@@attention@@ Committee Secretary, Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs
1 June 2026
Dear Committee Chair, Secretary and Members 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. For background I am the parent and carer of an NDIS participant who is a neurodivergent young adult. I would like to outline the damage this Amendment Bill will cause if it passes Parliament. I believe the Bill requires substantially greater scrutiny and considerable amendment before it proceeds:
e Parliamentary Scrutiny and Transparency The consultation period for the Amendment Bill was two weeks, grossly 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 has impacted me by adding stress and time pressure to my already chronically stressful life as a 24/7/365 carer, self-employed business owner, wife, mother, daughter and carer of elderly parents and autism community volunteer. Recommendation/Request: The consultation period should have been extended to a minimum of 30 days.
Key decisions left to ministerial instruments, not law The issue: The Bill allows Ministers to change who receives 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 like our disabled adult child, 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 altered or cut and their daily life adversely impacted.
Like thousands of others across the country, our 24yo autistic, ADHD, PDA profile, BPD, Anxious/Depressed young adult does not have the capacity to assess, address or appeal such cuts or changes to their supports.
Recommendation/Request:
all decisions affecting NDIS eligibility and funding levels must be made through primary legislation subject to full parliamentary scrutiny, with mandatory adequate advance notice provided to affected participants and their nominees before any changes can take effect with the right to appeal maintained.
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 substantially more difficult to challenge decisions about their supports and funding. For a vulnerable and already chronically disadvantaged population, this further restricts their very existence and connection to the community. It impacts 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 may be reassessed under stricter rules at any point in time. If funding is reduced or their plan renewed automatically, they may have limited or no ability to challenge that decision. This will make it so much harder for Australian people, particularly those with cognitive, nervous system, intellectual, emotional, or mental health challenges to request and/or receive extra support when their circumstances or disability change. It is therefore considered cruel, unjust and unethical - if not illegal under Disability Discrimination legislation
Recommendation/request:
Mandatory “no harm“ safeguard, ensuring current participants cannot lose access to existing supports 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 can and will be cut without warning and without any right to appeal. This is already happening on a daily basis as witnessed daily both in the media and across social media. Participants who save unspent funds across plan periods for high-cost items will lose that ability entirely.
This is an alarming and entirely unacceptable proposition, one which will result in my child and thousands of others to become largely housebound and even more dependent on their ageing carers, many of whom have their own physical or other challenges and businesses and other responsibilities - who cannot sustain this role indefinitely. The fallout of such a shortsighted and frankly ludicrous approach is that hundreds of thousands of Australians will require institutional care at an enormous cost to the state and federal governments and to every single taxpayer. This is completely nonsensical and beggars belief that it possibly could be considered to be a “cost-saving” measure.
Recommendation/reqest:
All unspent funds to 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 their ability to pay for
treatment, their residential location and/or whether treatment is even available to them.
In view of the current medical and allied health staffing crisis across the country, this will be almost impossible to achieve and further burden the public and private health systems.
It is worth noting that permanent disability - such as those required to even be eligible to access NDIS (!!) - are not “treatable” conditions. Case in point is neurodivergence which is not treatable/fixable/curable, however the neurodivergent person can be supported by qualified allied health professionals to gradually build their capacity and skills over time.
Recommendation/request: 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 or consideration of whether a condition is in fact “treatable”.
Unvalidated functional capacity assessment tool risks misidentifying need
The issue: The Bill shifts assessment from whole-of-person consideration by qualified, registered medical and allied health professionals 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 and others for whom the tool was not designed nor intended to assess.
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 as so many disabilities do, including neurodivergence, than participants may be found ineligible or have their supports underestimated, with zero guarantee that the result reflects their actual daily life experience or meets their critical support needs. To the best of my knowledge the people conducting these assessments are not qualified or skilled to do so which invalidates the tool entirely.
This proposal has caused immense anxiety and overwhelming frustration to myself and my family, along with many hundreds of thousands of disabled Australians, their parents and carers. Recommendation/request: 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, and others, and only if conducted by tertiary qualified allied health professionals.
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 capacity and develop and maintain independence can and will be cut before any infrastructure, services, programs etc even exists to replace them, leaving carers and families with greater responsibilities, burden and stress with no additional support. These supports are what help people function, stay alive, connected, healthy (physically, mentally, psychologically and socially). I ask how every single person involved in these decisions and Bills, every person reading this submission, would feel if they/you were told they/you couldn’t leave the house 50% of the time they needed or wanted to??! It is a preposterous and outrageous decision is it not? This proposal contradicts every single philosophy of the Australian Government and its National Autism Strategy launched just last year, together with every other piece of disability-related research on social integration and all legislation in place to support and protect disabled Australians and their carers. Unfathomable. Unfair. Unacceptable. Recommendation/request: Reductions to community participation and capacity building supports must not occur at all - or alternatively, must not take effect until Foundational Supports for 0-65yo are fully operational, adequately funded and have been proven to be able to meet the needs of every one of those disabled people who will lose NDIS supports.
Thank you for your time and attention to my submission and those submissions and concerns of other Australians with disability and their carers. Please keep in mind that the vast majority of this population are unable - for myriad reasons - to lodge a submission themselves, so those of us who have also speak on their behalf. I can only hope that the proposed changes do not proceed as “evil prevails when good men and women do nothing” (Edmund Burke). Many thanks for caring for our children and families and doing the right thing.