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

To: The Community Affairs Legislation Committee,

I am writing as a concerned Australian and as someone with many good friends who are disabled. I do not have a disability myself, and I do not want to speak over the lived experience of disabled people. But I do want to stand clearly with the people I love, and with the many disabled people across Australia who rely on the NDIS to live with dignity, safety, autonomy and connection.

I am deeply concerned by the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026.

I understand that the NDIS needs to be sustainable. I understand that poor-quality services need to be improved. But I do not accept that the answer is to make access harder, reduce supports, increase administrative barriers, or give broad powers to cut funding in ways that will leave many vulnerable people without what they need.

To me, this Bill feels like a fundamental shift away from the promise of the NDIS. The NDIS was built on the idea that disabled people deserve choice, control, inclusion and support to participate in ordinary life. An equaliser, if you will. This Bill risks replacing that promise with a system that is more rigid, more suspicious, more automated, and more focused on cost containment than on people’s real lives.

There are millions of disabled Australians. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 5.5 million Australians were living with a disability in 2022, representing 21.4% of the population. The scale of these proposed changes is huge, and the consequences may be life-changing (and in some cases, life-threatening) for many people who are already pushed to the limit.

My position on this Bill

I ask the Committee to recommend that the Government withdraw this Bill.

At a minimum, the Bill should not proceed in its current form. Any reform to the NDIS must be co-designed with disabled people, families, carers, disability representative organisations, advocates and the workers who understand the system on the ground. It must be rights-based, transparent, accessible and properly scrutinised. Not simply a budget line.

I am appalled that the Albanese Government would wind back access and supports for some of the most vulnerable Australians under the language of “sustainability”. Sustainability cannot mean pushing disabled people out of the scheme, forcing families and friends to absorb unpaid labour, or making people prove over and over again that they deserve help.

This feels like a tax on some of the most vulnerable Australians. Not a tax in the formal legal sense, but in the real-world sense… disabled people and their supporters may be made to pay the price through lost supports, greater stress and anxiety, worsening their mental health, through more paperwork, fewer choices and less safety.

This is not right.

Every Australian deserves dignity and human rights. Disabled people deserve to live full lives with access to the support they need. Making access to the NDIS harder is going to hurt people. It’s going to hurt many, many Australians.

My key concerns are as follows:

1. Automated decision-making systems are not safe to be deployed at scale:

This is something I have intimate knowledge of in my career. This Bill would allow automated systems to take administrative action, including actions involving discretion, evaluative judgement or forming a state of mind. I am extremely concerned about what this means in practice.

As taken from the bill:

Governance arrangements Schedule 3 Automation of administrative action Part 2:

Division 5—Automation of administrative action

59B Automation of administrative action

(1) The CEO may, in writing, arrange for the use, under the CEO’s oversight, of computer programs to take administrative action that may or must be taken by the CEO under a provision that is one of the following… [continues.]

Evaluative administrative action (4) Subsection (1) includes administrative action that involves one or more of the following: (a) a discretion being exercised; (b) an evaluative judgement being made; (c) a state of mind being formed.

(5) Administrative action taken by the operation of a computer program under an arrangement under subsection (1) is treated, for all purposes, as administrative action taken by the CEO.

This is absolutely unacceptable. Just think about what that means. The computer program, can exercise evaluative judgement, exclude humans from the system – withhold support etc… and legally and administratively it is considered for all intents and purposes as action being taken by the CEO.

I should not have to remind the government about the unlawful automated Centrelink Robo-Debt Scandal. A ‘cost-cutting’ scheme that harmed many Australians, and was even allegedly indirectly responsible for the suicides of vulnerable Australians. The Robo-Debt scheme is a sound, real-life example, of where automated decision-making about the lives of vulnerable people at scale can lead.

As a software engineer/founder/CEO in the Artificial Intelligence industry in Sydney, I realise the promise that automated systems can have. They are incredible for some applications. However, I assure you, judgement on very nuanced human situations, is not one of them. No matter what you hear about the promise of AI, (or even Non-AI complex automated decision making) these systems do not have the human-level judgement required for navigating and allocating access to schemes that people’s lives and care depend on. These situations are not binary, they are complex, complicated, extremely unique-per-case, and require humanity, and human judgement.

Disabled people are already too often forced to deal with systems that do not understand them. Automated systems can make this worse if they simplify complex lives into data points, thresholds and categories. Whether it’s by traditional programming, or LLM-based approaches – tech systems are not equipped to make such judgements.

Administrative convenience should never come before justice. These systems are not able to do what this bill proposes they can do. If they are introduced, they are guaranteed to make mistakes. Miscategorisations and unfair judgements will happen. They do not, and will not have the necessary human context to make these calls. I have no doubt, if introduced, this system will hurt disabled Australians.

2. Making access harder through a narrower idea of functional capacity

One of my major concerns is the Bill’s proposed definition of ‘functional capacity’. The Bill defines functional capacity in relation to an activity as a person’s ability to undertake that activity without assistance from other people, assistive technology or modifications, and in a context that excludes, as far as possible, the impact of environmental and personal circumstances.

That may sound technical, but it is not just technical. It goes to the heart of how disabled people’s lives are understood.

Disability does not happen in a vacuum. People’s capacity is shaped by housing, transport, income, family support, access to health care, communication access, technology, geography, discrimination and the availability of safe services. Ignoring those realities risks creating assessments that do not reflect how people actually live day-to-day.

A disabled person may appear to function ‘better’ because they have fought hard to build a fragile network of supports around them. That should not be used against them. The fact that a person can participate with the right supports does not mean they no longer need those supports. It means the supports are necessary and working.

I am concerned that this provision will make it harder for people to access the NDIS and easier for the Agency to minimise people’s needs.

3. Tighter reassessment rules will punish people whose lives change quickly

The Bill would make it harder for participants to request unscheduled reassessments of their plans. It introduces stricter conditions, including requirements around significant and ongoing changes to support needs, functional capacity, personal circumstances, living arrangements, work, education or informal supports.

Real life is not that neat. Disabled people’s circumstances can change quickly. It might be that a carer has become unwell… Housing can become unsafe… Someone can quickly fall into a mental health crisis… A support relationship can break down… A participant may experience burnout, a new diagnosis, a change in medication, family violence, homelessness, grief or isolation. These changes may not fit neatly into bureaucratic categories at the moment a person most needs help.

I am worried that people will be left stuck in plans that no longer meet their needs because they cannot satisfy a rigid test or gather the right evidence in time. This will especially hurt people without strong advocates, people with communication disabilities, people in crisis, and people already exhausted by navigating the complex system.

The NDIS should respond to people’s lives, not force people’s lives to fit a narrow administrative framework.

4. Broad powers to reduce funding for groups of supports are dangerous

The Bill would allow the Minister to reduce funding for specified groups of supports across plans. The Bill expressly states that such a determination can have effect even if the funding provided for a reasonable and necessary support is less than the total cost of that support, or if funding for all reasonable and necessary supports in the plan is less than the total cost.

This is extremely concerning.

Not contactable“ rules could harm people in crisis

I am very concerned about the “not contactable” provisions. The Bill would allow a participant’s plan to be suspended if the CEO is satisfied that reasonable attempts have been made to contact the participant and the participant is not contactable. It also allows participant status to be revoked in certain circumstances, including where a plan has been suspended for at least 90 days.

This is frightening.

There are many reasons a disabled person may not respond to the NDIA. They may be in hospital. They may be experiencing a mental health crisis. They may be houseless or in an unsafe situation. They may not understand the communication. They may be experiencing burnout. They may not have internet access. They may have a communication disability. They may depend on a nominee, carer or support coordinator who is unavailable. They may be overwhelmed by the exact administrative burden the system has created.

The people who are hardest to contact will likely also be the people most at risk.

Suspending or revoking support because someone cannot respond to bureaucracy, risks punishing people for the impacts of their disability, poverty, crisis or trauma. At the very least, there must be much stronger safeguards before any suspension or revocation can occur, including mandatory accessible communication, multiple contact methods, human review, involvement of trusted supporters where appropriate, and clear evidence that the person is safe.

No one should lose disability support because they missed a letter, had to exit a house, lost their phone, had their phone service suspended, or were too unwell to navigate a government process.

Concerns Regarding Proposed Changes

I am also concerned about the Bill’s proposed changes around permanence and “appropriate treatment”. The Bill says treatment may be considered appropriate regardless of whether a person’s individual circumstances restrict them from accessing it, including financial circumstances and geographical location. As many measures in this bill, this could disproportionately effect the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community.

This is deeply unfair.

A person should not be denied access to the NDIS because a treatment theoretically exists but is not realistically available to them. Australia is not equal in access to health care. People in regional and remote areas face different barriers. People with low/no income face different barriers. Long waiting lists, out-of-pocket costs, transport barriers, medical trauma and lack of local specialists are real.

It is unjust to treat a support as “available” when, in practical terms, the person cannot access it.

The NDIS should not punish people for being poor, rural, isolated, medically complex or unable to navigate a fragmented health system.

My Lived Experience

My experience is not as a disabled person, but as someone who knows and loves disabled people.

I have seen how hard my disabled friends and family already have to work, just to access what non-disabled people often take for granted: leaving the house, seeing friends, getting to appointments, participating in the community, maintaining independence, recovering from burnout, or having a sense of safety and continuity.

I have seen how much energy goes into admin, appointments, forms, evidence, phone calls, follow-ups, reviews and proving need. I have seen how often disabled people are expected to be endlessly resilient, endlessly organised and endlessly articulate in systems that are not designed around them.

The people I care about deserve more than survival. They deserve dignity. They deserve joy. They deserve connection. They deserve the ability to participate in society without being treated as a burden.

When I read about proposals that would make access harder, reduce funding, restrict reviews, suspend plans when people are “not contactable”, and rely more on automated or standardised systems, I do not see a safer NDIS. I see a colder one, a more harmful one.

I see a system that risks becoming harder to enter, harder to navigate, harder to appeal and easier to be pushed out of.

This Bill gets it wrong.

The Balance is Wrong

The balance is wrong in this amendment. It treats sustainability as if it can be separated from human consequences. It cannot.

A sustainable NDIS is not one that cuts people off, reduces supports, or makes disabled people and their families fight harder for less. A sustainable NDIS is one that invests in the right supports early, prevents crisis, reduces exploitation, supports independence, and respects disabled people as experts in their own lives.

This Bill also risks confusing fraud control with participant control. Legitimate fraud should be addressed firmly, but fraud is not caused by disabled people needing support. Disabled people should not be made to feel like suspects in their own lives.

The Bill gives too much power to Ministers, rules, determinations, standardised processes and automated systems, and not enough protection for individual circumstances, lived experience, procedural fairness and human rights.

It also appears to rely too heavily on mainstream services, informal supports and future systems that may not exist, may not be accessible, or may already be overstretched. Telling people to rely on other systems does not help if those systems are not actually there.

What Needs to Change or Be Protected

I am asking the Committee to recommend that the Government withdraw the Bill.

If the Bill proceeds, I ask that the Committee recommend major amendments to ensure that:

1. No automated computer systems should ever have the right to “exercise evaluative judgement”, and they should definitely not be “treated, for all purposes, as administrative action taken by the CEO”.
2. NDIS access is not narrowed in a way that excludes people who genuinely need disability support.
3. Functional capacity assessments consider real-world circumstances, including environment, informal supports, assistive technology, poverty, housing, geography and communication access.
4. Participants can request reassessments when their circumstances change, without being forced through overly narrow or unrealistic tests.
5. Funding for reasonable and necessary supports cannot be reduced below the real cost of providing those supports.
6. Social, civic and community participation supports are protected as essential supports, not treated as optional extras.

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7. “Not contactable” provisions cannot be used to suspend or revoke support without strong safeguards, accessible communication, human review and evidence that the participant is not in crisis or at risk.

8. Families, friends and informal supports are not treated as a substitute for properly funded disability support.

9. Individual lived experience and professional evidence are given real weight, not pushed aside by narrow evidence hierarchies.

10. People are not denied access because treatment theoretically exists but is not realistically accessible to them.

11. Disabled people and their representative organisations are genuinely involved in redesigning the NDIS before major changes are made.

My final statement

The NDIS is not just a budget line. It was meant to be a promise.

A promise that disabled people are not disposable. It is a promise that people should not be trapped at home, isolated, unsafe or dependent on exhausted loved ones because support is too hard to access. It is a promise that disability support is part of a fair society.

What happened to the Australian ideal of “getting a fair go”?

I am asking the Committee to listen to disabled people, and their families, carers, friends, advocates and communities who are saying that this Bill is dangerous.

The Government should stop trying to ‘secure the future of the NDIS’ by making disabled people less secure.

I ask the Committee to recommend that the Government withdraw this Bill and work with the disability community on reforms that protect the NDIS without harming the people it exists to support.

Thank you for considering my submission.

With respect, Joshua Graham