To the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee,
I write to strongly oppose the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026.
While I acknowledge the importance of ensuring the long-term sustainability of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), I am deeply concerned that the proposed reforms place financial considerations ahead of the rights, safety, dignity and wellbeing of Australians with disability.
The NDIS was established to provide reasonable and necessary supports that enable people with disability to live meaningful lives, participate in their communities, pursue education and employment, and maintain their health and independence. These reforms risk undermining those fundamental objectives.
- Reduction of Supports Will Cause Harm The proposed reforms create pathways for future reductions in funded supports and may allow categories of support to be restricted or removed.
For many participants, NDIS-funded supports are not optional extras. They are essential services that enable people to eat, shower, communicate, leave their homes, attend school, maintain employment, access healthcare and participate in society.
Reducing these supports will not eliminate need. Instead, costs will be shifted to families, carers, hospitals, emergency departments, schools, community organisations and already overwhelmed state services.
The likely result will be increased isolation, declining mental health, greater carer burnout, increased hospital presentations and reduced community participation.
- The Reforms Risk Excluding People With Genuine Disability Needs The proposed changes to eligibility and access raise serious concerns.
Many disabilities are permanent and lifelong. Requiring people to demonstrate that all treatment options have been exhausted before they can access support fails to recognise the reality that some conditions cannot be cured.
People should not be forced into unnecessary, inappropriate or ineffective interventions simply to prove eligibility.
The NDIS exists because disability support is a human right, not because disability can be eliminated.
- Loss of Individualised Decision-Making One of the greatest strengths of the NDIS has been its focus on individual circumstances.
The move towards standardised assessment tools, formula-driven planning and automated decision-making risks reducing people to numbers rather than recognising their unique support needs.
Disability is highly individual.
Two people with the same diagnosis can require vastly different supports depending on their circumstances, environment, communication needs, cultural background, family situation and co-occurring conditions.
A standardised process cannot adequately account for this complexity.
The Committee should reject any reforms that reduce human oversight or prevent planners from exercising reasonable discretion.
- Reduced Appeal Rights Threaten Procedural Fairness Access to independent review is a critical safeguard.
Participants must retain meaningful rights to challenge decisions that affect their lives.
Where participants disagree with funding decisions, they should continue to have access to independent external review bodies capable of genuinely reconsidering decisions.
Removing or weakening these safeguards creates a significant power imbalance and leaves vulnerable people without effective remedies.
- Disproportionate Impact on Vulnerable Groups These reforms are likely to have the greatest impact on:
- Children with disability.
- People with intellectual disability.
- People with psychosocial disability.
- Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.
- Rural and remote Australians.
- Individuals with limited advocacy support.
- Families already experiencing financial hardship. Those who struggle most to navigate complex systems are likely to be the first harmed by increased bureaucracy and reduced supports.
- Inadequate Consultation
Many disability organisations, advocates and participants have expressed concerns that consultation timeframes have been inadequate.
Changes of this magnitude should not proceed without meaningful co-design with people with disability.
The disability community must not simply be consulted after decisions have effectively been made.
Nothing about us without us must remain the guiding principle of disability policy in Australia.
- Human Rights Considerations Australia is a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
The NDIS should be assessed not only through a budget lens but through a human rights lens.
The proposed reforms risk:
- Limiting community participation.
- Restricting independence.
- Increasing social exclusion.
- Reducing equality of opportunity.
- Diminishing quality of life for people with disability. Financial sustainability is important, but it cannot come at the expense of fundamental human rights.
- Disability Support Must Not Be Reframed as Parental Responsibility I am particularly concerned by proposals and policy directions that appear to shift responsibility for disability-related supports onto families under the guise of ordinary parental responsibility.
While parents are responsible for raising and caring for their children, there is a clear distinction between typical parenting responsibilities and the significant additional demands associated with supporting a child with disability.
When a child is unable to meet developmental milestones, requires substantially greater supervision than their peers, experiences significant difficulties with communication, emotional regulation, self-care, learning, mobility, social interaction or participation in everyday activities, these challenges arise from disability-related support needs—not from a lack of parental capacity or responsibility.
Families of children with disability are already providing extraordinary levels of unpaid care, advocacy, coordination and support. Many parents reduce their working hours or leave employment altogether to meet the needs of their child. The emotional, physical and financial burden carried by these families is substantial.
It is neither fair nor reasonable to expect families to absorb additional responsibilities that arise directly because of a child’s disability. Doing so risks increasing carer burnout, financial hardship, family breakdown and mental health challenges for both parents and children.
The NDIS was established in recognition of the fact that disability creates support needs beyond those experienced by the general population. These needs should continue to be recognised as disability-related supports rather than being reclassified as parental responsibility in an effort to reduce Scheme expenditure.
Any reforms must clearly acknowledge that disability support requirements are distinct from ordinary parenting obligations and must ensure that families are not left carrying an unsustainable burden.
- The Education System Is Already Failing Many Children with Disability The proposed reforms also fail to acknowledge significant gaps that already exist within Australia’s education system.
Many children with disability are struggling within mainstream educational settings due to inadequate resourcing, limited specialist support, insufficient staff training and a lack of appropriate accommodations. Families are frequently required to advocate extensively to secure even basic adjustments that allow their children to participate safely and meaningfully in education.
At the same time, access to specialist education settings is often restricted. In many jurisdictions, special schools require a diagnosis of intellectual disability as part of their eligibility criteria. This creates a significant gap for children who experience substantial functional impairments, autism, psychosocial disability, sensory disabilities, behavioural challenges or complex support needs but do not meet the criteria for intellectual disability.
These children are frequently left without an educational environment capable of meeting their needs. They may be excluded, subjected to reduced attendance arrangements, experience repeated suspensions, develop school refusal due to distress, or fall significantly behind academically and socially.
Rather than reducing disability supports, governments should be addressing the systemic shortcomings within Australia’s education system. Greater investment is required to ensure that all children with disability have access to safe, inclusive and appropriately supported educational environments.
Without meaningful reform in education, reducing NDIS supports will simply transfer responsibility and costs onto schools and families that are already struggling to meet demand.
- Cost Shifting Does Not Solve the Problem A recurring concern throughout these reforms is that they appear to focus on reducing expenditure within the NDIS without adequately considering where those unmet needs will ultimately be borne.
If supports are removed or restricted, disability-related needs do not disappear. Instead, the burden is shifted to families, schools, health services, community organisations and state-funded systems that are already operating under significant pressure.
When families reach breaking point, children are more likely to experience educational disengagement, mental health deterioration, family stress, crisis intervention and increased interaction with other government services. These outcomes are not only harmful for individuals and families but are also more costly in the long term.
A sustainable NDIS should not be achieved by reducing access to necessary supports. Sustainability should be pursued through system efficiency, improved oversight, fraud prevention and investment in early intervention that reduces future costs while improving outcomes.
True sustainability is achieved when people with disability receive the supports they need to participate fully in society, not when responsibility is shifted elsewhere.
Alternative Approaches
Rather than reducing supports for participants, the Government should prioritise:
- Stronger action against fraud and exploitation.
- Improved provider oversight.
- Better pricing transparency.
- Administrative efficiency improvements.
- Reducing duplication between agencies.
- Genuine co-design with people with disability.
- Investment in early intervention and preventative supports. Savings should be achieved through system improvement, not by restricting support for people who rely on the Scheme.
Conclusion
I urge the Committee to reject or substantially amend this Bill.
The proposed reforms risk creating a system that is less fair, less individualised and less accessible for the very people the NDIS was created to support.
The success of the NDIS should not be measured solely by budget outcomes. It should be measured by whether Australians with disability can live safe, dignified and meaningful lives.
If these reforms proceed without significant changes, many participants and families will experience reduced supports, increased hardship, worsening mental health, greater isolation and diminished opportunities to participate in Australian society.
The long-term social and economic consequences of these outcomes are likely to outweigh any short-term budget savings.
I ask the Committee to place the rights, wellbeing and lived experiences of people with disability at the centre of its decision-making and ensure that the NDIS remains true to its original purpose.