Safeguards needed to prevent harm to disabled people (Individual advocacy)

Submission 488

Submission to the Senate Community

Affairs Legislation Committee

National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future

Generations) Bill 2026

Submitted by

Jess Schafer-Wilson

Co-Founder | Practice Lead | NDIS Systems, Recovery & Lived Experience

Heart Worx

Tamworth, NSW

May 2026

Prepared by Jessica Schafer-Wilson | Heart Worx | Page 1

Submission 488

Opening Statement

Please do not reduce disabled people, families and carers to a budget problem.

I understand the need for sustainability, fraud prevention and public confidence in the NDIS. I also understand that Parliament has a responsibility to ensure the Scheme remains viable long-term.

But disabled people should not carry the cost of internal system dysfunction, inconsistent decision-making or rushed reform.

The people affected by this Bill are not abstract costs. They are people trying to live, work, communicate, recover, parent, study, leave the house, stay connected, keep housing, avoid crisis and reduce pressure on families already holding too much.

If the Scheme is changed without proper safeguards, the cost will not disappear. It will move into homes, hospitals, unpaid care, mental health services, housing systems, crisis responses and preventable harm.

Reform of this scale deserves care, communication, time and serious scrutiny before this Bill proceeds.

Executive Summary

I support genuine NDIS reform, including stronger fraud prevention, clearer administration, improved planner training, better market oversight and long-term sustainability.

I do not support reforms that reduce participant choice, increase access barriers, centralise control, or shift the financial and human cost of disability support onto disabled people, families, carers, regional communities and already-overloaded mainstream systems.

My concern is that this Bill attempts to achieve savings through participant-level restriction while leaving major internal NDIA dysfunction insufficiently addressed.

Working across provider operations, lived experience, regional delivery, carer systems, psychosocial complexity and review realities, I am concerned the downstream implementation impacts of this Bill are being underestimated.

The Bill should not proceed in its current form.

At minimum, the participant-level reductions, access changes, support coordination commissioning and plan management restrictions should be paused until there has been proper consultation, transparent evidence, economic modelling, regional impact analysis and clear safeguards for disabled people across all disability groups.

The Committee should assess this Bill by how these powers will operate inside the NDIS as it currently functions in practice, where many of these risks are already visible.

Recommendations

I recommend the Committee reject or substantially amend the Bill.

At minimum, I recommend that Parliament require the following safeguards and evidence. These recommendations correspond to the main risks created by the Bill: access restriction, loss of participant choice, administrative harm, regional market failure, and downstream cost-shifting.

1. Access, permanence and treatment safeguards - Do not proceed with tightened access, permanence or “all appropriate treatment” requirements unless the legislation itself protects bodily autonomy, informed consent, disability identity, cultural safety and the right to refuse unsafe, coercive, ineffective, unavailable or inappropriate treatment.

2. Functional capacity and support needs assessment safeguards - Require assessments to be independent, disability-literate, trauma-informed and able to consider evidence from participants, families, carers, treating professionals, providers and support coordinators, not only narrow assessment tools.

3. Support coordination and plan management protections - Do not remove participant choice over support coordination or plan management unless there are strong safeguards for independence, local access, continuity, conflicts of interest, workforce impact, market disruption and participants with complex or fluctuating support needs.

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Submission 488

4. Protection against administrative harm - Do not introduce plan suspension, participant status revocation, reduced claim windows, provider debt recovery, expanded record-keeping burden, automated debt creation or automated administrative action without clear safeguards, accessible communication requirements, human oversight and independent review pathways.

5. No participant-level cuts before measuring recent reforms and NDIA administrative burden - Publicly report on savings, behaviour change, compliance impacts and administrative burden already created by the October 2024 NDIS support definition changes and later fraud and integrity reforms before further participant-level cuts proceed. This should also include clearer reporting on NDIA delay, complaints, internal review burden, ART/legal costs, overturned or conceded decisions, payment delays and downstream administrative harm.

6. Regional impact assessment - Assess the impact of the Bill on regional areas before implementation, including workforce shortages, provider viability, confidentiality concerns, allied health waitlists, thin markets and limited participant choice.

7. Downstream cost modelling - Independently model the impact on hospitals, mental health systems, housing, child protection, family carers, unpaid care, employment, regional economies and the Administrative Review Tribunal.

8. Children and early intervention safeguards - Do not move children out of the NDIS unless alternative supports are already funded, accessible and operating in the child’s actual community.

9. Pricing and value-for-money transparency - Require transparent evidence, consultation and public reasoning for pricing decisions and value-for-money assessments, including assistive technology and home modifications.

10. Genuine consultation - Consult meaningfully with disabled people, participants, families, carers, providers, allied health professionals, support coordinators, plan managers, lived experience workers and regional communities before passing reforms with this scale of impact.

Personal and Professional Context

I write as a person with disability who is not currently an NDIS participant, as a carer for family members on the NDIS, as someone with close family on the Scheme, and as a practitioner working inside the NDIS system.

I am not outside this issue because I am not currently a participant. There are many reasons people with significant functional impairment do not access the NDIS, including the complexity of the access process, the evidence burden, regional trust and confidentiality concerns, and the reality that fluctuating capacity can make the process itself difficult to begin and sustain.

My own lived experience includes long-term disability-related functional impairment and periods where day-to-day life, work, study, independence and community participation have been significantly affected. I also know, from years helping participants and families navigate access requests, reassessments, evidence gathering, reviews, provider collapse, regional shortages and preventable administrative harm, how overwhelming and all-consuming the NDIS process can become.

This is not only a personal concern. It is a systems concern.

These concerns are not theoretical from my perspective. They are operational realities I see across regional disability systems, provider practice, carer load, participant support, psychosocial complexity and review pathways.

There is a dangerous assumption in disability systems that if a person can sometimes work, care for others, advocate, appear articulate, or function well in one context, then their disability-related impairment must not be significant. That is not how fluctuating disability, chronic illness, psychosocial disability, trauma injury, neurological disability, intellectual disability, developmental disability, sensory disability or complex disability works.

Many people survive by overextending themselves until their body, mind, functioning or support network collapses again.

A fair system has to understand that. It cannot assess need only by a person’s best presentation, strongest moment, or ability to survive without adequate support.

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Submission 488

Core Position

The Government appears to be trying to save money downstream while leaving expensive dysfunction upstream.

If the NDIA consistently followed its own legislation, trained planners and delegates properly, made evidence-based decisions the first time, communicated properly, and stopped forcing people into unnecessary reviews, a large amount of waste could be prevented before it reached internal review, the ART, lawyers, providers, allied health professionals, support coordinators, families or crisis services.

A sustainable NDIS should reduce waste, fraud and administrative failure without making disabled people carry the savings in their bodies, homes and daily lives.

The public is repeatedly shown the cost of participant supports. It is not shown, with the same clarity, the cost of NDIA administrative failure, review burden, delay and downstream transfer.

The NDIS was created because ordinary systems were not meeting disability-related needs. If reform simply pushes people back into those same systems without real capacity, it is not sustainability. It is cost-shifting.

1. This Bill Cannot Be Assessed in Isolation The Bill sits within a broader reform timeline that includes commissioned navigation, provider registration changes, digital payments, plan management changes, pricing changes, budget reductions and access changes.

Some of these changes may appear administrative when viewed separately. The risk emerges when they operate together inside an already overloaded and inconsistent system.

The combined effect may be:

• less individualised funding
• less independent support
• less participant choice
• fewer local provider options
• tighter access
• harder reassessments
• reduced community participation
• greater central control
• more pressure on families and informal carers A person may not just lose some funding. They may lose the trusted person who helps them understand the system, lose choice over who manages their plan, face fewer local providers, have less community access, and then be expected to navigate tighter evidence and reassessment requirements.

That is not a minor administrative adjustment. It is a system redesign with real human consequences.

2. Recent Reforms Should Be Measured Before Further

Participant-Level Cuts

The Government has already introduced recent reforms aimed at tightening NDIS spending, clarifying what NDIS funds can be used for, improving compliance and reducing fraud.

From October 2024, changes to the NDIS introduced a new definition of NDIS supports and changed how participants, providers and plan managers interpret what can and cannot be claimed. [2]

In practice, this has already changed behaviour across the sector. Providers are more cautious. Plan managers are more cautious. Claims are being scrutinised more heavily. Some supports are being refused or delayed because they are said to be outside the plan, outside the support definition, outside the plan period, or not clearly “in accordance with the plan”.

That may reduce spending, but it also creates new administrative burden.

Providers can lose money for supports delivered in good faith. Participants can lose access to supports because the NDIA is too slow or too under-resourced to assess disputes properly. Support coordinators,

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Submission 488

providers, plan managers and families spend more time trying to interpret rules, correct errors and manage unpaid or rejected claims.

Further fraud, integrity and safeguarding reforms have also been introduced or passed, including stronger compliance measures, evidence requirements and claim controls. [3]

Before Parliament accepts another Bill that makes large participant-level cuts, the Government should show:

• what savings have already resulted from the October 2024 changes

• what savings are expected from later fraud and compliance reforms

• how much spending has already reduced due to tighter claiming, plan-period enforcement and “in accordance with the plan” interpretations

• how much additional administrative burden has been created

• how much cost has shifted onto participants, families, providers, plan managers and support coordinators

• whether recent fraud-control reforms have been given enough time to work The Government should not rely on public concern about fraud to justify broad cuts to legitimate participant supports without first accounting for the reforms already introduced to address fraud and compliance.

Fraud prevention must not become a broad justification for reducing participant rights, choice, privacy, or review safeguards.

This is especially important because the Australian National Audit Office found in 2025 that the NDIA’s management of claimant compliance with NDIS claim requirements was only partly effective, and that prior to 2024 the NDIS lacked basic prevention controls for fraud and non-compliance. [4]

3. NDIA Decision-Making Already Creates Waste Many current pressures inside the NDIS are not only caused by participant demand. They are also being created by the Scheme itself.

I have seen participants lose supports unfairly when existing legislation was not properly followed.

Too often, decisions appear inconsistent, poorly explained, disconnected from functional evidence, or reliant on internal interpretations rather than the legislation itself.

That creates enormous downstream cost.

Internal review, external review and tribunal oversight are not barriers to reform. They are safeguards that protect people when government decision-making is wrong.

Participants seek reviews. Support coordinators spend hours gathering evidence and responding to cuts. Allied health providers are repeatedly asked to rewrite reports. Families are pushed into crisis trying to hold things together. Matters escalate to the ART. Lawyers become involved. Plans are reassessed again anyway.

That is not an efficient system.

One young participant was repeatedly not properly contacted for planning or reassessment. His support coordinator was not meaningfully engaged, despite the participant struggling to manage the process himself while working full-time. This happened more than once.

He moved from adolescence into adulthood without a proper, evidence-based reassessment of his functional needs. Instead of correcting the process failure, his funding was reduced again and again. Eventually, support coordination was removed altogether.

That is not sound decision-making. It is administrative failure being treated as evidence of reduced need.

At minimum, there should have been disability-adjusted contact, meaningful engagement with the participant’s support coordinator, and an evidence-based reassessment before funding was reduced.

If the Government is serious about sustainability, one of the biggest savings opportunities is improving the quality and consistency of NDIA decision-making in the first place.

4. Access, Permanence and “All Appropriate Treatment” I am deeply concerned about the proposed tightening of access, permanence and the phrase “all appropriate treatment”.

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Submission 488

That wording may sound neat in legislation. In real life, it is not neat at all.

Who decides what treatment is “appropriate”? What happens when a disabled person refuses a treatment because it is invasive, risky, traumatic, behaviourally harmful, culturally unsafe, unaffordable, unavailable, ineffective for them, or simply not something they consent to?

Disabled people should not have to exhaust every possible treatment pathway to prove they deserve support.

For some people, “treatment” might mean medication with serious side effects. For others, surgery. For autistic people, it could open the door to pressure toward behavioural interventions many autistic people experience as harmful. For people with complex medical conditions, “available treatment” does not always mean safe, tolerable, ethical or appropriate.

The NDIS must not turn bodily autonomy into an eligibility hurdle.

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities recognises respect for inherent dignity, individual autonomy, freedom to make one’s own choices, independence, participation and inclusion. It also recognises the right to physical and mental integrity on an equal basis with others. [5]

A person should not lose access to disability support because they decline a treatment that an external decision-maker believes might “alleviate” their impairment.

At minimum, the Bill must make clear that treatment is not “appropriate” unless it is:

• clinically safe
• evidence-based
• available in practice
• affordable and accessible
• consistent with the person’s informed consent
• not coercive
• not contrary to the person’s human rights, dignity, culture, disability identity or bodily autonomy Rights protections should not depend on future Rules, future instruments or future advisory panels behaving reasonably. The safeguards need to sit clearly in the legislation.

5. Functional Capacity and Support Needs Must Not Be Assessed

Shallowly

Functional capacity cannot be assessed properly by looking only at what a person can do on their best day, during a crisis, under pressure, or while overextending themselves.

Across disability groups, people can appear capable in one setting while still having significant functional impairment in daily life. A person may be articulate and still need communication support. A person may work and still need daily living support. A person may care for others and still have major functional impairment. A person may attend one meeting and then lose functioning for days.

This matters because the Bill proposes functional capacity access tests, support needs assessments and new framework planning rules. [1]

Functional capacity must be assessed in real-world context, not as if people exist in isolation from their environment, mobility aids, home modifications, communication supports, informal support or the practical conditions that make daily life possible.

Support needs assessments must be independent, disability-literate and able to consider real-world evidence from participants, families, carers, providers, support coordinators and treating professionals.

Clinical, diagnostic and functional evidence should come from appropriately qualified professionals and people with genuine knowledge of the participant’s day-to-day functioning. Administrative assessment processes should not override specialist evidence without clear, transparent and reviewable reasons.

If an assessor or decision-maker departs from treating professional evidence, they should be required to provide a written rationale tied to evidence, not administrative preference or unsupported opinion.

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Submission 488

A narrow assessment tool cannot capture fluctuating capacity, hidden disability, communication differences, regional access barriers, trauma responses, chronic illness, fatigue, episodic disability or the functional impact of living without enough support.

The Government should clearly identify the evidence base informing these reforms. Disabled people, carers and providers are constantly asked to prove impairment, need, risk, value for money and reasonable and necessary supports. The Government should be held to the same standard.

6. Social, Civic and Community Participation Is Not Optional For many participants, social, civic and community participation is not a “nice to have”.

It is how isolation is reduced, routines are maintained, informal carers get breathing room, and people stay connected enough to avoid decline.

For example, regular community access may be the support that keeps someone attending appointments, maintaining communication skills, safely practising independence, or staying visible to people who can notice when things are starting to deteriorate.

For many disability groups, community access can be the difference between stability and deterioration. It can support communication, mobility, regulation, confidence, employment pathways, informal safeguards, family sustainability and ordinary participation in community life.

Cutting this support may appear to save money inside an NDIS budget line, but the support need does not disappear. It moves into family homes, hospitals, emergency services, mental health systems, housing instability, unemployment, carer burnout and unpaid care.

7. Support Coordination and Plan Management Should Not Be

Removed From Participant Choice

Support coordination is not just an administrative service.

Done well, it reduces cognitive load, helps participants understand decisions, keeps providers accountable, gathers evidence, prevents service gaps and stops people falling through systems.

Replacing participant-chosen support coordination with commissioned providers may reduce choice and create conflicts if participants are forced toward limited providers who do not understand their needs, history, communication style, culture, risk, family context or local service system.

Plan management choice also matters. The Government has stated that from 1 October 2027 a panel of plan management providers will be established and only providers on that panel will be allowed to deliver plan management services. [7]

A commissioned or restricted panel may reduce independent oversight, reduce participant control, disrupt existing relationships, reduce market diversity and create additional access barriers, especially in areas where trusted local options are already limited.

For participants with complex, fluctuating, high-risk or hard-to-navigate support needs, trust and continuity are not extras. They are often the reason the support works at all.

8. Regional Areas Will Carry Extra Risk Regional areas already have thinner markets, fewer providers, longer waitlists, limited allied health availability, fewer specialist services and greater confidentiality concerns.

Choice and control operate differently when there are only a few viable options.

If participants lose independent support coordination, lose practical choice over plan management, have fewer available providers, face tighter budgets and are expected to navigate more complex reassessment processes, the combined effect will be more restrictive in regional areas than it may appear on paper.

Unspent funds should not automatically be treated as reduced need. In regional areas, participants may underspend because workers are unavailable, allied health waitlists are long, providers withdraw, illness fluctuates, or managing supports is too hard without enough coordination.

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Submission 488

Removing rollover without safeguards risks punishing people for market failure, disability-related barriers, or NDIA delay.

Any reform that reduces choice, provider viability or support continuity must be tested against regional reality before implementation.

9. Plan Suspension, Revocation, Contact Failures and Delayed

Decisions Are High Risk

Any provisions allowing plan suspension or participant status revocation after claimed reasonable contact attempts must be treated with extreme caution.

Many disabled people are difficult to contact for disability-related reasons. This can include communication disability, cognitive disability, psychosocial disability, executive dysfunction, trauma responses, housing instability, digital exclusion, unreliable phone access, family violence, hospitalisation, carer breakdown, literacy barriers, sensory disability or distrust created by previous system harm.

Failure to respond should not automatically be treated as disengagement, refusal or reduced need.

Many disabled people already experience inaccessible communication, missed contact, housing instability, unreliable phone access, unknown numbers being screened out, digital exclusion, executive dysfunction or communication preferences being ignored by systems that are supposed to support them.

The NDIS already struggles to contact people properly and engage the right supporters. Where the NDIA fails to contact a participant, nominee, support coordinator, guardian or key support person properly, the participant should not be punished through suspension, reduced funding or revocation.

Extended decision timeframes, including for access, variation or reassessment decisions, may be presented as administrative practicality, but for disabled people they can mean months without needed support.

For participants facing housing instability, carer collapse, hospital discharge, family violence, deterioration, loss of workers or crisis escalation, waiting months for a decision can create preventable harm and higher downstream costs.

Any suspension or revocation power must include strong safeguards, accessible communication requirements, escalation pathways, independent review and evidence that reasonable disability-adjusted contact was actually attempted.

10. Other Safeguards Required Several other proposed changes also require stronger safeguards before this Bill proceeds.

• Direct impairment-link rules may appear administratively tidy, but disabled people’s lives are not tidy. Many participants have interacting impairments, co-occurring disability, trauma histories, chronic illness, family breakdown, housing instability, communication barriers and environmental factors that shape functional need. A narrow impairment-link test risks creating artificial separation between needs that are connected in real life. This is especially risky where a person has more than one disability, secondary conditions, chronic illness or interacting impairments. The system should not force people into an artificial “one disability only” model when their functional needs arise from the way impairments interact.

• Workers compensation, motor accident and other scheme interactions must not leave participants unsupported while systems argue responsibility. Clear safeguards are needed so people do not fall between systems.

• Children and early intervention changes must not create another gap between systems. Children should not be moved out of the NDIS unless the alternative system is already funded, accessible and operating in the child’s community. Families should not be told support exists elsewhere if that support is not actually available.

• Claiming, record-keeping and debt rules must not punish legitimate participants and providers for administrative complexity created by the system itself. Reduced claim timeframes, increased record-retention obligations and debt risks where records are disputed may leave participants with fewer viable providers, especially in regional areas.

• Automation and automated debt or payment decisions must have clear human oversight, clear reasons, accessible communication and a simple review pathway. Any expanded data sharing, digital payment or

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automated compliance system must include clear limits, privacy protections, transparency, human oversight and accessible review. The Robodebt Royal Commission recommended that where automated decision-making is implemented, there should be a clear path for those affected by decisions to seek review, plain-language public explanation of how the process works, and availability of business rules and algorithms for independent expert scrutiny. [8]

• Context-sensitive decisions must remain human-led. Disability support decisions depend on context, communication, fluctuating need, human judgement and evidence that may not fit cleanly into a system field. The Committee should require clear safeguards before any automated process affects claims, payments, debts, supports, plan status or participant access.

• Pricing and value-for-money decisions need transparency. Pricing affects whether providers can operate, whether workers stay in the sector, whether allied health remains available, whether regional services survive, and whether participants can actually use the supports in their plans.

• Assistive technology and home modifications should not be reduced to the cheapest upfront option. A higher-cost support may be better value if it prevents injury, hospitalisation, carer breakdown, housing loss or reduced independence.

11. Drift From the Original Principles of the NDIS The NDIS was built around choice and control, individualisation, flexibility, community participation and supports tailored to functional need.

For many people working in disability, lived experience and psychosocial support, that vision mattered.

It created space for more relational, person-led and flexible support approaches. It allowed participants more autonomy over who supported them, how support looked, and what meaningful participation actually meant in their own life.

Over time, the system has become increasingly restrictive, administrative and risk-focused.

Public discussion around the NDIS has also increasingly framed disabled people as budget pressure, fraud risk or financial burden rather than citizens requiring support.

That shift affects dignity, trust, help-seeking, workforce morale and whether experienced providers and workers stay in the sector.

A disability support system cannot function well if it burns out the people genuinely trying to hold it together.

12. Disability Royal Commission Findings Should Not Be Ignored The Disability Royal Commission was Australia’s largest inquiry into the experiences of people with disability. Its Final Report made 222 recommendations and identified the need for change so people with disability can live free from violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation.

This matters because the Royal Commission did not point Australia toward less autonomy, less access, less communication, less community participation or weaker safeguards.

It pointed toward stronger rights, stronger safeguards, accessible communication, supported decision-making, inclusion, autonomy and access.

A Bill that tightens access, reduces community participation, centralises control, restricts choice, expands administrative powers and moves people into systems that may not yet exist should be tested against the Royal Commission’s findings before it proceeds.

Reform should not undermine the safety, autonomy and inclusion work the Royal Commission said Australia needed to build.

13. Economic, Workforce and Downstream Impacts NDIS funding is not money that disappears from the economy.

It pays support workers, allied health providers, support coordinators, plan managers, administrators, sole traders, small providers, regional businesses and local services. It also helps participants and carers stay connected to work, study, community life and ordinary economic participation.

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Submission 488

Previous economic modelling by Per Capita estimated that underfunding the NDIS by $1 billion would reduce total economic activity by $2.25 billion. Even if that figure is debated, the broader point remains: NDIS funding supports jobs, local businesses, participant employment, carer employment and regional economies. [6]

A Commonwealth saving is not automatically a national saving if the cost is shifted into unemployment, unpaid care, hospitals, housing, mental health, ART matters and regional provider collapse.

A reform that looks like a Commonwealth saving may still create losses elsewhere, including:

• reduced disability workforce hours
• fewer viable regional providers
• less participant and carer workforce participation
• more pressure on informal carers
• more demand on hospitals, mental health services and housing systems
• more review and tribunal costs
• less local economic activity in communities already struggling with workforce shortages The Committee should require proper economic modelling before accepting large participant-level reductions as true savings.

Conclusion

I am not arguing that the NDIS should remain unchanged.

Fraud should be addressed. Poor providers should be dealt with. Spending should be accountable. The Scheme should be sustainable.

But reform should be evidence-based, transparent, properly tested and proportionate to the actual problem being addressed.

The current public discussion around the NDIS increasingly reduces disabled people to cost, suspicion and fraud narratives. Policy should not be built from public anxiety alone.

Sustainability cannot be achieved by cutting legitimate supports while leaving internal decision-making problems, administrative burden and review costs unresolved.

Before Parliament accepts further participant-level restrictions, it should require the Government and NDIA to show the full balance sheet: participant spending, administrative delay, complaint burden, review costs, legal costs, regional market risk, provider viability, unpaid carer load, workforce impact and downstream cost transfer.

The Government should fix fraud, poor administration and inconsistent decision-making first.

Disabled people should not be asked to pay for the system’s failure to follow its own rules.

Please do not pass this Bill in its current form.

References

[1] Australian Government Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, “About the changes to the NDIS”, National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026.

https://www.health.gov.au/our-work/ndis-legislation-changes/amendments/ndis-amendment-securing-the-ndis-for-future-generations-bill 2026/about-the-changes-to-the-ndis (https://www.health.gov.au/our-work/ndis-legislation-changes/amendments/ndis-amendment-securin g-the-ndis-for-future-generations-bill-2026/about-the-changes-to-the-ndis)

[2] National Disability Insurance Agency, “3 October legislation changes”, 1 October 2024.

https://www.ndis.gov.au/news/10432-3-october-legislation-changes (https://www.ndis.gov.au/news/10432-3-october-legislation-changes)

[3] National Disability Insurance Agency, “Parliament passes tough new laws to protect the NDIS from fraudsters, predators and shonks”, 1 April 2026.

https://www.ndis.gov.au/news/11506-parliament-passes-tough-new-laws-protect-ndis-fraudsters-predators-and-shonks (https://www.ndis.gov.au/news/11506-parliament-passes-tough-new-laws-protect-ndis-fraudsters-predators-and-shonks)

[4] Australian National Audit Office, “National Disability Insurance Agency’s Management of Claimant Compliance with NDIS Claim Requirements”, 25 June 2025.

https://www.anao.gov.au/work/performance-audit/ndia-management-of-claimant-compliance-with-ndis-claim-requirements (https://www.anao.gov.au/work/performance-audit/ndia-management-of-claimant-compliance-with-ndis-claim-requirements)

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[5] Australian Human Rights Commission, “United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities”; Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Article 17.

https://humanrights.gov.au/know-your-rights/rights-of-individuals/disability-rights/disability-rights/international-opportunities-and-the-crpd /united-nations-convention-rights-persons-disabilities-uncrpd (https://humanrights.gov.au/know-your-rights/rights-of-individuals/disability rights/disability-rights/international-opportunities-and-the-crpd/united-nations-convention-rights-persons-disabilities-uncrpd)

https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/convention-rights-persons-disabilities (https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/convention-rights-persons-disabilities)

[6] Per Capita, “False Economy: The economic benefits of the NDIS and the consequences of government cost-cutting”, 2021.

https://percapita.org.au/our_work/false-economy-the-economic-benefits-of-the-ndis-and-the-consequences-of-government-cost-cutting/ (https://percapita.org.au/our_work/false-economy-the-economic-benefits-of-the-ndis-and-the-consequences-of-government-cost-cutting/)

[7] Australian Government Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, “About the changes to the NDIS”, plan management and support coordination commissioning information.

https://www.health.gov.au/our-work/ndis-legislation-changes/amendments/ndis-amendment-securing-the-ndis-for-future-generations-bill 2026/about-the-changes-to-the-ndis (https://www.health.gov.au/our-work/ndis-legislation-changes/amendments/ndis-amendment-securin g-the-ndis-for-future-generations-bill-2026/about-the-changes-to-the-ndis)

[8] Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme, Final Report, Recommendation 17.1.

https://robodebt.royalcommission.gov.au/publications/report (https://robodebt.royalcommission.gov.au/publications/report)

[9] Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability, Final Report, 29 September 2023.

https://disability.royalcommission.gov.au/publications/final-report (https://disability.royalcommission.gov.au/publications/final-report)

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