Submission 62

—–Original Message—– From: Sent: Wednesday, 20 May 2026 11:51 To: Subject: Submission – NDIS Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

To the Committee,

Please accept the attached submission regarding the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026.

I am lodging this submission because I do not believe the Australian public has been presented with a complete or honest picture of the foreseeable consequences attached to the current reform direction.

At present, the Government continues to publicly frame these reforms as “sustainability measures,” while failing to transparently demonstrate whether the projected reductions remain genuine whole-of-government savings once downstream impacts across health, housing, safeguarding, justice, mental health, regional healthcare and unpaid family care are properly accounted for.

Reducing visible expenditure inside one federal funding line is not the same thing as reducing actual societal cost.

And where foreseeable downstream harm is known, this ceases to become a simple budget discussion.

It becomes a legal, ethical and safeguarding issue.

This reform does not occur in isolation.

Australia is already bound by domestic and international obligations, including:

• the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
• the Disability Discrimination Act 1992
• the NDIS Act 2013
• safeguarding obligations embedded throughout the NDIS framework
• procedural fairness obligations under administrative law
• broader human rights and anti-discrimination principles

The current reform direction risks substantial incompatibility with these obligations where it:

• reduces preventive supports
• narrows access
• weakens participant certainty
• shifts burden onto unpaid families
• delays intervention until crisis point
• increases bureaucratic barriers
• reduces community participation
• centralises discretion without equivalent safeguarding expansion

The foreseeable consequences are already well understood by participants, carers, clinicians, advocates and families:

• increased psychiatric admissions
• increased suicide risk
• increased carer burnout
• family collapse

Submission 62

• institutionalisation
• delayed healthcare intervention
• safeguarding failures
• increased police interactions
• homelessness
• increased pressure on already overwhelmed state systems

These are not hypothetical possibilities.

They are foreseeable outcomes.

Which means Parliament is now making a conscious policy choice despite being aware of the likely consequences.

That distinction matters profoundly.

Because there were, and still are, safer pathways available.

The Government could target:

• provider profiteering
• ghost ships
• inflated invoicing
• conflicted SIL/SDA arrangements
• excessive legal expenditure
• duplicated assessments
• administrative waste
• fragmented safeguarding systems
• poor oversight mechanisms
• regional market failure

Instead, participants themselves increasingly appear positioned as the source of “unsustainability.”

That framing is both dangerous and fundamentally dishonest.

Disabled Australians did not create the structural inefficiencies now being used to justify restriction.

Yet disabled Australians are being asked to absorb the consequences.

This submission also requests formal consideration of Harley’s Law and other community-led safeguarding proposals before any further narrowing of participant rights or supports occurs.

The Ministerial response to Harley’s Law became overdue on 10 May 2026.

That fact is significant.

Because while Parliament debates “integrity” and “safeguarding,” a safeguarding proposal developed directly from lived experience remains unanswered.

Harley’s Law represents the kind of preventative safeguarding reform this process should actually be centred around:

• earlier intervention
• participant-centred escalation pathways • mandatory safeguarding triggers • accountability before crisis • protection for high-risk participants • protection for advocates and families raising concerns • reducing deterioration before systems collapse

That is both fiscally responsible and human-rights compliant reform.

Crisis systems are always more expensive than preventive systems.

Submission 62

The aƩached submission outlines an alternaƟve reform framework grounded in:

• safeguarding
• early intervenƟon
• provider accountability
• transparency
• parƟcipant autonomy
• genuine whole-of-government sustainability • regional stability • human rights compliance

Because the central quesƟon before Parliament is no longer whether reform should occur.

The real quesƟon is whether Australia wishes to pursue reform through:

• prevenƟon
• intelligence
• safeguarding
• transparency
• and human dignity

—or through foreseeable deterioraƟon, crisis transfer and bureaucraƟc raƟoning of vulnerability.

History will judge this reform not by its slogans, but by its outcomes.

Whether people became safer or less safe. Whether communiƟes strengthened or fractured. Whether costs genuinely reduced or merely shiŌed elsewhere. Whether rights were protected or quietly raƟoned.

And whether Parliament listened when the disability community warned what was coming before the damage became irreversible.

Kind regards,

Katherine McDowell