Submission 50
Submission to the Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs
RE: NDIS Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Introduction
Thank you for the opportunity to have a say about the NDIS Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 (“The NDIS Bill 2026”). I am a disabled person who has been an NDIS participant and user since 2020. I also work as a Disability and Patient Expert providing policy advise to organisations and government based on my lived and professional experience. I have a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology, BArts (Hons) and BCom.
In my submission, I make the following 6 recommendations:
-
Delay the introduction of the NDIS Bill 2026 for 6 months to allow time for the disability community to read, analyse, and discuss it, and then work with the government on fixing it.
-
There is a fast-track process for eligibility re-assessment of existing NDIS participants.
-
“All appropriate treatments” should take into account patient choice and barriers to accessing treatment.
-
Accept one report from a current doctor summarising an applicant’s medical and treatment history. If a medical practitioner says that all reasonable treatments have been exhausted, accept that this is the case for the purposes of access to the NDIS.
-
Remove the proposed amendment that claims for NDIS amounts are made within 90 days of a support being provided. Keep this requirement at 2 years.
-
Remove the amendment for Panel Based Arrangements for Plan Managers and instead revise the registration requirements to improve the quality of services. OR Ensure that Panel Arrangements for Plan Managers focus on selecting high quality Plan Managers, not just big ones.
A Lack of Co-Design and Inadequate Consultation We’ve only been given two weeks to read, comprehend, and respond to brand new, complex legislative changes. This is inaccessible for anyone, but especially so for the disabled community who take longer to process information and require information in different formats. At the point that I have written my submission, I have only seen one detailed summary/analysis of the NDIS Bill 2026 by one of our allies. I have only been able to read the outline in the Explanatory Memorandum. I’ve been forced to base my feedback here off those bits of information and only had the time to write about the things that are the most concerning to me.
Recommendation 1: Delay the introduction of the NDIS Bill 2026 for 6 months to allow time for the disability community to read, analyse, and discuss it, and then work with the government on fixing it.
1 )
Submission 50
Schedule 1: Introduction of the concept of “all appropriate treatments” I’m particularly concerned about the proposed requirement about exhausting “all appropriate treatments” to gain access to the NDIS. I’m concerned that all current participants are going to have to go through the Access process again under these new requirements. It will be akin to reapplying. I’m concerned that many current participants (especially people with trauma and burn out from past dealings with the NDIS, people without supporters, and people with energy impairing conditions) won’t be able to engage with this process again and they will unfairly lose Access to the NDIS.
Recommendation 2: There is a fast-track process for eligibility re-assessment of existing NDIS participants.
Forcing NDIS applicants to undergo all appropriate treatments threatens patients’ rights to bodily autonomy and treatment choice. It is wrong (perhaps even illegal) for a government agency to withhold access to disability funding if a patient does not do something to their body that they do not want to do and that they don’t believe is in their own best interests. I have greater knowledge of my own body, my medical history and what I am reasonably able to do than any doctor. The right to bodily autonomy must be respected and considered during the NDIS Access process.
Patients may also want to undertake a treatment but be unable to access that treatment due to barriers beyond their control including cost and location. It is completely unreasonable to expect a disabled person to foot the bill to travel overseas to do an experimental treatment just to access basic disability supports in Australia. That’s wrong. That’s also discriminatory. If this came into effect, the government would be excluding many disabled people from accessing disability funding based on poverty. This would disproportionally impact our indigenous community and women with disabilities.
Recommendation 3: “All appropriate treatments” should take into account patient choice and barriers to accessing treatment.
I’m concerned that what will be expected from medical records is out of touch with medical practice. The realities of practice include clinics only keeping medical records for 7 years, clinics making it difficult for patients to get copies of their own medical records, discontinuity of care being common, and the way doctors and allied healthcare professionals document treatment progress (if at all) isn’t in the format or detail that the NDIA will require.
Recommendation 4: Accept one report from a current doctor summarising an applicant’s medical and treatment history. If a medical practitioner says that all reasonable treatments have been exhausted, accept that this is the case for the purposes of access to the NDIS.
2 )
Submission 50
Schedule 2: Require that claims for NDIS amounts are made within 90 days of a support being provided. The NDIA currently requires that claims for NDIS amounts are made within 2 years of a support being provided. This is consistent with Medicare and private health insurance. 90 days is an unreasonably tight timeframe if you factor in all the steps involved:
-
Many NDIS businesses invoice for a month’s worth of supports at once.
-
Businesses may take a week to prepare and send an invoice.
-
A Plan Manager or self-managed participant needs to check, approve and enter the claim details into the NDIA’s portal.
-
If a Plan Manager or Self Manager identifies problems with an invoice, it usually takes weeks to notify the business and participant, to negotiate a fix, and for the business to amend and reissue the invoice.
This may all take close to 90 days. This does not allow time for human or computer errors, or delays. For example,
-
A Self Manager needs urgent surgery and is too unwell to process their invoices. The law prevents anyone else from claiming on their behalf.
-
A Self Manager goes on holiday overseas. MyGov prevents them from accessing the portal and processing their invoices.
-
A Plan Manager or the NDIA’s computer system goes down for a few days.
-
An invoice gets lost between being emailed and the Plan Manager’s software. It takes two weeks to identify that this has happened. I experienced this problem frequently with one of the biggest Plan Managers. In one incident, the error wasn’t detected for 20 months.
I am concerned that when invoices take more than 90 days to be claimed, it will be NDIS participants who are left to pay the bill personally. This is unfair, especially when delays are not within their control.
Recommendation 5: Remove the proposed amendment that claims for NDIS amounts are made within 90 days of a support being provided. Keep this requirement at 2 years.
Schedule 2: Enable a new approach to plan management, including transitioning to a panel arrangement for plan managers. As a participant, I am concerned that this amendment would mean that I have less choice of Plan Manager and I would lose access to my wonderful little Plan Manager. I have tried at least 6 different Plan Managers. I’ve found that they are all completely different in how they communicate with me, what supports they will/will not approve, their participant portals and their processing practices.
3 )
Submission 50
Many made lots of mistakes, took a long to process invoices, lost invoices, had unclear spending approval processes, had software systems that didn’t contain the information that I needed to adequately monitor invoices and spending, and were highly infantilising and controlling in their communication with me. This caused me high distress, and lots of work in monitoring and chasing unpaid invoices.
Then I found a wonderful little Plan Manager run by parents of an NDIS participant. With their lived experience, they speak to me with respect, they take time with me as an individual and they respect my communication needs and preferences. Their software system is far superior to anything that was offered by the big Plan Managers that I used. And they process invoices more efficiently. I’m anxious that if this amendment comes in, excellent but small Plan Managers like mine will be forced out of the market.
Recommendation 6: Remove the amendment for Panel Based Arrangements for Plan Managers and instead revise the registration requirements to improve the quality of services. OR Ensure that Panel Arrangements for Plan Managers focus on selecting high quality Plan Managers, not just big ones.
Yours sincerely,
4 )