Submission 581
SUBMISSION TO THE INQUIRY INTO THE NATIONAL DISABILITY
INSURANCE SCHEME AMENDMENT (SECURING THE NDIS FOR FUTURE
GENERATIONS) BILL 2026
May 2026
Submission Prepared by: Kayla Hill (Disabilities Officer, Students’ Representative Council);
Remy Lebreton (Disabilities Officer, Students’ Representative Council); Madeleine
Keightley (Member, Disabilities Collective and Caregivers Network); Chiara Reeves
(Member, Disabilities Collective and Caregivers Network); Red Ricketson (Member,
Disabilities Collective and Caregivers Network).1
1 University of Sydney
Submission 581
Introduction
The University of Sydney Students’ Representative Council (SRC) Disabilities Collective and
Caregivers Network (DisCo) welcomes the opportunity to make a submission to the Inquiry
into the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future
Generations) Bill 2026. The University of Sydney SRC represents undergraduate students
and hosts various collectives and networks, including disability advocacy groups that work
specifically with students who have lived experience of disability and mental health. The
SRC Disabilities Officers represent and advocate for undergraduate students within the SRC’s
Disabilities Collective and Caregivers Network at the University of Sydney. As
representatives of students with disabilities at the University of Sydney, we present this
submission to highlight the detrimental impacts of the proposed changes to the NDIS on
current and future student NDIS participants, disabled students, disabled staff, student carers,
and staff carers.
We are deeply opposed to this bill and do not support it. In our submission we recommend
that tabled changes to the NDIS in Schedules 1 and 3 in particular are ceased, highlighting
key areas of concern: lack of appropriate co-design, obscurely narrowed eligibility under the
functional capacity framework and reassessment rules, the prioritisation of cost-cutting over
support provision, increased risks with automation, the social impact of job cuts, the
exacerbation of social disadvantage through the redefinition of permanence and participant
suspension powers, and violations to the human rights of disabled people.
Submission 581
Key Issues
Lack of co-design with the disability community
We are deeply concerned by the rushed and restrictive processes in which these cuts have
been proposed, including the lack of transparency surrounding the proposed NDIS changes,
the limited time period to accept bill submissions, and failure to engage in genuine
collaboration with community and industry experts. This approach has been entirely
contradictory to best practice for governmental work based in community consultation,
evidence-based approaches and genuine stakeholder engagement when involving disabled
communities, where there is nothing about us, without us. This approach does not prioritise
safety and accessibility either, despite the latter being a core rationale for these legislative
changes.
Obscurely narrowed eligibility will remove vital access
Access to the NDIS is a life-line for many, given the centralisation of comprehensive
foundational supports from states being redirected from community based supports, and into
the NDIS. We are deeply concerned by the immense harm that will occur as a result of the
proposed cuts, in which over 241,000 people will no longer receive the care they need to
sustain a life that enables inclusion and social participation — a core entity of the NDIS as a
whole. This denial of support will cost lives. The reassessment of all current and future
participants under the new framework creates particular precarity around eligibility for
existing and future participants with psychosocial, developmental, and fluctuating disabilities.
The way in which changes to assessment and access are being made are extremely
untransparent, unclear, and rushed. The complexities, fluctuations, and nuances of disability
Submission 581
are best understood by NDIS participants’ health professionals, not standardised assessments
made through currently vague tools. Massive oversights will be made through these
insufficient measures to capture ‘Functional Capacity’, further compromising necessary
access to the NDIS.
Cost-cutting considerations
The changes to cost-cutting considerations and addition to the Objects of the Act to consider
financial sustainability deeply undermine the inherent agency and self-determination of
disabled people. Disabled people will be forced onto cheaper, less effective supports that
lower independence, safety, and community participation — assuming that they can access
support at all. Furthermore, informal support systems such as family, friends, and carers will
be forced to take on increased responsibilities, disregarding sustainability and heightened risk
of burnout.
That cost-cutting is taking precedence over the provision of supports is egregious.
Cost-cutting in the reactionary and rushed manner as is proposed will not achieve the priority
of long-term sustainability or efficacy of the NDIS, and will rather cost more money in the
long run when the 241,000 people who will be cut from the NDIS will seek everyday support
as well as care for more frequent and intense emergencies through the strained public health
and mental health systems.
This raises the question of the efficacy of this scheme, which operates exactly as it was
designed to without meaningful community consultation efforts from the get-go, and what
our landscape could look like if investments were made into community based mental
healthcare and disability supports, rather than simply postvention or band-aid solutions
without actually addressing the root of the issue.
Submission 581
Increased risks via automation
We are extremely concerned by the lack of transparency and current vagueness around which
tasks, decisions, and actions will be automated. The automation of administrative decisions
would place disabled people in an extremely precarious and otherwise avoidable position.
These automations would substantially increase the frequency and impact of errors due to the
widened scale of automated processes, as seen with Robodebt. This is an extremely risky
change which, when corrected, again, costs more money in the long run.
Impact on jobs
Tightened controls and spending will take away hundreds of jobs, uprooting the livelihoods
of families who rely on employment at the NDIA. Additionally, these cuts will increase
psychosocial hazard risks for workers in the face of job insecurity and exposure to more
distressed participants, carers, and disability workers.
Social disadvantage embedded in and exacerbated by the redefinition of
permanence and participant suspension powers
The redefinition of permanence will significantly exacerbate disadvantage to the disability
community and their support networks. It is completely unreasonable to require disabled
people — who are already more likely to experience financial disadvantage, such as those on
the DSP — to have exhausted all appropriate treatments for NDIS eligibility to be
considered, even if such treatments are inaccessible due to cost or geographic location. The
right to live a life based in dignity, autonomy, and self-determination through access to
services and support should not be contingent on one’s ability to “exhaust all other avenues of
support.” This is a deeply flawed premise which assumes both financial privilege and service
Submission 581
availability, and will simply work to further entrench inequality for those already excluded
from access within Australia’s siloed systems. In the future context of the burgeoning cost of
living where people are forced to choose between housing, food, specialist appointments, and
fuel, financial feasibility is carelessly excluded in conversations about access.
Similarly, the proposal to suspend a participant’s plan on the basis of not being contactable
dismisses the immense difficulty of technology and internet access for people under various
social and/or physical circumstances. This may include people located in rural and regional
Australia, people who are homeless, people experiencing domestic violence, people in
hospital, and people with fluctuating disabilities such as ME/CFS.
Both such proposed changes effectively limit access to support to those who can afford it,
thereby reproducing the cycle of disability and poverty alike.
Violations of the UN CRPD
The rights of disabled people are already fraught by virtue of not having a federally enshrined
Human Rights Act or a Constitutional Charter of Rights to recognise fundamental rights to
things such as dignity, autonomy, and equality. This lack of protection is further damaged by
these proposed cuts. The proposed cuts present severe violations to the United Nations
Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), notably Articles 25–30 which
outline the right to health, habilitation, and rehabilitation, opportunity to work and
employment, an adequate standard of living, participation in political and public life, and
participation in cultural, creative, and recreational life and leisure.
Submission 581
Recommendations
1. Remove the Functional Capacity framework as the primary measure of eligibility; and
remove the standardised assessment tool (proposed s 9B of the NDIS Act; cl 4 of sch
1 to the Bill).
2. Remove the requirement for all appropriate treatments to be considered in order for
permanence to be considered (part 8 of sch 1 to the Bill).
3. Remove the value for money considerations and keep existing legislation that requires
consideration of whether a lower-cost option would achieve the same or substantially
similar outcome (proposed ss 34(1A) and 34(1B) of the NDIS Act; cl 73 of sch 1 to
the Bill).
4. Remove “so far as is consistent with the financial sustainability of the scheme”
(proposed s 3(1)(d), cl 60 of sch 1 to the Bill).
5. Remove the automation of administrative action (proposed s 59B of the NDIS Act; cl
11 of sch 3 to the Bill).
6. Remove the ability to suspend a participant from the NDIS on the basis of non-contact
(proposed s 30(1A)(a)(i) of the NDIS Act; cl 70 of sch 1 to the Bill).
7. Engage in thorough, comprehensive consultation and co-design with the disability and
carers community for all present and future changes to the NDIS and other relevant
programs.
Submission 581
Concluding statement
Overall, the proposed cuts to the NDIS fundamentally undermine the crucial, widespread
need for access to support which has come to only be accessible through the NDIS itself.
These cuts also undermine broader social goods of equality and self-determination for people
with disabilities, and in extension violate existing protections to disabled people under the
CRPD. Furthermore, the cuts were made with no proper consultation and co-design with the
disability community.
The extreme and far-reaching harms directly associated with The National Disability
Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 make it
egregious to pass. We absolutely oppose this bill, particularly Schedules 1 and 3 of the Bill,
and do not support it as it stands.