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

Attention: Committee Secretary, Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs Submitted by email: community.affairs.sen@aph.gov.au Date: 30/05/2026

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.

The NDIS is a world leading program of Disability support for Australia’s most vulnerable and disadvantaged that was created with some key principles agreed to:

• Australians who met the eligibility criteria around severely impacted and permanent conditions should have all Reasonable (Originally Basic) and Necessary supports fully funded.
• Support Assessments should be individualised to assess the participants circumstances and assess their needs.
• That participants should be provided with fixed budgets (of at least twelve months) so that they had certainty in order to be able to plan their lives and engage supports in good faith.
• That the NDIA needed to be resourced appropriately to deal with emergency situations as required.
• That participants would have normal Administrative Review rights when subject to decisions within the scheme.
• That any changes to the NDIA policies and frameworks needed to have whole of Government oversight because of the complexity of need and vulnerability of the participants and to ensure all policy decisions were assessed in consultation with all impacted parties.

The Amendments as written undermine all of the principles on which the NDIA was legislated and agreed to with bi-partisan commitment.

I am a NDIS participant and a person with twenty-seven years of experience working formerly in the Australian Public Service working in the sectors that provide support to our most vulnerable Australians. I am deeply concerned that these core principles of the NDIA are being undermined and the enormous harm this legislation will cause if it passes Parliament in its current form. Not only harm to people living with severe disabilities, but their families, their communities, the disability employment sector that has grown throughout the last thirteen years and all other Australian citizens as costs get shifted to other services like the health system, the justice system, the education system, aged care facilities etc.

My Specific Concerns:

Parliamentary Scrutiny and Transparency

The Issue: The consultation period for the Amendment Bill is two weeks, which is insufficient to allow for appropriate consultation on legislative amendments that seek to fundamentally change some of the core principles of a highly complex policy program, whose purpose is to look after a cohort with significantly complex accessibility and communication needs and which interacts with a significant number of other government programs that will also be impacted by these changes. The Australian Government Guide to Policy Impact Analysis says consultation should occur for a minimum of 30 days where possible. There has been no genuine reason given for the shortened timeframe provided in this case.

Recommendation: Amend the consultation period for a best practice minimum of at least 30 days.

Key decisions left to ministerial instruments, not law

The issue: The Bill allows the Minister of the day to change who is eligible for 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 NDIS and what supports they can access, could be changed without parliamentary debate or public scrutiny.

A program aimed at the most vulnerable Australians should be completely transparent, easy to understand, as static as possible and able to be relied upon so that people can plan their lives with some level of confidence. This proposition undermines every one of those principles and will create even greater confusion for participants, and undermine the social license for the program given the lack of parliamentary scrutiny and actively cause harm.

Recommendation: Require that all decisions affecting NDIS eligibility and funding levels be made through primary legislation subject to full parliamentary scrutiny. Before changes are made the policy that determines eligibility and what that eligibility entitles them to needs to be developed, publicly available and able to be debated.

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.

The problem that is trying to be resolved is to limit the administrative churn (rework, complaints, escalations, appeals) about decisions made in the scheme and require greater planning from participants. These amendments will not address those issues.

It will put vulnerable people with high levels of support needs at significant risk of not being able to access vital lifesaving supports at critical times and result in the cost of those supports having to be met by the health sector at greater cost to the taxpayer and the community’s overall health. It will also increase the risk that where mistakes have been made by the NDIA that those mistakes take longer to rectify or are never actually rectified. It will absolutely increase the number of complaints all Parliamentarians can expect to receive in regard to the scheme administration.

What will fix administrative churn would be:

• Legislated, transparent criteria around eligibility and entitlement which has been done before for example the legislative criteria for the Disability Support Pension. In particular legal definitions in the NDIS context as to permanent, severe, reasonable and necessary with detailed specificity.
• A trained and stable NDIA workforce who are able to communicate and enforce clear legislation and policy in an effective manner.
• Communication strategies around decision making that are aimed at individual circumstances not formulaic generalisations.
• Comprehensive wholistic access to legislation and policy that is not isolated and piecemeal and can be relied on not to change without full public and parliamentary scrutiny.
• Specialisation of the NDIA workforce to acknowledge the complexity and breadth of knowledge needed to deliver this program effectively.
• A performance management system for NDIA staff that rewards quality of outcomes achieved for participants without administrative review and not the quantity of work processed.
• Actual strict adherence to current guidelines that allow for participants to be prepared for and engage with the administrative process in an appropriate manner. For example, currently participants are not being given any formal notice that their plan is being reassessed, nor any notice that they are

expected to have provided reports from Physios, allied health providers etc. They are just being told that they are having a check in phone call sometimes with less than an hour’s notice and then finding that that was the plan review meeting.

• Tools that will actively assist participants to interact with policy guidelines in real terms for their own circumstances. Such as a decision tree tool to assist with what has been funded in their circumstances and what they can purchase with their funds. This should allow participants to enter their own specific circumstances. Also, a budget calculator that shows your actual plan funds amounts and builds in price guide limitations.

Recommendation: An Independent Review of the NDIA be undertaken to see where current rules around plan review are not being followed. Quality auditing of plans granted by an independent team against current guidelines. Testing of current guidelines usability and value in their current format. 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.

As currently written, this seems unworkable, against all principles of natural justice, discriminatory against certain disability cohorts, completely at odds with two of the core principles of the NDIS scheme (all reasonable and necessary supports are fully funded and supports meet an individual’s circumstances). This will create much more administrative churn (complaints, rework, escalations).

To provide a funding amount on the basis that it is both reasonable and necessary for their individual circumstances then tell participants that due to budget constraints they can only access a certain percentage of that amount is designed to fail and will create distrust in the scheme, anxiety amongst participants and administrative problems. To also remove access to funding that has been granted as reasonable and necessary without any level of scrutiny as to how it will impact an individual’s needs and without right of review seems to be quite frankly UnAustralian i.e. in no way is it fair or equitable. It also seems to undermine the idea that the NDIS is a well

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. 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.

Introducing criteria that does not even allow the safeguards in the Disability Support Pension legislation just further bakes in the inequalities of the NDIS scheme and disadvantages Australians with rare or undiagnosable conditions, people who live in rural and remote regions and people who cannot afford to access private health care. Which completely undermines the government’s current messaging about wanting to improve the current schemes acknowledged issues with equity, consistency, and fairness in the accessibility of the scheme.

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. Furthermore, due to the significant wait times to see specialists from whom a diagnosis and prognosis are required the Federal Government should be working with the State Governments to take practical steps to ensure eligibility can be assessed as soon as possible.

Unvalidated Functional Capacity Assessment Tool Risks Misidentifying Need

The Issue:

The Bill shifts assessment from whole-of-person consideration to only eligible impairments (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 impairment.

How This Affects Participants:

If the assessment tool does not accurately capture the full extent of a person’s disability, including needs where the severity of impact is daily, but severity fluctuates over time, a participant may be found ineligible or have their supports undercounted, with no guarantee the result reflects their actual experience.

Put simply the SNA assessment framework runs the real risk of just perpetuating the current issues around establishing eligibility in that it will come down to the skill level of the individual assessor, the communication skills of the applicant and their ability and comfort level in explaining the impacts of their condition. For people who have lived with disability for an extended period it also relies on them being self-aware enough to understand what about their normal day to day could be assisted with NDIA supports. Tertiary educated middle class, conversant people with a well-defined and visible disability will do very well. Results for everyone else will be mixed. This runs the real risk of having severely disabled Australians who should be eligible for the scheme incorrectly categorised as not eligible.

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. Consultation should include a subset from all disability types, with varying types of communication methods and complex needs. As well as sign off from an independent allied health advisory group that effective assessments are being achieved. Also a wide selection of test participants must have actually viewed the SNA report and agreed that it represents an accurate reflection of the information provided.

Supports Cut Before Replacement System Is Ready

The Issue:

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 Operational Status

All States have not even signed on as of the date the legislation was introduced to parliament.

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.

These cuts from plans where people have already budgeted their care needs could put applicants in situations of real harm.

There is a real possibility the government is basing this decision on flawed data that has created a belief in the government that participants are currently underutilising their community access funds.

The NDIA invoicing requirements are complex. There is little understanding and adherence within the provider and participant communities of the critical requirement to invoice against line items correctly. One example of this is that the major registered platform provider Hire-up only invoices community access line items where the support worker is driving a participant in their own car despite presumably having been audited for compliance to price guidelines pre and post registration.

This decision will leave participants without essential supports to undertake critical activities like attending health appointments, physio, employment, volunteer activities etc. The ramifications of which will be felt with more carer burnout, greater need for the use of the health system, greater need not less for personal care support services. This seems like a very shortsighted decision that should only be taken after accurate data is actually available once the invoicing, payment and audit systems are strengthened.

Recommendation:

Require that no reductions to community participation or capacity building supports take effect until there is accurate data available to assess the flow-on impacts of this decision. No removal from the scheme of any participants who are funded for community access as a reasonable and necessary support until foundational supports are fully operational, adequately funded and demonstrably able to meet their needs.

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48(2A) legislates that the request must be made in a manner approved by the CEO with the relevant evidence. At the same time, it provides an additional sixty-nine days for these requests to be assessed. Given the increased severity of all reassessment requests being received and limiting the manner in which they are received the extension date for decisions does not seem wise or justified.

How this affects participants:

The tightened criteria for eligibility for reassessment means in real terms participants with shortened funding periods, exhausted funding allocations etc will be at real risk of having to manage without critical supports for up to ninety days. Through no fault of their own. This could result in a reduction in a participant’s health, or functional capacity and cause a greater reliance on the health sector, aged care facilities or informal supports who will need to forgo their own employment or education. It will also result in breaks in service provision and loss of income for service providers. It could result in loss of life.

Recommendation:

No change to the current timeframe of twenty-one days and the issue be managed through a system of triage and prioritisation, and proper workforce resourcing.

Inserting the concept of Financial Sustainability into the Act.

The issue: Item 60 – Paragraph 3(1)(d) This item repeals paragraph 3(1)(d) and substitutes with ‘provide NDIS supports for participants in the National Disability Insurance Scheme that are reasonable and necessary, so far as is consistent with the financial sustainability of the Scheme; and’.

The purpose of this item is to embed the concept of financial sustainability of the scheme into the objects of the Act to provide clarity and direction to the interpretation of the NDIS Act. But nowhere in the Act is it defined what are the factors to be assessed when looking at financial sustainability of the scheme. Or a definition of what financial sustainability actually is that the Minister’s decision has to meet. This leaves this critical concept up to the Minister of the day (presumably in conjunction with the Treasurer, Finance Minister and Prime Minister but this is not stated) to determine and not the whole of Parliament or the Australian public.

How this affects participants:

This leaves participants extremely vulnerable to having funding decisions made without rigour, transparency or even agreement that they are required based on the judgement of one person’s interpretation of what is in the best interest of the country’s financial position at any given point in time. This is not a legitimate policy framework that would be considered in any other part of a federal program.

Recommendation:

Do not proceed with the change.

Strengthening the Guidelines for Parents and Informal Carers

The Issue: Proposed new subsections 34(1G), (1H) and (34)(1J), provide guidance to the CEO in considering whether a support meets the requirements in paragraph 34(1)(e) that a support will only be reasonable and necessary if the funding or provision of the support takes account of what is reasonable to expect families, carers, informal networks and the community to provide.

The issue here is that there is still no current concrete NDIA policy around what the governments expectations are around parental responsibility at the various ages. Parental levels of oversight and support vary widely in the community and there is no yardstick here for this complex policy proposal. The legislative amendments also misses the point of parental and carer safety. This completely abrogates the government’s responsibility to ensure its decisions do not put informal supports at risk of physical or mental harm.

There is currently no formal or transparent process in the NDIS planning framework of the capacity of the participants informal supports to provide safe ongoing care, including how much care they are able to provide when deciding a participants funding. This needs to include factors as physical capacity, age, own medical conditions, other parental/caring responsibilities, paid work commitments and gerographical factors that impact on availability of community support. Without that process and policy and these factors being specified and taken into account these legislative changes will be completely ineffective.

Recommendation: If these amendments are to be accepted they must be accompanied by transparent guidelines around parental and informal carer responsibility that takes into account the above issues. Plus, a well thought out administrative process for how to assess parent/carer capacity and OHS risks so that these provisions do not put informal supports in positions where they could be actively harmed. It is only then that the risk to the participants can be assessed accurately in line with the amendments aims.

Thanks for taking the time to read this submission.

Please feel free to contact if you have any questions.

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