Submission 497

SUBMISSION TO THE SENATE COMMUNITY AFFAIRS

LEGISLATION COMMITTEE

Inquiry into the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment

(Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

Submitted by: Capacity: NDIS participant and person with lived experience of quadriplegia (34 years) Date: 24 May 2026

1. Introduction This submission is made by , a quadriplegic and NDIS participant, residing in the electorate of Brisbane. I write as an individual, not on behalf of any organisation. I am bed-bound most days. I rely on NDIS supports to participate in the community to the extent that my health allows. The NDIS makes that participation possible.

While the terms of reference do not specifically call for lived experience perspectives, I will occasionally refer to my own experience as a participant in the context of the reforms being examined. It is evident from the content and structure of this Bill that very little genuine lived experience consultation informed its drafting. That absence is itself a significant part of what is wrong with these reforms, and the Committee should weigh it accordingly.

This submission addresses four areas: the removal of participant rights enshrined in the current Act; the economic consequences of the proposed reforms; the implications of mandatory provider registration; and the disproportionate political focus on NDIS integrity relative to other areas of government expenditure.

I note that the timeframe for submissions — approximately fourteen days from introduction of the Bill — is itself a symptom of the problem. The NDIS was founded on the principle of ‘nothing about us without us’: the insistence that people with disability must be genuinely involved in decisions that affect their lives. A fourteen day window for public comment on legislation of this magnitude inverts that principle entirely. This is everything about us, without us.

2. The Removal of Participant Rights: From Choice and Control to

Ministerial Edict

2.1 Shifting the Goalposts: Rewriting the Objects of the Act Before examining what the Bill removes, it is important to understand what it adds. Item 60 of the Bill rewrites section 3(1)(d) — one of the Act’s core objects — in a way that fundamentally alters the scheme’s legal foundation.

Submission 497

The current section 3(1)(d) states the object of the Act is to “provide reasonable and necessary supports, including early intervention supports, for participants in the National Disability Insurance Scheme.” Financial sustainability already appears in the current Act, but only in section 3(3) — a subordinate subsection dealing with how the objects are to be given effect. It is context for implementation, not a qualification on the obligation itself.

The Bill replaces section 3(1)(d) 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.” Financial sustainability has moved from a subordinate implementation consideration into the objects clause itself, as a direct qualification on the core obligation. The phrase “so far as is consistent with” means financial sustainability can now legally override the obligation to provide reasonable and necessary supports. A support can be reasonable and necessary, and the scheme can still decline to fund it on financial sustainability grounds, consistently with the Act’s own stated objects.

There is a second change in the same item: the word “supports” is replaced by “NDIS supports.” This is not cosmetic. “NDIS supports” is a defined term under the Bill that is narrower than “supports” — it excludes items the Minister determines are not NDIS supports. The objects of the Act now refer to a narrower category of fundable items, additionally qualified by financial sustainability.

2.2 Knifing the Baby: The Repeal of Section 31 Arguably the soul of the NDIS, Section 31 of the current Act establishes legally enforceable principles that must guide every participant’s plan. These require that plans be individualised and directed by the participant; respect the role of family and carers; be underpinned by the participant’s right to exercise control over their own life; maximise choice and independence; advance community inclusion; and facilitate tailored and flexible responses to individual goals and needs.

Item 66 of the Bill repeals these principles entirely. Some are nominally redistributed into sections 17A and 17B, but the redistribution is not faithful. The most important participant-centred principles — the right to exercise control over one’s own life, maximising choice and independence, and tailored and flexible responses to individual goals — are simply deleted without replacement. What section 17B introduces instead are scheme-level financial principles. The individual disappears into the aggregate. A scheme that once asked what does this participant need now asks what can the scheme afford overall.

Individualised support and choice and control are lost, replaced with a cut-rate, Henry Ford-style scheme.

2.3 Tightening Access: Treating Your Way Out of Eligibility

Part 8 of the Bill is titled, in the government’s own words: “Tightening meaning of permanence to reduce access where an impairment can be treated.” The intent to restrict access is not inferred — it is stated explicitly in the Bill itself.

Under the current Act, an impairment is considered permanent if there are no known, available and appropriate treatments likely to remedy it. The Bill replaces this with a stricter test: an impairment is not permanent — and therefore cannot qualify for the NDIS — unless the person has first undertaken all appropriate treatment for it, any

Submission 497

remaining treatment is unlikely to materially improve or alleviate the impairment, and the impairment is likely to persist for the person’s lifetime.

“Appropriate treatment” is defined as any treatment that is evidence-based, regularly performed in Australia, and can reliably be expected to materially improve or alleviate the impairment — regardless of whether the person’s individual circumstances restrict them from accessing it. A person can therefore be deemed not to have exhausted appropriate treatment even if they cannot, in practice, access it. For many conditions that are genuinely permanent but where some treatments offer only partial improvement, this creates a substantial new barrier to entry that did not exist before.

2.4 Snakes and Ladders: Slowing Access Once Inside the Scheme

For those already in the scheme, new section 48A requires that before a participant can request a reassessment, they must demonstrate a significant change resulting in a substantial reduction in functional capacity — a high threshold particularly problematic for participants with fluctuating or degenerative conditions. Once a valid request is made, the CEO has 90 days to respond, extended from the current 21. If the CEO elects to redirect a reassessment into new framework planning, that decision is explicitly not reviewable. If there is no response at all, that also is not reviewable.

In a further Kafkaesque twist, participants asking for a review now have to navigate the Byzantine scheme without the assistance of support coordinators or other experts.

Part 8 and section 48A together create a pincer effect: the scheme is harder to enter, and once inside, harder to have your plan respond to changing needs. This is directly contrary to the findings and recommendations of the Disability Royal Commission (Final Report, 2023), which called for strengthened independent oversight, preserved choice and control, and enhanced access to review mechanisms. The Commission found that removing agency from people with disability is not a safeguard — it is itself a risk factor for harm.

2.5 Expanded Ministerial Powers with Imperial Overreach

The rewriting of the objects clause and the repeal of section 31 occur alongside a sweeping expansion of Ministerial power that is striking in what it does not require the Minister to consider.

New section 34A allows the Minister to reduce funding for entire support categories by legislative instrument, applying simultaneously across all affected participant plans. The provision is exempt from sunsetting. The only legally required consideration is participant safety — and that is it. The Minister is not required to consider whether the support is reasonable and necessary, the impact on individual participants, whether participants have been consulted, or any independent advice. Section 34A(5) makes this explicit: the determination has effect even if the result is that funding for a support already recognised as reasonable and necessary falls below its total cost. In other words, the Bill explicitly authorises the Minister to underfund supports the scheme itself acknowledges participants need.

New section 45C gives the Minister power to set the maximum price for any NDIS support by legislative instrument. This provision contains no consideration

National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

Submission 497

requirements whatsoever — not even participant safety. The Minister need not consider the impact on participants, the cost of delivery, regional variations, or any other factor. It is an entirely unconstrained pricing power, exempt from sunsetting and parliamentary disallowance. The pricing power is therefore less constrained than even the funding reduction power — a remarkable feature for legislation affecting vulnerable people’s access to essential services.

The architecture of these provisions is internally coherent and deeply concerning. The amended objects clause establishes that financial sustainability can override the obligation to provide reasonable and necessary supports. Section 34A then gives the Minister unilateral power to determine what that means in practice. Section 45C gives the Minister parallel power to cap what the scheme will pay. What is entirely absent is any independent check on how these powers are exercised, any requirement to demonstrate the financial sustainability justification is genuine, or any mechanism for participants to challenge a determination that cuts or caps their supports. The current Act contains no equivalent powers. These are not refinements of existing Ministerial authority — they are entirely new powers, constructed to operate with minimal accountability.

The weakness of the section 34A safety obligation warrants particular attention. The requirement that the Minister

National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

Submission 497

appreciate is the reduced efficiency of the scheme. Let me explain with an example from my own lived experience.

I wanted to visit my local MP to discuss the NDIS reforms. I would need to hoist into my wheelchair and later back onto my bed. Using my usual unregistered support workers this would cost approximately $125-175 for 2.5 hours of support. They have flexible minimum shift and cancellation policies — important flexibility for someone who is bed-bound most days. Under a registered provider (which I would be forced to use under these reforms) operating under SCHADS award conditions, the same outing would cost over $316, with up to a 7-day cancellation policy requiring payment for support I cannot use when health prevents the outing. The proposed reforms will cost more, deliver less, and produce worse outcomes.

That is not sustainability. Bean counters should at least care about that.

I am not saying the government should abandon all attempts at savings. There are a plethora of more equitable savings options at: https://ourndis.org/savings. I urge the committee to examine these alternative options thoroughly.

4. Mandatory Provider Registration: Cost, Concentration and Safety

The Bill mandates registration for high-risk support categories including personal care, daily living assistance, and closed or isolated settings, with precise categories to be determined by NDIS rules after the Bill passes. Parliament is therefore being asked to approve a fundamental restructure of the provider market without knowing its full scope.

One thing the Bill doesn’t examine is why unregistered providers are so popular in the first place. I can answer that from lived experience. Most participants really don’t like most registered providers – many are reincarnations of large old block-funded providers, institutions founded on abuse and neglect. Even the good registered providers are weighed down with soul-destroying red tape, all at the behest of the NDIS. Forced to become inflexible, wasteful and bureaucratic, it can become One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in your own bedroom. Did I mention they cost more? It’s why some participants were hoping for at least a tiered registration scheme.

Sadly, the Explanatory Memorandum explicitly states that a tiered registration model has been considered and rejected. A tiered approach would have allowed smaller providers to register at reduced compliance and audit cost, preserving participant access to community-based and independent workers while extending oversight where most needed. By rejecting this, the government has chosen full registration requirements applied uniformly regardless of provider size. The question the Committee should put to the government is direct: do they expect a sole-operator support worker or small community organisation to bear the same audit costs as a large national provider? If yes, the predictable outcome is that small providers exit the market. If no, then a tiered model should have been adopted.

Market consolidation toward large registered providers is not a neutral outcome for participant safety. The Disability Royal Commission (Final Report, 2023, Volume 10) made extensive findings about large disability service organisations — both for-profit and charitable — whose scale and governance structures created conditions in

Submission 497

which abuse and neglect occurred and went undetected over extended periods. The Commission found that organisational size and charitable status are not reliable safeguards, and recommended that provider accountability be outcome-based rather than process-based. It also found that large-provider dominated service models tend to prioritise organisational convenience over individual needs and create environments where abuse is more likely and less likely to be reported.

A market restructured toward fewer, larger registered providers recreates precisely those conditions. When a participant in a regional area has access to only one or two registered providers, the ability to switch — one of the most effective accountability mechanisms — disappears. The participant has nowhere else to go. Registration without genuine market diversity does not protect participants. It may increase their vulnerability. The Commission’s recommendations on independent oversight and complaints handling (Volume 11) called for strengthened, accessible mechanisms for people with disability to raise concerns. The Bill does not materially strengthen any of these.

5. Proportionality: Why Is the NDIS Being Singled Out? The government cites integrity leakage of approximately 8.3% — around $3.7 billion annually — as a central justification for these reforms. Before accepting this figure, the Committee should note that it includes administrative errors and incorrect claims, not solely deliberate fraud. The government should be asked to disaggregate deliberate fraud from administrative error before using the combined figure to justify reforms of this scale.

For context, there is more integrity leakage in the ATO, infrastructure spending, illicit tobacco, defence procurement, and welfare payments than there is in the NDIS. To put this in perspective: the ATO leakage alone — $58.2 Billion in 2022/23 — is sufficient to fund the entire NDIS scheme. None of these areas has attracted legislation of comparable breadth, speed, or impact on the individuals affected.

The government frames these reforms as saving the NDIS for future generations. But a scheme whose objects have been rewritten to subordinate participant need to financial sustainability, whose founding participant-centred principles have been deleted, whose access has been deliberately tightened, whose review rights have been curtailed, and whose most consequential decisions have been placed in Ministerial hands through instruments with no parliamentary oversight, is not a saved NDIS. It is a fundamentally different scheme wearing the same name. The internal contradiction of the government’s position is this: the reforms said to be necessary to save the NDIS are the same reforms most likely to destroy what made the NDIS worth saving.

6. Recommendations I respectfully recommend that the Committee:

• Recommend that the Bill not be passed in its current form, and that the government undertake genuine extended consultation with the disability

Submission 497

community, including people with lived experience, before reintroducing reform legislation.

• Recommend that the proposed amendment to section 3(1)(d) be rejected, and that financial sustainability remain a subordinate implementation consideration rather than a qualification on the core objects of the Act.

• Recommend that any replacement legislation reinstate legally enforceable participant-centred planning principles equivalent to those in the current section 31, including the right to exercise control over one’s own life and the maximisation of choice and independence.

• Recommend that Part 8’s treatment exhaustion test be removed or substantially amended to ensure applicants are not excluded on the basis of treatments they cannot access in practice.

• Recommend that the Ministerial power under section 34A to reduce support funding be subject to a broader set of mandatory considerations beyond participant safety, including independent assessment, participant consultation, and merits review by affected individuals.

• Recommend that the Ministerial power under section 45C to set maximum prices be subject to mandatory consideration requirements, including at minimum participant safety and welfare, and be made subject to parliamentary disallowance.

• Recommend that mandatory provider registration be implemented through a tiered model that accounts for provider size and risk level, with specific regard to the impact on small providers, regional access, and participant choice.

• Recommend that the government publish a full economic impact assessment of the proposed reforms, including modelled effects on employment, GDP, carer workforce participation, and downstream service demand.

• Recommend that the 8.3% integrity leakage figure be independently disaggregated to distinguish deliberate fraud from administrative error before it is used as policy justification.

• Recommend that the Bill’s consistency with the findings and recommendations of the Disability Royal Commission Final Report (2023) be formally assessed before the Bill proceeds.

I thank the Committee for the opportunity to make this submission and am available to give evidence by video if the Committee considers that helpful.

24 May 2026