Submission to the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Attention: Committee Secretary, Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs Submitted by email: community.affairs.sen@aph.gov.au Date: 28 May 2026
I welcome 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.
I have a disability and am a participant of the NDIS. I am a father, a husband, a member of a family and my community.
I want to outline the harm this Amendment Bill will cause if it passes Parliament. This Bill is too far reaching and requires much more scrutiny and amendment before it proceeds.
Parliamentary Scrutiny and Transparency
The issue:
The consultation period for the Amendment Bill is two weeks, which is 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.
How this affects participants:
The Bill is almost completely inaccessible to the disabled community and individuals like me, who need time to read and understand it. I have had a lot of trouble understanding this Bill as it stands, in this format with a confusing website, within such a short period. This Bill will have such a substantial effect on me, my family and community, that it needs to be fully understood so I can properly digest and understand the consequences. Two weeks is far too short a time.
Recommendation:
Amend the consultation period for a best practice minimum of 30 days and more and provided in accessible formats for blind, deaf, people with intellectual disability, and those with other disabilities like mine which is a rare neurological disease.
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 3) 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 NDS 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.
We are a democracy and to imagine a minister or a small selection of people can suddenly decide what happens to me in my life without consulting me is abhorrent and returns to a very old systems open to institutional abuse.
I do not want decisions made in Canberra by a few without any scrutiny to put me in a situation where I end up in a nursing home or hospital because suddenly there is nowhere for me to be cared for. I already have to explain through professional reports how my day is broken up, by the MINUTE to justify why I have the hours of support I receive. I have had to account for how many times I use the toilet with support, how many transfers I need support with, how many times I eat and need help with eating etc. For all this to go unread and misunderstood by lay NDIS people or worse, a minister making unilateral decisions without any understanding of the impact these decisions could make is horrifying.
Recommendation:
Require that all decisions affecting NDS 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 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.
I have already briefly outlined what I already need to do and prove to the ndis for requesting support workers such as assistance in eating, drinking, going to the toilet and how many times I need the support worker to empty my catheter. As far as my experience has been everything is already ACCOUNTED FOR. I live 12 hours a day, bed from 8pm to 8am. I get put in bed at 730pm before a support worker leaves for the day. My day is already restricted. I wonder if politicians would be happy with this in their life? And I could be expected to have cuts and justify my existence again by the stroke of a pen? My life already exists on bare minimum support.
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.
Participants who have unspent money on a plan is already saving the budget. There is already a wait of months and months for OT, physio, equipment reviews, speech reviews and finding the right support. Much of the time unspent funds I have are because of things completely out of my control. I should not be punished for this. This will also further reduce my ability to go out into the world. For example spending simple time with my young daughter and family and doing ordinary things everyone else takes for granted including parliamentarians.
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.
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 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.
To have an instrument where the environment or personal situations of a person can be assessed without understanding the person as a whole is not in the spirirt of the ndis and is quite frankly absurb and degrading for people such as me who already deal with trauma inflicted by the current ndis processes. I do not live in a silo. I am a father, a partner, a community member. I am not the total of some box ticking.
To require a person such as me with a rare neurological condition where not even the specialist or top neurologists in the country can understand. I cant exhaust all treatment if my disability being caused by my rare condition had no treatment. And if there is treatment it could be (and would be if not covered by the hospital for me) hideously expensive. People with disability are not one size fits all. I have needed all kinds of support I never imagined at first diagnosis, such as physio, speech therapy, dietitians, programs that will save my voice for the future.
Recommendation: Do not proceed with a requirement to exhaust “appropriate treatment” opions – 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.
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..
How this affects participants: If the assessment tool does not accurately capture the full extent of a person’s disability, including needs like mine 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.
This to me is a box ticking instrument with no humanity. This is not about standardisation, it is about reduction and reducing my life to a few pages of boxes either ticked or not ticked. I have already had extensive reports on me and the ndis has so much information on me already. My life is so much more than this.
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.
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.
All the things I have contributed to my community such as being active with local council access committee, catching up with people who I’ve made connections with at wheelchair ugby, or my neighbours or at my daughters school or attending my daughters school activities, or helping out at her karate or little athletics will be not be possible if this type of unding is reduced. Let alone those outings such as physio twice a week, hospital trips every twofold, catching up with my elderly parents, will all be either taken away or reduced. This is hardly living an ordinary life. I will again become unseen and put away. My overall health will reduce, my function will reduce, my mental health will plummet.
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.