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: 1st June 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 am a family member and informal support for an adult NDIS participant. I am also a person with a background in law and more than 25 years’ experience in the Australian Public Service. I have worked extensively in decision review and understand the importance of clear correct decision making in the first instance (and what supports this), as well as the costs of internal and external administrative and judicial review.

The NDIS is a world leading program of 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.

I am deeply concerned that the core principles of the NDIA will be undermined and that enormous harm will be caused if this legislation is passed in its current form. Not only harm to people living with severe disabilities, but their families,

Parliamentary Scrutiny and Transparency

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.

The short timeline impacts people with disabilities who given their diverse needs and abilities, one would think, should be afforded a greater period of time rather than a shorter period of time to consult about these changes that directly affect them. It is not enough to say that disability sector consultation has occurred prior to the Bill’s presentation to Parliament. Prior to seeing the detail contained within the Bill the people affected could not properly respond.

Recommendation: Amend the consultation period for 60 days, or at the very least, the best practice minimum of 30 days.

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 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 affected.

A program aimed at the most vulnerable Australians should be completely transparent, easy to understand, and as static as possible so that people can plan their lives with some level of confidence. Program changes especially those that will limit access, should not be made without real consultation with those directly affected. It places these vulnerable Australians at real risk of harm if left unsupported. Placing these powers in the Minister’s hands alone undermines every one of the NDIS core principles, will create great confusion for participants, and undermines the social license for the program given the lack of parliamentary scrutiny.

Recommendation: Require that all decisions affecting NDIS 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. Before changes are made to eligibility, clear policy as to eligibility criteria and what supports that eligibility entitles participants 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.

How this affects participants: 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. These amendments will not limit the administrative churn (rework, complaints, escalations, appeals) about decisions made in the scheme. It is highly likely to increase the number of complaints Parliamentarians can expect to receive in regard to the scheme administration. It is also highly likely to result in an increase in external review, including judicial review as challenges are made to the nature of decisions made and whether they are reviewable or not within the wider context of principles of natural justice in administrative law decision making.

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• What will fix administrative churn would be:

• Legislated, transparent criteria around eligibility and entitlement. This has been done before for example the legislative criteria for 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 with lived experience of disability that reflects the community they serve, 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 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. Nor being steered towards agency preferred outcomes such as the rollover of plans when you ask for a plan reassessment as you are told your funding might reduce.

• 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, with sufficient detail to allow participants to factor in the required hours of different types of support to assist them to have real oversight of their funds.

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.

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 thought out program where funding amounts are matched to individual needs in a meaningful way. This action will further undermine the social licence of the programs validity going forward. It will also undermine confidence in the sector that funding amounts can be relied on and that this is a sector worth investing or working in. Creating the risk that there will be a large-scale exodus of providers from the Disability support sector.

Recommendation: Require that plans cannot be reduced without that reduction being actually reflected in their plan and any reduction in funding needs to be based on an individual’s circumstances and be able to be reviewed. Where reductions take place, the Agency needs to be able to demonstrate in real terms how the participant’s circumstances have changed significantly, and the agency has effectively demonstrated that the funds are not required. Any wholesale changes to eligibility entitlement in like circumstances needs to have an Independent Price Review Committee recommendation, updated guidelines and explanation signed off by Parliament. This needs to be done as part of the Budget process and only once per year. 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. 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. Once in the scheme, their supports will only be assessed against a single eligible impairment rather than their whole experience.

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 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.

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,

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, including those with episodic or fluctuating disability, and demonstrated to be culturally appropriate for First Peoples 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: 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. 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.

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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.

Reassessment Decision Timeframe Extended from 21 days to 90 days

The issue: The amendment 48A(3) limit when a reassessment can be requested and increase the severity of the circumstances that need to be evidenced before a reassessment can be requested for additional or changed supports. Amendment 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 (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
• geographical 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.

Thank you for taking the time to read this submission.