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National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Physical Disability Australia Ltd
PO Box 107 Bungendore NSW 2621
CONTENTS
About …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 2
Executive Summary ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 2
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 3
The Scale of Underrepresentation: Evidence of Systemic Exclusion ……………………………………………………………………………… 4
Reassessment and Plan Renewal: A Disproportionate Burden …………………………………………………………………………………….. 5
Funding Certainty and the Destruction of Assistive Technology/home modifications Markets ……………………………………….. 5
Review Rights and Administrative Accountability: Barriers to Justice …………………………………………………………………………… 6
Intersectional Discrimination: Age, Gender, and Geography……………………………………………………………………………………….. 6
Violation of Human Rights Obligations …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 7
The Impact of the Bill on People with Physical Disability …………………………………………………………………………………………….. 8
Schedule 1, Part 1 — Defining “Functional Capacity” (s 9B) …………………………………………………………………………………….. 8
Schedule 1, Part 3 — Strengthening the Impairment-to-Support Link ………………………………………………………………………. 8
Schedule 1, Part 4 — Support Determinations (Commences 1 October 2026) …………………………………………………………… 9
Schedule 1, Part 5 — Plan Renewal (Commences 1 February 2027) …………………………………………………………………………. 9
Schedule 1, Part 6 — Reasonable and Necessary Supports (Commences 1 February 2027) ………………………………………. 10
Schedule 1, Part 7 — Plan Suspension (Commences 1 October 2026) …………………………………………………………………….. 10
Schedule 1, Part 8 — Tightening Permanence: “All Appropriate Treatment” (Commences 1 January 2028) ………………… 11
Schedule 1, Part 9 — Eligibility based on access to other services ………………………………………………………………………….. 12
Schedule 2, Part 3C — Compliance and Enforcement in relation to Agency Functions ……………………………………………… 12
Schedule 2, Part 4 — Information Gathering, Record Retention and Claims Integrity ……………………………………………….. 13
Our Recommendations ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 14
Primary Recommendations ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 14
Specific Recommendations on the Bill ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 14
Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 17
Submission Details …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 17
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PO Box 107 Bungendore NSW 2621
NATIONAL DISABILITY INSURANCE
SCHEME AMENDMENT (SECURING
THE NDIS FOR FUTURE
GENERATIONS) BILL 2026
ABOUT
Physical Disability Australia (PDA) is Australia’s national peak Disabled People’s Organisation representing people
living with physical disability. Established in 1995, and governed and led by people with physical disability, we
advocate for the rights, inclusion, and full participation of all people with physical disability across Australia.
At the heart of everything we do is a commitment to ensuring Australians with physical disability can realise their full
potential and live with dignity, autonomy, and equal opportunity. Through systemic advocacy, meaningful policy
engagement, and direct representation to government, we champion equality, inclusion, and accessibility — working
to ensure the voices and lived experiences of people with physical disability shape the laws, policies, and decisions
that affect their lives.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Consultation is not a courtesy. It is essential.
While the need for a sustainable NDIS is undeniable, the way reform is pursued matters. For thousands of Australians
with physical disability, the NDIS is not an abstract policy framework; it is the funding basis for wheelchairs, home
modifications, essential therapies, personal care, and the assistive technology that makes employment and
community participation possible.
In their present state, the reforms proposed by the Government risk narrowing access, reducing support, and forcing
people into standardised categories that do not reflect the reality and complexity of physical disability. The reforms
have been developed with minimal consultation from the disability community, and are now being rushed into
Parliament without providing adequate opportunity for us to demonstrate how some of the reforms being proposed
risk taking away the basic supports that thousands of people with physical disability rely on to live ordinary lives.
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Physical Disability Australia Ltd
PO Box 107 Bungendore NSW 2621
THE SCALE OF UNDERREPRESENTATION: EVIDENCE OF
SYSTEMIC EXCLUSION
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) reports that 5.5 million Australians were living with disability in 2022; just over three-quarters of that number reporting a physical condition as their main long-term health condition. Yet NDIS administrative data shows only 20–25% of participants list physical disability as their primary condition. Even after accounting for the well-documented age barrier, whereby Australians who acquire physical impairment after age 65 are excluded from the NDIS and funnelled into the aged care system, the disparity remains stark.
This gap suggests that hundreds of thousands of Australians of working age with significant physical impairments,
including spinal cord injury, multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy, acquired brain injury with mobility loss,
amputation, and degenerative arthritic conditions, are already either never entering the NDIS, or are being screened
out during access and planning. The Bill’s proposed changes risk codifying and accelerating this exclusion.ndirect
Discrimination Through “Neutral” Assessment Methodology
The Bill’s proposed changes to access and assessment methodology appearneutral but will have a disproportionately adverse effect on people with physical disability. This constitutes indirect discrimination under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (Cth) and Article 2 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).
Why the methodology discriminates:
Functional criteria bias: Standardised functional assessments often weight cognitive, behavioural, and communication domains more heavily than mobility, dexterity, continence, and chronic pain management. A person with profound mobility impairment but intact cognition may score as less “functionally impacted” than the assessment framework assumes.
Invisibility of environmental barriers: Physical disability support is fundamentally anchored in the social model of disability; wheelchairs, hoists, and home modifications are required because the built environment is inaccessible. If the new assessment methodology shifts toward “impairment severity” or “capacity to rehabilitate” without accounting for environmental intervention, it treats physical disability as a purely medical deficit rather than a barrier requiring capital supports.
The “primary condition” trap: Many physical disabilities involve complex, multi-system comorbidity (e.g., spasticity, pain, osteoporosis, pressure injury risk following spinal cord injury). Requiring a single “primary condition” obscures the cumulative functional burden and can lead to arbitrary categorisation that undervalues the need for assistive technology (AT) and personal care.
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Physical Disability Australia Ltd
PO Box 107 Bungendore NSW 2621
REVIEW RIGHTS AND ADMINISTRATIVE ACCOUNTABILITY:
BARRIERS TO JUSTICE
The proposed narrowing of review rights and administrative accountability disproportionately affects people with physical disability for several reasons:
Structural barriers to advocacy: Meritorious review before the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) requires legal representation, medical evidence, and digital or physical access to hearings. People with severe mobility limitations face compounded cost and access barriers in securing representation and attending proceedings.
Evidence asymmetry: The NDIA holds actuarial and medical procurement data that participants rarely see. Reducing accountability mechanisms entrenches this imbalance, particularly for participants whose needs are highly technical (e.g., level 4 pressure care seating, ceiling hoist tracking, complex bowel and bladder management).
Exhaustion and learned helplessness: Repeated adverse decisions and opaque review processes force participants with high physical support needs to choose between exhausting their limited energy on administrative combat or accepting dangerously inadequate plans. This is constructive denial of support.
INTERSECTIONAL DISCRIMINATION: AGE, GENDER, AND
GEOGRAPHY
The discrimination is compounded by intersectional factors:
The age-65 cliff: Because physical disability prevalence rises sharply with age (52.3% of Australians aged 65 and over live with disability), the NDIS age gateway already diverts many older Australians into the aged care system. This system is structurally oriented toward residential care rather than independent living, assistive technology, and home modifications. The Bill’s tightening of NDIS access offers no equivalent safeguard, meaning a person who acquires a spinal cord injury at 64 may have only a narrow window in which to access the NDIS before turning 65, and may face a severe support cliff shortly thereafter.
Gendered impact: Older women, who live longer and have higher rates of age-related physical disability, are disproportionately affected by both the age gateway and the devaluation of in-home support.
Regional thin markets: People with physical disability in regional areas already face prohibitive travel costs for AT assessments. Any additional administrative hurdle multiplies that burden exponentially.
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Physical Disability Australia Ltd
PO Box 107 Bungendore NSW 2621
Schedule 1, Part 4 — Support Determinations (Commences 1 October 2026)
For physical disability participants, support worker hours are existential. A reduction in funding for “personal care” hours doesn’t reduce a person’s need to be transferred, showered, repositioned, or assisted at toileting, it just means they have to find that care elsewhere, ration it, or go without. “Going without” personal care is not an inconvenience; it is a medical event that brings with it the risk of serious complications, including potentially Hospitalisation..
The mechanism is also concerning because it operates across the NDIS, not on an individual participant basis. That means an entire cohort can lose funding at once, without individual review.
“So if they reduce my personal care hours, what would they like me to give up? Hygiene? Clean equipment?
Essential hospital treatments? Or perhaps they want me to stay home and never see another living person
– a reduction in any of these leads to the same thing. One less on the NDIS system because I’ll likely be
dead.” David M
Schedule 1, Part 5 — Plan Renewal (Commences 1 February 2027)
Plan continuations have, in practice, been the mechanism that kept participants funded while awaiting reassessment. Many participants with physical disability have remained on rolling continuations for more than a year because the NDIA has been unable to complete reassessments within expected timeframes.
The new “renewal” mechanism legislates this, which is good in principle, but with the catch that renewed plans must comply with the new s 33 requirements: total funding amounts, funding component amounts, and funding periods.
This means a renewal is not a continuation of the old plan; it is a recalculation under the new framework. For participants whose old-framework plans were generous, a renewal may actually be a reduction.
The interaction with Schedule 1 Part 4 (support determinations) is particularly worrying: renewals will be calculated using whatever reduced funding the Minister has determined for those support categories. Existing participants will be migrated to lower budgets at renewal.
“Living with a physical disability is hard enough. Every delay feels like I’m being left to drift without the
support that keeps me afloat, and the idea that a renewal could quietly shrink my funding is terrifying.
What the system calls continuity to me feels like survival on borrowed time, because if my needs are
reassessed into a lower budget it doesn’t just change my plan it changes whether I can live with some
sense of self-worth and be safe.” Kevin T
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Physical Disability Australia Ltd
PO Box 107 Bungendore NSW 2621
OUR RECOMMENDATIONS
Primary Recommendations
Physical Disability Australia considers the Bill, in its current form, unworkable and likely to cause significant harm to people with physical disability. We recommend that the Bill be withdrawn and that a genuine, accessible consultation process be undertaken before any further legislative reform proceeds.
During that consultation period, reform efforts should prioritise cost reduction through provider oversight, market stewardship, and administrative efficiency rather than by shifting additional burden onto participants.
If the Bill is not withdrawn, it should be substantially amended to ensure proper representation, procedural fairness, and strong protections for people with physical disability.
Specific Recommendations on the Bill
Part 8 of the Bill
Part 8 should be opposed on the basis that it introduces a threshold likely to exclude or delay access for people with physical disability by linking permanence too closely to the exhaustion of treatment options. For many people with spinal cord injury, multiple sclerosis, neuromuscular conditions, acquired brain injury with mobility loss, amputation, chronic pain conditions, or other significant physical impairment, treatment may manage symptoms, slow deterioration, or prevent secondary complications without altering the permanence of the underlying disability or the ongoing need for personal care, assistive technology, home modifications, pressure care, and transfer assistance. The provision would create uncertainty, increase the scope for inconsistent decision-making, and risk exerting pressure on participants to undergo treatment that is unavailable, unsuitable, or inconsistent with free and informed consent. Part 8 raises defects of principle and operation that cannot be cured by minor amendment and should be omitted in its entirety.
Other Available Support Systems (Access)
Schedule 1, Part 9 should be removed on the basis that it would permit exclusion from the Scheme of participants with lifelong physical disability support needs by reason only of the notional availability of another service system, including where that system is time-limited, inferior, uncertain, or incapable of providing equivalent support. For people who require ongoing attendant care, continence support, complex bowel or bladder care, pressure management, wheelchair replacement, vehicle or home modifications, and other long-term physical disability supports, the existence of a compensation, health, or aged care pathway does not ensure equivalence of access, continuity, or adequacy. The provision would create a real risk of displacing people with physical disability from the NDIS without any reliable safeguard that substitute supports will be available in practice over the course of their lives. Schedule 1, Part 9 should therefore be omitted.
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PO Box 107 Bungendore NSW 2621
If Part 9 is retained, the rule-making power in proposed section 25B should, at a minimum, be removed because it would allow substantial restrictions on NDIS access to be effected by delegated legislation rather than by amendment to the primary Act subject to full parliamentary scrutiny. That presents a particular risk for people with physical disability, whose long-term reliance on attendant care, assistive technology, home modifications, consumables, and complex daily living supports may be displaced by broad assumptions that another service system is available. Changes of that kind go to the substance of entitlement and should not be left to future rules capable of materially altering access without the same degree of debate, transparency, and accountability. If Part 9 is retained, the rule-making power in proposed section 25B should be omitted and any such reform should be made, if at all, by amendment to the NDIS Act itself.
‘Reasonable and Necessary’ Criteria (Planning)
Proposed subsection 34(1A) should be removed because it introduces a constraining threshold at the threshold stage of the reasonable and necessary test, with the effect of narrowing access to supports for participants with physical disability whose needs are substantial, ongoing, and highly individualised. For this cohort, essential supports commonly include personal care, transfers, pressure care, continence supports, assistive technology, and home modifications, none of which can be appropriately assessed through broad statutory framing divorced from the participant’s actual functional circumstances. The provision would create a material risk that supports critical to health, safety, and community living are excluded by abstraction rather than assessed by reference to their necessity and functional purpose. Proposed subsection 34(1A) should therefore be omitted, while proposed subsections 34(1B) and (1C) may remain.
Proposed subsections 34(1E) and (1F) should be removed because they risk recasting the existing ‘effective and beneficial’ inquiry in a manner that is narrower, more rigid, and less responsive to the practical realities of physical disability support. For people with physical disability, a support may be effective and beneficial because it prevents pressure injuries, preserves transfer safety, reduces hospitalisation risk, maintains wheelchair access, sustains continence management, or enables community living, even where it does not produce measurable improvement in impairment. The current Supports Rules already provide an appropriate framework for that inquiry and should not be displaced by provisions likely to invite a more restrictive interpretation. Proposed subsections 34(1E) and (1F) should therefore be omitted.
Proposed subsection 34(1G) should be clarified to ensure that the treatment of parental responsibility remains anchored to the additional care burden arising from disability, and is not used to normalise the transfer of disability specific supports to families. That is of particular importance for children with physical disability who may require lifting, transfers, positioning, feeding assistance, respiratory support, pressure management, continence care, or mobility-related supervision beyond what would ordinarily be expected of a parent of a child of similar age. The objective should be to preserve a clear distinction between ordinary parental responsibility and materially increased care needs arising from physical disability.
Amend proposed subsection 34(1G) to read:
For the purposes of paragraph (1)(e) so far as it applies in relation to a participant who is a child, the CEO must take into account:
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PO Box 107 Bungendore NSW 2621
a. that it is commonly expected that parents are responsible for providing care and support for their children; and
b. whether, because of the child’s disability, the child’s care needs are substantially greater than those of other children of a similar age.
Proposed subsection 34(1H) should be removed because it risks importing assumptions about ordinary family functioning that do not reflect the complexity, intensity, and sustainability limits of physical disability-related care. For participants with physical disability, those assumptions may understate the labour involved in lifting, showering, dressing, toileting, repositioning, supervision during transfers, equipment management, and night-time care, and may shift essential care obligations to family members without adequate statutory protection. Proposed subsection 34(1H) should therefore be omitted.
Proposed subsection 34(1J) should be amended to ensure that reductions in parental burden or gains in household efficiency are not treated as reasons to refuse supports that are otherwise necessary by reason of physical disability. In the context of physical disability, supports such as hoists, showering assistance, toileting support, mealtime assistance, home modifications, and mobility equipment may also reduce household strain; however, that incidental effect should not be used to characterise them as ordinary family supports rather than disability-specific necessities. The subsection should make clear that disability-related supports are not to be excluded merely because they also produce practical benefits within the home.
Amend proposed subsection 34(1J) to read:
For the purposes of paragraph 1(e) so far as it applies in relation to a participant who is a child, the CEO must disregard the extent to which the support would:
a. reduce burdens on parental time below what is reasonably expected of a parent of a child with disability; and
b. improve household efficiency. Proposed subsection 34(1K) should be amended to ensure that reliance on family, carers, informal networks, or community supports is not treated as inherently available, safe, or sustainable. For people with physical disability, informal support may involve high-intensity manual handling, continence assistance, pressure care, transport, equipment set-up, or night-time attendance, and should not be assumed without consideration of carer fatigue, injury risk, burnout, and the participant’s safety and dignity. The provision should require express consideration of risk and wellbeing so that informal supports are strengthened where appropriate, but are not assumed in circumstances where such reliance would create harm, instability, or unmet need.
Amend proposed subsection 34(1K) to read:
For the purposes of paragraph 1(e), the CEO must consider:
a. whether relying on family, carers, informal networks or the community would expose the participant or another person to any risk to their wellbeing that cannot be reasonably mitigated; and
b. the desirability of supporting, maintaining and strengthening informal supports and community networks in preference to replacing those supports and networks with funded supports.
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PO Box 107 Bungendore NSW 2621
CONCLUSION
This Bill is presented as a measure to secure the future of the NDIS, but for people with physical disability it risks producing the opposite result: even further reduced access, less certainty, greater administrative burden, and weaker practical safeguards. A sustainable NDIS must also be fair. Reform cannot be durable if it is built on processes that exclude the people most affected and on legal settings that fail to reflect the realities of lifelong physical disability support.
Physical Disability Australia therefore urges the withdrawal of the Bill, or at minimum its substantial amendment following genuine consultation and co-design with people with disability. Without those changes, the Bill risks entrenching structural exclusion rather than securing the NDIS for future generations.
Submission Details
Authors:
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Suzanne Gearing, CEO
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Sarah McInnes, Policy and Programs Officer Contacts:
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Paul Williamson, President / Director
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Suzanne Gearing, CEO We sincerely thank our association members and the wider physical disability community who responded to our
call for comments. The sheer volume of emails and calls we received shows how important this legislation is and
how strongly people feel about it. We have considered all feedback in preparing this response, and any quotes not
included here will be collated and provided to the Ministers as a separate document.
Nothing About Us
Without Us
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