NDIA Accountability Project

Advocacy for systemic change in the National Disability Insurance Scheme

‹ PrevPage 1 of 14 · Source p. 1Next ›

Submission 630

National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 A PWDWA submission to the Australian Parliament’s Community Affairs Legislation Committee inquiry

People with Disabilities WA Belmont disability hub

213 Wright Street, Cloverdale, Western Australia Email: systemic.advocacy@pwdwa.org

Voicemail: +61 8 6243 6948 Rural and regional voicemail: 1800 193 331 Website: www.pwdwa.org

Submission 630

People with Disabilities WA’s Thoughts on the Diabolical National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

Preface

This submission to the Australian Parliament’s Community Affairs Legislation Committee May–June 2026 inquiry into the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 is presented by People with Disabilities WA. It is authored by our lived experience advocates, PWedWA Systemic Advocate Amanda Ellis and myself, PWdWA CEO Kat Johns.

  People with Disabilities WA is the peak disability advocacy organisation in Western Australia, representing the rights, interests, and voices of people with disability. PWdWA works hard to ensure that people with disability are included, respected, and empowered to participate fully in Western Australian and Australian society, and is led by and for people with disability in metropolitan and regional WA.

   This PWdWA submission to NDIS Bill inquiry requested by the Australian Senate on 14 May 2026 draws on the lived experience of people with disability in WA. It also draws on the 45 years of experience that PWdWA has in supporting people with disability to enjoy their international human rights and everyday life in the community while they access fair and equitable support services such as those provided by the Australian Government and the states and territories through their jointly funded National Disability Insurance Scheme.

PWdWA is proud to contribute to this important public inquiry, reflecting a shared commitment to addressing discrimination, supporting people with disability, and advocating for systemic change through legal and community–based approaches used across Australia and WA.

 What our NDIS should look like and deliver is an is important topic that is top-of-mind for people with disability in this state and country. Members of the disability community in Australia view the scheme with hope and see as a mechanism by which they can take part in everyday life in the community and get

Submission 630

People with Disabilities WA’s Thoughts on the Diabolical National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

the support they need to live their best lives, with autonomy and choice and control. As people with disability and disability advocates, the staff, board and members of People with Disabilities want the NDIS to meet our expectations and be only be change in ways that better serve us – not by shelling it and ditching our community for the scheme while pretending legislation will counter the tiny proportion of fraud seen on the scheme.

We encourage the Australian Government and the Albanese Government caucus to hear people with disability’s objections loudly and respect our lived experience perspective and ditch the regressive restrictive and scheme-shrinking reforms you have put forward and retain spending on the scheme, in accordance with your very real intergovernmental agreements with the states and territories. People with disability know what they need. We need an NDIS that serves us so we can enjoy our human rights under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and take part in everyday life in the Australian community.

Submission 630

People with Disabilities WA’s Thoughts on the Diabolical National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgement of Country

People with Disabilities WA acknowledges Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the traditional custodians of Australia and acknowledge their continuing connection to land, sea and community. We acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands we live and work on, the Whadjuk and Noongar people, the Ngarluma, Yindjibarndi, Mardudhunera and Yaburara people, and the Wangkatha people, and pay our respects to elders past and present. Some of us come from afar, others from near and here, and acknowledge our deep gratitude at our shared access to these lands that were never ceded. Always was, always will be. We also pay our respects to all First Nations people reading this submission.

Acknowledgement of lived experience

PWdWA is a disabled people’s organisation of people with disabilities and we pay respect to all people with disability and all people with lived experience of disability reading this submission. We acknowledge the awareness, sensitivity and deeply valuable lessons you have learned that you can share with the Australian community in your individual and group submissions to this community consultation and in co-designing Australian laws and policy to help our community leaders improve the lives of people with disability in our country.

Acknowledgement of opportunity

PWdWA thanks the Australian Senate’s Community Affairs Legislation Committee for the opportunity to provide our comments for its inquiry and report into the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 presented to Australian Parliament. PWdWA encourage you as always to co-design all policy and legislation about us with us.

Thank you.

Submission 630

People with Disabilities WA’s Thoughts on the Diabolical National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

About us

People with Disabilities WA

Since 1981 People with Disabilities WA has been Western Australia’s peak disabled people’s community organisation representing the rights, needs and equity of all residents with physical, intellectual, neurological, psychosocial or sensory disability.

PWdWA is a member-based organisation that serves the disability community in WA with individual and systemic advocacy services. The organisation provides access to information, and independent individual and systemic advocacy support with a focus on the community’s most vulnerable people.

PWdWA is run by and for people with disabilities and provides support for people accessing national, state and local services. The organisation has many lived experience advocates in staff and management and on its board. The team aims to amplify the voices of all people with disabilities in Western Australia and empower them to live their best lives in the community.

Submission 630

People with Disabilities WA’s Thoughts on the Diabolical National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

Contents

Submission 630

People with Disabilities WA’s Thoughts on the Diabolical National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

Executive Summary

Bill claims to tackle provider fraud but instead punishes participants

The proposed bill stresses importance of tackling fraud by providers in the NDIS. Rather than identifying strategies to tackle fraud, the bill punishes participants and does not identify any strategies to deal with fraud. The strategy set out by the government involves removing supports. Blocking participation is not a strategy in any other market or support system, to tackle fraud.

Questionable data relating to fraud

Disabled Person’s Organisations have also requested more information about where the government have obtained their data from and if it’s accurate.

Bill pretends Australia is spending too much on disability support

Australia is not an outlier in spending on disability supports. Australia’s NDIS expenditure (around 2% of GDP) sits in line with countries such as Germany and below Nordic countries, rather than representing exceptional level of investment.

Cutting NDIS spend on participants will increase spending on hospital care

The NDIS is an upstreaming system, made efficient via a market model and naturally supporting safeguards by enabling choice and control. Dismantling supports will inevitably increase pressure in state-based systems of care, including hospitals, emergency departments and mental health systems.

Efficiencies can be made without a lazy strategy to cut front line support

What IS an outlier compared to e.g. Nordic countries, are Australia’s spend on bureaucracy, overheads, lawyers and other government programs. Many things can be done to curb spending such as defaulting to plan management, cutting expensive consultancy contracts and undertaking a normal efficiency program.

Millions will be impacted

People with disabilities, carers, parents and support workers will be impacted, causing financial pressures on the economy. Many carers (mostly women) will be unable to work, participants on the scheme who have all proven eligibility, will be forced back into poverty without the support to participate economically.

Submission 630

People with Disabilities WA’s Thoughts on the Diabolical National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

Introduction

People with Disabilities WA has been supporting people with disability in

Western Australia with disability advocacy services for the past 45 years.

PWdWA and its staff have lived experience of disability and decades of

experience supporting people with disability to live their best lives in the

community. It is based on this extensive experience of the lived experience of

people with disability that we believe the rushed, exclusionary piece of

legislation that is the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment

(Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 is not fair, sensible or

appropriate.

PWdWA has read the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment

(Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026, the accompanying

Explanatory Memorandum, the Statement of Compatibility with Human Rights,

the announcements of the Hon. Mark Butler MP and the supporting 2026–27

Budget materials. We are shocked at the NDIS Bill’s contents and believe it is

unworthy to be passed by members of any political party in Australia,

including the Australian Labor Party, the Liberal Party of Australia, the Australian

Greens, the National Party of Australia and Pauline Hanson’s One Nation – all

key players in whether this legislation gets up.

 PWdWA’s position is unambiguous: the National Disability Insurance

Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 is the

wrong instrument applied to an actually nonexistent “overspending problem”

that, based on the international evidence is just spin. The Bill’s name is a fallacy.

The NDIS Bill actually aims to rob future generations of the NDIS and rip it

away from current generations. It’s an appalling piece of legislation and it

should not pass or be voted for by any politician regardless of their politically

leanings.

Submission 630

People with Disabilities WA’s Thoughts on the Diabolical National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

PWdWA notes that the major political parties have supported this legislation being assessed by a Senate inquiry from the Australian Parliament’s Community Affairs Legislation Committee. However, sending it to an inquiry is not enough. The legislation needs to be thrown out. We cannot abandon the disability community and then use the funds we save to fund nuclear submarines. It is just wrong.

Like organisations, lobby groups and everyday Australians with disability, PWdWA opposes the exceedingly short timeframe for the inquiry to evaluate the legislation, examine community feedback, and report back to Parliament. Two weeks for the community to look at the NDIS Bill. Two weeks for the inquiry to report. Just four weeks in total. The timeframe is ridiculous. And if the NDIS Bill is to pass people with disability will lose our funding, lose our human rights under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and lose the role we play in everyday community life. We will lose our way of life, and some of us will lose our lives too. It’s not on.

Principles for any reforms

People with Disabilities WA believe the following five principles should apply to any reforms to the National Disability Insurance Scheme and disability support services in Australia.

  1. Keep The Promise – honour Australia’s social contract for the National Disability Insurance Scheme. Give us the support you promised.
  2. Nobody Left Behind – don’t boot people off the NDIS without a real and equal support system in place. Ensure we have certainty and good ongoing support.
  3. No Disadvantage – legally guarantee people won’t be worse off under any new arrangements. Enshrine our rights, like Australia and the world did in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Submission 630

People with Disabilities WA’s Thoughts on the Diabolical National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

Real Choice And Control – keep people’s ability to choose their NDIS or state and territory–based providers and caregivers.

We want to choose who we have around us and who supports us.

Protect Disability Work – support our right to work, and protect the employment of people who work for us.

We need good jobs where we’re accommodated, and so do our disability support workers.

Specific feedback on the NDIS Bill that follows its structure

Schedule 1—Access and planning measures

People with Disabilities WA believes that there should be no reduction in the number of people on the National Disability Insurance Scheme and no removal of the lists of impairments that make people eligible for the scheme. In fact, we believe the impairment tables should be revisited and glaring omissions from the lists, such as ADHD, should be finally included.

Part 1—Defining functional capacity

PWdWA understands and respects the need for assessing functional capacity when looking at people’s eligibility for the scheme. However, PWdWA does not believe that functional capacity should be assessed by non-professionals who have an economic incentive to exclude people from the scheme and save the Australian Government from spending funds on people who are truly eligible.

PWdWA therefore opposes the introduction of the 9B(1) definition of functional capacity, especially its efforts in section 9B(2) to move elaboration on the ways to determine functional capacity into the Rules, instead of being clearly specified in legislation and impairment tables.

Submission 630

People with Disabilities WA’s Thoughts on the Diabolical National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

Part 2—Limit unscheduled plan reassessments

PWdWA opposes the shifting of the goalposts on participants that will mean that

participants must dread the very real prospect that under the proposed new

subsection 32B(2A) the National Disability Insurance Agency CEO could

mandate that the participant must have a new framework plan, even if an

eexisting plan is still current. People should have certainty in the plans they have

and not be subject a captain’s call from whoever the latest NDIA CEO is.

  • PWdWA also objects to the replacement of subsection 48(2) with a new

    48(2) which introduces more captain’s call provisions for the latest and

    subsequent NDIA CEOs to execute their own judgement (read initiative) and a

    new 48(2A) that allows any NDIA CEO to require any evidence they like, whether

    it be information, documents … or reports that are impossible to obtain or afford

    without assistance.

  • PWdWA is concerned that the new section 48A will use legalese to limit

what counts as “conditions for conducting reassessment of participant’s plan on

request” to extreme alterations in their circumstances – such as 48A(3)(a) living

arrangements; or (b) education arrangements; or (c) work arrangements; or (d)

network for informal support. We are concerned that valid reasons will be

ignored and the significant alterations required will only be diabolical reasons.

People need their plans when their circumstances change, so trying to close the

door as much as possible through exclusionary definitions is not on. Don’t

introduce this clause.

  • PWdWA worries about the proposed section 27 related to “application of

amendments.“ What on earth does it mean? Are you really going to try and police

this requests-for-assessments clause 48A from the nanosecond this NDIS Bill

passes? What happened to delayed implementation? This Bill is trying to ram

through its changes, as fast as possible.

Submission 630

People with Disabilities WA’s Thoughts on the Diabolical National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

PWdWA believes the removal of whole-of-person assessment through Schedule

1 Part 3, in favour of assessment on a single eligible impairment consideration is

wrong. People with disability can and usually do have multiple impairments or

comorbidities, if you want to use medical language. Collectively, people’s

multiple impairments add up to the disability they live with. That is why we in

Australia use the term people with disability as a singular noun. All our

impairments add up to the experience of disability we have in society.

PWdWA notes that in Schedule 1 Part 3 a clause will be removed that says

previously acknowledged environmental factors and other ineligible

impairments could affect support needs. We don’t believe this consideration

should be removed. It should stay, as our environmental factors and ineligibility

impairments still contribute to our singular experience of disability as real

people. Check out the social model of disability, it will help explain why the

bigger picture of our environment and context is just as disabling as catastrophic

injury. One impairment does not affect us in isolation. All impairments

contribute to our singular experience of disability as individuals.

Submission 630

People with Disabilities WA’s Thoughts on the Diabolical National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

Part 4 — Support determinations

Part 5 — Plan renewal

Part 6 — Reasonable and necessary supports

Part 7 — Plan suspension etc.

Part 8 — Tightening meaning of permanence to reduce access where an impairment can be treated

Part 9 — Eligibility based on access to other services

Schedule 2 — Fraud measures

Part 1 — Registration of NDIS providers

Crimes Act

National Disability Insurance Scheme Act 2013

Part 2 — Civil penalties and regulatory powers

Part 3 — Information gathering powers

Part 4 — Retention of records

Part 5 — Reducing claim times

Part 6 — Registered plan management providers

Schedule 3 — Governance arrangements

Part 1 — Decision-making on pricing

Part 2 — Automation of administrative action

Part 3 — Minor amendments

Schedule 4 — New framework planning

National Disability Insurance Scheme Act 2013

Submission 630

People with Disabilities WA’s Thoughts on the Diabolical National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Getting the NDIS Back on Track No. 1) Act 2024

Schedule 5 — Transitional rules

8