainability or whether they simply shift costs to other areas of government while reducing quality of life for people with disability.

It is also important to recognise that a significant portion of NDIS expenditure does not represent entirely new costs to government but rather costs that have been transferred from other service systems as the NDIS has matured. One key example of this is Disability-related health supports, which were previously covered by the Health Department, but have now transitioned to the NDIS budget for participants. These are high cost supports and often add tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars to Participant plans.

Assessments of NDIS costs should therefore acknowledge that part of the Scheme’s expenditure reflects the centralisation of existing government responsibilities, rather than wholly new spending.

Community participation supports are frequently characterised as discretionary expenditure. This framing misunderstands their purpose and value.

Community participation supports assist people with disability to:

Develop and maintain relationships.
Participate in education and training.
Pursue employment opportunities.
Volunteer.

13 Per Capita, The NDIS Transformed Hundreds of Thousands of Lives in its First 10 Years – What Will the Next Decade Hold? (2024).

Engage in recreation and civic life.
Maintain physical and mental wellbeing.
Access critical mainstream and community-based health supports.
Avoid social isolation.

For many participants, community participation supports are not peripheral to independence; they are the mechanism through which independence is achieved.14 15

Reducing access to these supports may generate short-term savings but risks increasing long- term social and economic costs through reduced participation, increased isolation and poorer health outcomes.

Choice, Control and Procedural Fairness

The NDS was founded on the principles of choice and control.

Several provisions within the Bill raise concerns regarding procedural fairness, including:

Automatic plan renewals.
Support determinations that are not individually reviewable.
Restrictions on reassessment processes.
Expanded automated decision-making powers.

Participants should retain meaningful opportunities to challenge decisions that affect their access to supports.

Where automated systems are used, participants should have clear rights to human review and disclosed explanations regarding how decisions were reached.

Administrative efficiency should strengthen, not weaken, accountability and participant rights. 16

Consultation and Co-Design

The NDIS was founded on principles of participation and co-design.

The Bill proposes substantial changes to access, planning, funding, reassessment, compliance, pricing and participant rights.

The scale and complexity of these reforms warrant extensive consultation with people with disability, representative organisations, providers, legal experts and the broader disability community.

14 NDIS Review, Working Together to Deliver the NDIS (2023). 15 Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Articles 19 and 26. 16 Justice and Equity Centre, Explainer (21 May 2026), pp 11–12.

Consistency With Human Rights Obligations

The consultation period provided for this Bill has been insufficient to enable comprehensive community consideration of reforms of this magnitude.

Indeed, as recently as today, I have spoken with Participants and Carers who were unaware of the changes proposed.

Consistent with Article 4(3) of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, people with disability should be actively involved in the development and implementation of legislation and policies that affect them.

Importantly, participants themselves are often best placed to identify inefficiencies, inappropriate spending, service gaps, fraud and waste within the Scheme. As the people who rely on NDIS supports every day, they possess practical knowledge of what works, what does not, where resources are being used effectively, and where public funds could be better directed. Any genuine effort to improve the Scheme’s sustainability should include meaningful consultation with participants about opportunities for cost savings, improved service delivery, and measures to reduce waste while maintaining participant outcomes and choice and control.

The Committee should recommend further consultation and co-design before implementation of major structural reforms.

13. Consistency with Australia’s Human Rights Obligations

Australia is a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).

The NDIS has been one of Australia’s most significant mechanisms for giving practical effect to the rights recognised under the Convention.

Article 19 recognises the right of people with disability to live independently and be included in the community.

Article 26 recognises the right to habilitation and rehabilitation services that maximise independence and participation.

Article 28 recognises the right to an adequate standard of living and social protection.

Several provisions of the Bill risk limiting access to supports that facilitate these rights.

The CRPD is founded on principles of dignity, autonomy, participation and self-determination. Reforms that prioritise expenditure reduction at the expense of these principles risk moving Australia away from the objectives of the Convention.

Sustainability and human rights are not competing objectives. A genuinely sustainable disability support system is one that enables people with disability to participate fully in society while protecting their rights and dignity.

14. Consistency with the Intent of the NDIS Review

The Government has frequently referred to the NDIS Review as justiﬁcation for reform.

The Review identiﬁed signiﬁcant challenges facing the Scheme, including inequitable access, participant frustration, workforce shortages, market failures and a lack of support outside the NDIS.

However, the Review’s vision extended beyond cost containment. It emphasised rebuilding trust, strengthening foundational supports, improving participant outcomes and reducing complexity.

The Committee should carefully consider whether each proposed amendment advances these broader objectives or whether additional safeguards are required to maintain participant conﬁdence in the Scheme.

Recommendations

The Committee should recommend that the Bill be amended to:

Ensure functional capacity assessment frameworks appropriately accommodate ﬂuctuating, episodic and complex disabilities.
Require any assessment tools to be co-designed with people with disability and independently evaluated.
Amend the “all appropriate treatment” provisions to recognise circumstances where treatment is unavailable, inaccessible, ineffective, inappropriate or reasonably declined.
Ensure access to the NDIS is not denied solely because another service system exists.
Retain ﬂexible participant rights to seek reassessment when circumstances change or plans no longer meet participant needs.
Preserve the whole-of-person approach to disability support needs.
Retain the principle that participants should receive funding sufficient to meet the full cost of supports assessed as reasonable and necessary.
Remove provisions allowing funding caps that result in participants receiving less support than has been assessed as necessary.
Preserve participant review rights for decisions affecting access, planning and funding.
Strengthen safeguards regarding automated decision-making and require meaningful human review.
Protect access to community participation supports.

Conclusion

The NDIS is not simply a funding scheme. It is an expression of Australia’s commitment to equality, inclusion and the rights of people with disability.

Future generations will not judge the success of the NDIS by expenditure ﬁgures alone. They will judge it by whether Australians with disability were able to live independently, participate fully in their communities, pursue education and employment, maintain relationships, exercise choice and control, and enjoy the same opportunities as other citizens.

Sustainability is essential. However, sustainability should be achieved through investment, inclusion, prevention and partnership with people with disability—not through measures that risk reducing support, narrowing access or diminishing rights.

While there are aspects of the Bill that seek to improve consistency, integrity and accountability, several provisions risk narrowing access to the Scheme, reducing support levels, limiting participant autonomy and weakening important safeguards that have been recognised through Federal Court decisions.

I urge the Committee to amend the Bill to ensure that sustainability, human rights, participation and wellbeing remain equally important objectives of the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

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

NDIS Review, Working Together to Deliver the NDIS (2023).

Per Capita, The NDIS Transformed Hundreds of Thousands of Lives in its First 10 Years – What Will the Next Decade Hold? (2024).