Submission 630 - Supplementary Submission
People with Disabilities WA’s Thoughts on the
Diabolical National Disability Insurance Scheme
Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 – Our extended views PWdWA’s second 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 - Supplementary Submission
People with Disabilities WA’s Thoughts on the Diabolical National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 – Our extended views
Preface
This submission to the Australian Parliament’s Community Affairs Legislation
Committee May–June 2026 inquiry into the diabolical 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, PWdWA 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
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Submission 630 - Supplementary Submission
People with Disabilities WA’s Thoughts on the Diabolical National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 – Our extended views
mechanism by which they can take part in everyday life in the community and get
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.
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Submission 630 - Supplementary Submission
People with Disabilities WA’s Thoughts on the Diabolical National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 – Our extended views
Acknowledgements
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 comment 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.
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Submission 630 - Supplementary Submission
People with Disabilities WA’s Thoughts on the Diabolical National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 – Our extended views
About 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.
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Submission 630 - Supplementary Submission
People with Disabilities WA’s Thoughts on the Diabolical National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 – Our extended views
Contents
Preface………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. i Acknowledgements ………………………………………………………………………………………. iii
Acknowledgement of Country …………………………………………………………………………………………. iii Acknowledgement of lived experience ……………………………………………………………………………… iii Acknowledgement of opportunity ……………………………………………………………………………………. iii About People with DisabiliƟes WA …………………………………………………………………. iv Contents ………………………………………………………………………………………………………. v
- IntroducƟon …………………………………………………………………………………………… 1
- Principles for any reforms ………………………………………………………………………… 2
- PWdWA’s thoughts on what the government should do ……………………………… 3 Executive summary …………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 3 PWdWA’s central proposition…………………………………………………………………………………………… 4 What this submission asks the committee to accept …………………………………………………………… 8 Recommendations at a glance ………………………………………………………………………………………….. 8 Part A – About PWdWA and our methodology …………………………………………………………………. 10 Part B – Strategic and fiscal context ………………………………………………………………………………… 11 Part C – The Bill measured against our four principles ……………………………………………………….. 17 Part D – Clause-by-clause analysis …………………………………………………………………………………… 21 Part E – Human rights and UNCRPD analysis …………………………………………………………………….. 28 Part F – Administrative law and rule-of-law concerns ………………………………………………………… 30 Part G – The Alternative Savings Portfolio ………………………………………………………………………… 31 Part H – Lived experience: who the NDIA Bill removes ………………………………………………………. 35 Part H2 – May 2026 PWdWA member consultation: what people told us ……………………………. 37 Part H3 – Mandatory provider registration and the overhead question……………………………….. 42 Part I – Comparative jurisdictions ……………………………………………………………………………………. 45 Part J – First Nations participants ……………………………………………………………………………………. 47 Part K – The false economy: where the cuts actually land ………………………………………………….. 47 The aggregate fiscal proposition ……………………………………………………………………………………… 53 Part L – Consolidated recommendations ………………………………………………………………………….. 54
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People with Disabilities WA’s Thoughts on the Diabolical National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 – Our extended views
Appendix A – Savings porƞolio methodology………………………………………………….. 57
Base spend …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 57 Saving percentages ……………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 57 Aggregation and ranges …………………………………………………………………………………………………. 57 Appendix B – Glossary …………………………………………………………………………………. 58 Appendix C – References ……………………………………………………………………………… 59 Appendix D – Shared perspecƟves with PWDA advocates ………………………………… 61
Parliamentary scrutiny and transparency …………………………………………………………………………. 61 Key decisions left to ministerial instruments, not law ………………………………………………………… 61 Existing participants face narrower criteria and fewer rights to challenge decisions ……………… 62 Unreviewable ministerial power to cut funding across all support categories ………………………. 63 Requirement to exhaust treatment options before eligibility ……………………………………………… 63 Unvalidated functional capacity assessment tool risks misidentifying need …………………………. 64 Supports cut before replacement system is ready …………………………………………………………….. 64
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Submission 630 - Supplementary Submission
People with Disabilities WA’s Thoughts on the Diabolical National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 – Our extended views
- 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 worth the paper
the Albanese Government wants to print it on.
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 non-existent “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 political
leanings.
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Submission 630 - Supplementary Submission
People with Disabilities WA’s Thoughts on the Diabolical National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 – Our extended views
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. If you want billions, tax multinational companies.
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 initially for the community to look at the NDIS Bill. An interim report
rushed out. An inquiry extension for a smidgeon. 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.
NDIS Minister Mark Butler may have said (without parliamentary privilege)
people won’t lose lives. They will. They are. Your stats show it.
People will absolutely lose their lives.
- Principles for any reforms People with Disabilities WA believe the following five principles first proposed by
the Disabled People Against Cuts alliance we are a part of. We’ve extrapolated
on these principles and believe they should apply to any reforms to the National
Disability Insurance Scheme and disability support services in Australia.
- Keep the promise and stop the cuts – honour Australia’s social contract for the National Disability Insurance Scheme. Give us the support you
promised.
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People with Disabilities WA’s Thoughts on the Diabolical National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 – Our extended views
- Guarantee nobody is 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.
- Ensure 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.
- Deliver 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.
- PWdWA’s thoughts on what the government should do Executive summary People With disabilities WA (PWdWA) is the peak disabled people’s organisation
in Western Australia. We are run by and for people with disability.
We have 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. Our position is unambiguous: the NDIA Bill is the wrong
instrument applied to a problem that, on the international evidence, does not
exist.
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Submission 630 - Supplementary Submission
People with Disabilities WA’s Thoughts on the Diabolical National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 – Our extended views
PWdWA’s central proposition Australia does not have a disability-spending problem. At approximately 1.9 per
cent of GDP, Australia spends less on disability than Germany (2.0%), and
roughly two-thirds of what Sweden (2.8%), Denmark (2.9%) and Norway (3.1%)
spend on people with disability.
Australia carries this expenditure through a single scheme – the NDIS –
precisely because the universal health, mental-health, social-housing,
attendant-care and vocational-rehabilitation systems that Nordic and northern
European jurisdictions fund separately have either been defunded or were never
built here.
The NDIS is not over-spending; it is absorbing the consequences of
mainstream-services collapse. State services closed their doors because the
federal government said the second stage of the NDIS would support people not
covered not on the initial impairment lists. It never did. Now NDIS Minister Mark
Butler said the states and territories did wrong. It’s all spin. But that’s a
distraction from the main point. People need support now from the NDIS built to
serve them. And out in the community where foundational supports program
don’t actually exist. Programs like Thriving Kids that while they sound good on
the surface seem like a bandaid compared to wrap-around-care that some
children with autism spectrum and their neurodiverse families need and expect
from the system kids have grown up with. The NDIS is a part of people’s everyday
lives. It cannot be shelled.
PWdWA opposes the cuts proposed by this NDIS Bill. To be clear, our
opposition is not contingent on whether mainstream services are rebuilt: the
international evidence does not support the proposition that Australia is over
spending on disability, and reducing access to the Scheme is the wrong policy
response on its own terms. We also note, as a separate matter, that withdrawing
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Submission 630 - Supplementary Submission
People with Disabilities WA’s Thoughts on the Diabolical National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 – Our extended views
Scheme supports without commensurate investment in mainstream services
would compound the harm by displacing cost and unmet need to hospitals,
prisons, homelessness services, schools, and the unpaid (overwhelmingly
female) care economy – at a worse unit price and a worse human outcome.
That cost-shift argument is an additional reason to reject the NDIA Bill; it is not a
concession that the cuts would be acceptable if those mainstream systems
were rebuilt.
PWdWA also wishes to record, in the plainest terms available to a peak
body addressing a Senate Committee, that the Albanese Government has
repeatedly deployed the language of ‘fraud’ as a public-facing justification for
what are, in substance, cuts to front-line disability supports. The fraud figures
relied upon in Albanese Government ministerial press conferences and Budget
communications are inflated, contested by PWDA and Disabled People’s
Organisations Against Cuts Australia, and do not withstand the scrutiny applied
to comparable figures in banking, insurance, Medicare or aged care. The
repeated invocation of fraud has functioned as a form of public-facing
messaging directed at taxpayers, the practical effect of which is to manufacture
acquiescence to an otherwise illogical policy response – namely, the removal of
currently-eligible participants and the refusal of new intake. That is not an
integrity reform; it is the use of an inflated risk narrative to justify a cut to front
line services.
The market model is not the problem. Instead it’s our contention that
choice and control through the ability to change providers is the central pillar of
the NDIS Scheme and is, by a substantial margin, the most important
safeguarding mechanism participants possess. Every market – banking,
insurance, aged care, energy retail – carries a baseline rate of fraud and
misconduct. The customary response that has been used in every other sector
should instead apply here. Those actions should be what is customary in other
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Submission 630 - Supplementary Submission
People with Disabilities WA’s Thoughts on the Diabolical National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 – Our extended views
jurisdictions – targeted regulation, registration, consumer protection and
enforcement – not the withdrawal of consumer access. Responding to fraud by
cutting participants is not proportionate, not evidence-based, and not a serious
policy response. It’s a political furphy. Fraud is an excuse for the real agenda:
cutting spending instead of taxing gas companies, major miners and big-tech.
The NDIS Bill is the most significant restructure of the NDIS scheme since
the National Disability Insurance Scheme Act 2013 was enacted. Instead of
protecting future generations it harms to harm current generations to wipe away
$37.8 billion of participant payments over four years, compressing the NDIS’
annual cost growth to between 5 and 6 per cent, and reducing the participant
population from about 770,000 people with disability to a target of 600,000
people by the end of the decade.
On the face of the published targets, about 160,000 to 170,000 people
currently supported by the scheme from the scheme will be removed. PWdWA’s
analysis of the National Disability Insurance Agency’s projections, the
foreshadowed re-eligibility test under section 25A of the NDIS ACt, the
redefinition of functional capacity and the planned diversion of children with
developmental delay and people with psychosocial disability to yet-to-be-built
foundational supports indicates that about 140,000 more people will be diverted
away from individualised scheme supports over the same period. The honest
aggregate is therefore in the order of 300,000 people cut from or diverted out of
the NDIS scheme – not 170,000 people. PWdWA does not accept the premise on
which any of the promoted targets rest, while acknowledging the quiet correction
of some of the data used as rationale.
The Albanese Government’s framing that the NDIS scheme is fiscally
unsustainable and must be brought under ‘control’ at the level of the participant
collapses under the most basic international comparison. Australia is at or
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Submission 630 - Supplementary Submission
People with Disabilities WA’s Thoughts on the Diabolical National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 – Our extended views
slightly below the OECD average for disability expenditure as a share of gross
domestic product. The NDIS is doing the work of four or five separate systems in
comparator jurisdictions. The growth path the Australian Government describes
as a ‘blowout’ is, in substance, the natural cost curve of a scheme that is finally
meeting historic unmet need, absorbing demand from a collapsing mental
health system, and acting as the service of last resort in thin and unregulated
markets. None of that is a participant-eligibility problem. It is, first and foremost,
a mainstream-services investment problem and an NDIA agency-operating
model problem. PWdWA does not accept that there is a ‘market-design problem’
in any structural sense: the NDIS market is a comparatively new market, and like
every new market – including banking, insurance and aged care – it carries
growing pains, including isolated fraud and price-gouging. The proper response
in every other sector has been targeted regulation and consumer protection, not
the withdrawal of access. The same logic and action must apply here.
Where genuine waste does exist, it is not in participants’ plans. The
Productivity Commission, the claimed-independent NDIS Review, the Australian
National Audit Office and the NDIA’s own scheme Actuary have consistently
identified the principal controllable drivers of cost as provider over-pricing in
unregulated market segments, an unworkable plan-review cycle that generates
churn rather than outcomes, an NDIA operating model that has shifted
disproportionate workload to external contractors and lawyers, despite
organised fraud being concentrated in a small number of registered providers.
The latest NDIS Bill leaves each of these system flaws substantially untouched
and concentrates its restrictions instead on the least powerful actor in the
system: the participant.
PWdWA opposes the NDIS Bill in its current form. We support its genuine
integrity provisions in Schedule 2. We oppose Schedule 1, Part 4 (the Support
Determinations), the redefinition of functional capacity, the conversion of plan
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Submission 630 - Supplementary Submission
People with Disabilities WA’s Thoughts on the Diabolical National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 – Our extended views
continuations to renewals, the 5–6 per cent growth target as a binding object of
the NDIS Act, the expansion of automated decision-making, the curtailment of
merits-review for support-determination decisions, the 90-day claiming and
contact rules, the two-tier pricing regime, and very importantly the open-ended
ministerial rule-making powers.
The PWdWA submission that follows offers a fully costed alternative – a
portfolio of about $1.1 billion of non-participant savings per year – together with
a detailed legal, fiscal and human-rights analysis.
What this submission asks the committee to accept This submission asks the Community Affairs Legislation Committee to:
Firstly: Accept that the premise of the NIDS Bill is empirically wrong.
Australia is not over-spending on disability by any credible international
benchmark.
Secondly: Accept that the cost-drivers are already in the NDIA’s control –
namely the agency’s contracts, its legal-spend, its IT assets and its NDIS
provider marketplace. Cost-controlling is not needed in participants’ plans. The
NDIA can already control its costs without hitting participants. It just has to act –
and walk away from its exorbitant Administrative Review Tribunal legal-budget.
Third: Accept that compressing NDIS expenditure without re-investing
in mainstream services produces a larger, not smaller, total cost to the
Commonwealth and the states and territories, and a substantially worse
human-outcome.
Recommendations at a glance The following PWdWA recommendations are developed in full in Part L’s
consolidated recommendations. They are presented in summary form here so
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People with Disabilities WA’s Thoughts on the Diabolical National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 – Our extended views
members of the Committee, advisors and staffers can locate our asks without
reading the full submission. PWdWA recommends the Australian Parliament:
- Withdraw or substantially amend the NDIS Bill and recommit the Australian Government to genuine co-design with disability representative organisations
in compliance with its international obligations under article 4(3) of the
United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities for
which Australia is a ratifying States Party that must follow and comply.
This article states that “In the development and implementation of legislation
and policies to implement the present Convention, and in other decision
making processes concerning issues relating to persons with disabilities,
States Parties shall closely consult with and actively involve persons with
disabilities, including children with disabilities, through their representative
organizations.”
-
Delete the proposed NDIS Act section 34A (Support Determinations) and the codification of a 5–6% growth target as a statutory object.
-
Delete the proposed NDIS Act section 25A re-medicalisation of eligibility; retain the existing functional-impact test modernised in line with the
NDIS Review.
-
Restore plan ‘continuations’ (where unspent funds roll over) and remove the 90-day claiming and contact rules in their current form.
-
Prohibit fully automated decisions on eligibility, plan amount and reasonable- and-necessary determinations; codify the human-decision safeguards
recommended by the Robodebt Royal Commission.
-
Preserve full merits review at the Administrative Review Tribunal for all decisions affecting a participant’s plan or eligibility.
-
Adopt the Alternative Savings Portfolio in this Part G of PWdWA’s submission as the primary source of fiscal consolidation: saving about $1.0–1.3 billion
per year, none of it from participants.
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People with Disabilities WA’s Thoughts on the Diabolical National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 – Our extended views
- Establish an independent NDIS Pricing Authority with sector-regulator powers, modelled on the IPART Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal
NSW model or ACCC Australian Competition & Consumer Commission
pricing inquiries.
-
Codify a statutory ‘no-detriment’ principle: no participant is to be financially or functionally worse off as a transitional consequence of the reforms.
-
Require a whole-of-government cost-shift impact statement before any participant-side measure commences, covering health, education,
employment, justice, housing, aged care and the gendered unpaid-care
economy.
- Embed a First Nations Disability Commissioner within the NDIS governance architecture and quarantine funding for Aboriginal community controlled
organisations–led delivery.
Part A – About PWdWA and our methodology
Who we are People with Disabilities WA (PWdWA) is Western Australia’s peak disabled
people’s organisation. We are governed by people with disability, employ people
with disability, and represent the lived experience of Western Australians with
disability in policy, advocacy and systemic review. We hold individual advocacy
contracts under the National Disability Advocacy Program and provide systemic
advice to Western Australian state, and Commonwealth agencies.
As a disability representative organisation and disabled people’s
organisation, our authority to speak derives from the people we represent.
We are not a provider. We do not receive NDIS participant funding. We have no
commercial interest in the design of the NIDS scheme. Our interest is rights
based.
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Submission 630 - Supplementary Submission
People with Disabilities WA’s Thoughts on the Diabolical National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 – Our extended views
Methodology
This submission draws on four bodies of evidence. First, the NDIA Bill itself, the
Explanatory Memorandum, the Statement of Compatibility with Human Rights,
and the 2026-27 Federal Budget Paper No. 2. Second, the published outputs of
the NDIA, including the Quarterly Reports to the Disability Reform Ministerial
Council and the Annual Financial Sustainability Report. Third, independent
material including the NDIS Review (Kavanagh and Bonyhady, 2023), Productivity
Commission outputs, ANAO performance audits, and FOI disclosures
concerning the Agency’s legal and consultancy expenditure. Fourth, the lived
experience of PWdWA members and clients, presented in de-identified form with
informed consent.
Where we make a fiscal claim, we cite a source. Where we extrapolate, we
say so and we give our working. Appendix A sets out the methodology behind the
alternative savings portfolio in Part G.
Part B – Strategic and fiscal context
The Government’s framing
In 2011 the Productivity Commission estimated the NDIS scheme would, when
fully rolled out, support approximately 411,000 participants at an annual cost of
$13.6 billion. By March 2026 the Scheme supported 774,456 participants and
cost $50.2 billion over the preceding 12 months. The Australian Government
projects that, absent legislative intervention, the scheme would reach
$116.7 billion (about 2.4 per cent of GDP) by 2036–37.
National Cabinet has agreed to compress annual growth from about 8 per
cent down to 5 to 6 per cent. The NDIS Bill before the Community Affairs
Legislation Committee is the principal legislative instrument by which the
Government proposes to achieve that compression.
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People with Disabilities WA’s Thoughts on the Diabolical National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 – Our extended views
PWdWA’s submission is that the framing itself on which this compression
rests – that Australian disability expenditure is internationally anomalous,
fiscally unsustainable, or out of step with comparable democracies – is
empirically incorrect.
The international benchmark: Australia is not over-spending on disability Total Australian public expenditure on disability support (NDIS plus residual
Commonwealth and state-and-territory disability programs) is presently in the
order of 1.9 per cent of GDP. The OECD average is about 2.0 per cent.
Germany, which is often cited as a fiscal exemplar, spends abouts 2.0 per
cent of its budget on people with disability. The Nordic jurisdictions, which are
routinely held out as the benchmark for disability inclusion, spend materially
more on disability. The table below sets out the comparison.
Table A – A comparison of disability spending by other Western countries
Jurisdiction Public disability spend How the spend is(% of GDP) delivered
Norway ≈ 3.1% Universal health + BPApersonal-assistance
entitlement + municipal
services
Denmark ≈ 2.9% Universal health +Servicelov § 95/96
(Danish) personal
assistance + municipal
services
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Submission 630 - Supplementary Submission
People with Disabilities WA’s Thoughts on the Diabolical National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 – Our extended views
Sweden ≈ 2.8% Universal health + LSSAct entitlement +
Samhall supported
employment
Netherlands ≈ 2.6% Wlz long-term care +Wmo municipal support
- universal health
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People with Disabilities WA’s Thoughts on the Diabolical National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 – Our extended views
Jurisdiction Public disability spend How the spend is(% GDP) delivered
Germany ≈ 2.0% Statutory health/long-term care insurance +
Eingliederungshilfe
OECD average ≈ 2.0% Mixed; mainstream-services typically
separately funded
Australia ≈ 1.9% Predominantly the NDIS;thin mainstream
disability infrastructure
United Kingdom ≈ 1.9% NHS + PIP + local-authority social care
(post-austerity)
United States ≈ 1.5% Medicaid HCBS waivers +SSI/SSDI; large unmet
need
There are two notable takeaways of this analysis of OECD spending on disability.
First: Australia is at or slightly below the OECD average. There is no
defensible international basis on which to characterise the present level of
expenditure as excessive.
Second: the comparator jurisdictions that spend more do so through
multiple separately funded systems. A wheelchair user in Sweden receives
municipal accessibility modifications under its Law Regulating Support and
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Services to Persons with Certain Functional Disabilities, the LSS Act, and therapy
under the universal health system. Their personal assistant is provided under the
LSS, and their supported employment is provided through Samhall – four
distinct, separately-budgeted entitlements. In Australia the same person is
served, if at all, by a single scheme: the NDIS. The NDIS therefore looks
comparatively expensive on a single-scheme basis precisely because it is doing
the work that, elsewhere, is distributed across four or five universal systems. The
correct comparison is total disability expenditure as a share of GDP – and on that
comparison, Australia is unexceptional.
Even the Australian Government’s own forecast of 2.4 per cent of GDP by
2036–37 – presented as a crisis figure – would place Australia approximately
where Germany sits today and meaningfully below where Denmark, Norway and
Sweden rest. Australia’s 1.9-per-cent-of-GDP disability spending is not a number
that, in any comparator democracy, would be regarded as evidence of fiscal
failure. It is the cost of meeting disability need to a northern European standard,
through a single scheme, in a country that has not built (or has dismantled) the
surrounding mainstream architecture.
What the savings figure actually is The 2026–27 Budget books $37.8 billion of direct reductions to participant
payments over four years. The Department of Social Services material indicates
an intended reduction in the participant population from about 770,000 people
to a target of 600,000 people. That is, on the face of the materials, a policy of
removing about 170,000 people currently a part of the NDIS from the scheme
over the forward-estimates, together with a structural reduction in plan-amounts
for those people who remain on the scheme.
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What the cost growth actually consists of The NDIA’s quarterly reporting and the scheme Actuary identify five principal
drivers of expenditure growth:
- A growth in average plan-size for existing participants, particularly in the autism and psychosocial cohorts – much of which reflects historic unmet
need finally being met, and demand being cost-shifted from a collapsing
state-and-territory-based mental-health system
-
Provider price-growth in segments without effective price-regulation
-
Administrative and legal cost-growth at and by the NDIA itself
-
The cost of NDIA internal reviews and Administrative Review Tribunal external appeals, which has roughly doubled over four years
-
Genuine fraud and serious non-compliance, concentrated in a small number of registered providers and organised-crime groups.
None of these five drivers is a participant-eligibility problem. Each is a
mainstream-services or NDIA agency-operations problem, or a normal feature of
a young market that calls for targeted regulation rather than restriction of
access. The NDIS Bill is overwhelmingly directed at cost-driver 1 – participants –
and is substantially silent on the other four substantial cost-drivers.
What the NDIA Bill leaves untouched The NDIS Bill contains no provision for an independent pricing regulator.
It contains no enforceable cap on consultancy expenditure or external legal
services spending.
It does not reform the plan-review cycle that drives reassessment churn.
It does not address the NDIA’s reliance on labour-hire contractors.
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It does not direct a single dollar back into the mainstream health, mental-health,
education or housing systems whose collapse is driving demand into the NDIS in
the first place.
The Bill’s integrity architecture in Schedule 2 is welcome and overdue, but it sits
alongside a much larger participant-side restriction in Schedule 1 that does the
great bulk of the fiscal work.
Why this matters The NDIS is an insurance scheme.
Insurance schemes succeed by managing claims experience through
supply-side reform – by focusing in on price, integrity, and their operating model.
Insurance schemes also succeed by ensuring upstream systems function
so that the insurer is not the payer-of-last-resort for everything.
Insurance schemes like the NDIS fail when they pretend to manage claims
by raising the bar on who counts as insured.
The NDIS Bill, as drafted, fails to impressive both success factors: it
leaves the supply side and the upstream systems essentially untouched, and it
proposes its own downfall by applying the entire fiscal correction to the people
the scheme exists to serve. It’s a negative reform that’s just not on.
Part C – The Bill measured against our four principles PWdWA and the broader disability representative organisations sector –
including the Disabled People Against Cuts alliance – have organised our
analysis of the NDIA Bill against four principles drawn from the original
architecture of the NDIS scheme and from the public campaign against the NDIA
Bill.
The guiding principles that must dictate reforms are:
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- Stop the cuts
- Guarantee nobody is left behind
- Deliver a real NDIS offering genuine choice and control
- Protect disability work. The NDIS Bill fails on each of our four core principles.
Principle 1 – Keep the promise and stop the cuts Schedule 1, Part 4 introduces Support Determinations under proposedNDIS Act
section 34A. The Minister is empowered to cap funding for a class of supports
across the Scheme. Decisions made under a Support Determination are
excluded from merits review at the Administrative Review Tribunal. The
conversion of plan continuations to plan renewals strips unspent funds back to
the Commonwealth at the end of each plan period, ending participants’ ability to
save for larger intermittent needs (for example, an assistive technology
purchase). The 5 to 6 per cent annual growth target is codified into the Objects of
the Act, compelling decision-makers to weigh Scheme sustainability against
individual need at the point of every plan decision. The Government’s own
scenario material indicates a 50 per cent reduction to Social, Civic and
Community Participation budgets and a 10 per cent reduction to Capacity
Building Daily Activity budgets for participants on old-framework plans.
Principle 2 – Guarantee nobody is left behind ProposedNDIS Act section 25A re-introduces a medicalised eligibility test,
requiring that a person’s impairment be such that further treatment is unlikely to
substantially reduce its functional impact. ProposedNDIS Act section 34(1)(aa)
restricts supports to those linked directly to the qualifying impairment.
Functional capacity is to be assessed in a manner that abstracts the participant
from their actual environment, in defiance of the social model of disability that
the NDIS Act was designed to implement. The CEO is empowered to suspend a
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participant’s plan after ‘reasonable attempts’ at contact, and to revoke access if
the participant does not re-engage within 90 days. The cumulative effect is the
policy of removing approximately 170,000 currently-eligible people from the
Scheme.
Principle 3 – Ensure no disadvantage The NDIS Bill will leave people with disability worse off with its so-called reforms.
Like other reforms the Australian Government has committed to the
Australian Parliament should ensure people won’t be worse off under any new
arrangements. The government should legally guarantee this – not just promise
and fail to deliver in other similar promises.
It’s time for the Parliament to enshrine our rights, like Australia and the
world did in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with
Disabilities.
Principle 3 – Deliver real choice and control The Bill stops plan managers and support coordinators requesting unscheduled
plan reassessments on behalf of a participant; only the participant or a nominee
may now do so, and only in tightly defined circumstances under proposed the
new NDIS Act section 48A.
If the NDIS Bill passes verbatim as the Albanese Government has tried to
ensure then:
Current and future NDIS Ministers will gain god-powers and the
legal authority to set maximum funding amounts for individual
support-items. Automated decision-making will be rolled out across plan
processing and reassessment. Claims older than 90 days will be unclaimable.
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Stringent nominee oversight rules will come into play, including
civil penalties under proposed NDIA Act section 83(3D), exposing
family members acting in a fiduciary capacity to personal liability.
These provisions will together result in a substantial transfer of decisional power
from the participant to the NDIA, and its ministers-of-the-moment.
These negative reforms will have a crushing effect on people’s ability to
live a life of their choice in the community – which is their right under article 19 of
the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. When
Australia ratified the UNCRPD it agreed as a States Party that it did and would
“recognize the equal right of all persons with disabilities to live in the community,
with choices equal to others, and shall take effective and appropriate measures
to facilitate full enjoyment by persons with disabilities of this right and their full
inclusion and participation in the community.” It’s time to honour that
commitment and stop proposing laws that breach this international convention
our nation is obligated to follow.
The effect of the negative-changes and god-powers of the current NDIS Bill
may be that more people will enter live-in care or opt for voluntary assisted dying
instead of living their current maximum-independence lives. We are already
seeing people death-planning or extremely fearful for being put in the institutions
where our community experienced violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation in
decades-past.
With excessive oversight and the threat of losing family property,
supporters may withdraw from their support roles, leaving people with disability
facing the real prospect of returning to the disability group homes and
institutions the NDIS largely helped remove as a forced option for many people.
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Principle 4 – Protect disability work Schedule 2 of the NDIS Bill imports the Regulatory Powers (Standard Provisions)
Act 2014 framework into the Scheme, mandates seven-year record retention for
registered providers under proposed NDIS Act section 45B, introduces a two-tier
pricing structure that materially reduces the rates claimable by unregistered
providers, and creates a deed-of-arrangement requirement for plan managers
under proposed NDIS Act section 73EB with civil penalties of up to 600 penalty
units.
PWdWA supports robust integrity safeguards. But the combination of a
two-tier pricing regime and onerous registration is, in practice, a forced
consolidation policy that will materially harm small allied-health practitioner
organisations, sole-trader support workers and the disability-led microenterprise
sector – the very part of the workforce that is best aligned with supporting
participant-choice.
Part D – Clause-by-clause analysis PWdWA has reviewed the NDIA Bill against the National Disability Insurance
Scheme Act 2013 (Cth). We address below the clauses of greatest concern;
clause references are as introduced.
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.
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Schedule 1, 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 proposed NDIS Act
section 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.
Schedule 1, 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
NDIS Act subsection 32B(2A) the National Disability Insurance Agency CEO
could mandate that the participant must have a new framework plan, even if an
existing 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 NDIS Act subsection 48(2) with
a new section 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 section 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 proposed new NDIS Act 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
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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 new NDIS Act section 27 related to
“application of amendments.” What does it mean? Is the NDIA really going to try
and police this requests-for-assessments clause 48A from the nanosecond this
NDIS Bill passes? What happened to the convention of delayed implementation?
Or time to prepare? This Bill is trying to ram through its changes, as fast as
possible.
Schedule 1, Part 3 – Strengthen link between an impairment and need for support PWdWA believes the removal of whole-of-person assessment through the NDIS
Bill’s 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 in the NDIS Bill’s Schedule 1 Part 3 a clause will be
removed from the NDIS Act 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
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disabling as catastrophic injury. One impairment does not affect us in isolation.
All impairments contribute to our singular experience of disability as individuals.
Schedule 1, Part 4 – Proposed NDIS Act section 34A: Support Determinations The proposed NDIS Act section 34A authorises the Minister, by legislative
instrument, to set ‘support determinations’ that cap or limit funding for classes
of supports across the Scheme. Decisions made under a Support Determination
are excluded from merits review at the Administrative Review Tribunal.
This is, in substance, a power to cut a participant’s plan by Ministerial fiat
without any individual reassessment of need and without merits review. On any
orthodox understanding of insurance, that is not a sustainability measure; it is a
withdrawal of cover. The exclusion of Administrative Tribunal review is the most
serious feature: the Tribunal is the principal forum in which inconsistent NDIA
decision-making has been corrected over the last decade. PWdWA recommends
deletion ofNDIS Act section 34A in its entirety.
Proposed NDIS Act section 25A – Stop the re-medicalisation of eligibility The proposed NDIS Act section 25A requires that a person’s impairment be such
that further medical, allied health or rehabilitative treatment is unlikely to
substantially reduce its functional impact.
The drafting of new section 25A collapses two distinct concepts – the
permanence of impairment and the treatability of its functional impact – into a
single eligibility gate. For acquired brain injury, psychosocial disability, multiple
sclerosis, early-stage motor neurone disease and many congenital conditions,
treatment continues to deliver incremental functional benefit throughout life.
Under the proposed test, the existence of any plausible future treatment
becomes a ground to refuse access. That is the opposite of an insurance model
and is a regression to the medical-model approach that Australia specifically
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displaced by ratifying the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons
with Disabilities.
Stop the re-medicalisation of eligibility.
Proposed NDIS Act section 34(1)(aa) – Reject strict impairment linking Proposed NDIS Act section 34(1)(aa) requires that a funded support be linked
directly to the qualifying impairment. The Australian Government’s own
published scenarios illustrate the operation of the rule: a participant whose
qualifying disability is intellectual disability cannot use Scheme funding for
management of a co-occurring chronic condition (such as Type 2 diabetes)
unless the qualifying impairment directly causes the secondary need. This is
administratively neat and clinically incoherent. It will displace cost into the State
health system at a multiple of the displaced NDIS cost.
Reject strict impairment linking.
Proposed NDIS Act section 48A – Maintain restrictions on plan reassessment Proposed NDIS Act section 48A confines unscheduled plan reassessment to a
significant and ongoing change in functional capacity or a permanent change in
living arrangements. Routine triggers for reassessment – temporary loss of an
informal carer, exhaustion of core funding, hospital discharge – fall outside the
rule. The clause also removes the ability of plan managers and support
coordinators to request reassessment on behalf of a participant, a measure that
disproportionately disadvantages participants with cognitive, intellectual or
psychosocial disability.
Do not change the current limitations on plan reassessment.
Reject plan renewals and support continuations The conversion of continuations to renewals strips unspent funds back to the
Commonwealth at the end of the plan period. The change punishes prudent
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participants who build a reserve against an anticipated capital purchase (for
example, a manual or power wheelchair) and disproportionately affects
participants with episodic conditions whose support needs fluctuate.
Reject plan renewals and support continuations.
Deny codification of the 5–6 per cent growth target as a statutory object The amendment of the Objects clause to include a binding growth target
conscripts every decision-maker in the Scheme into a Treasury-set fiscal ceiling.
The Objects clause is interpretive law; what is in it conditions every other
section. PWdWA recommends that the growth target be addressed, if at all, in a
separate sustainability section and not in the Objects clause.
Deny codification of the 5–6 per cent growth target as a statutory object.
Reject automated decision-making – Stop Roboplanning The NDIS Bill authorises the CEO to arrange for the use of computer programs to
make decisions under the Act, on the standard ‘computer program is taken to
have been made by the CEO’ architecture familiar from social-security
legislation. The Robodebt Royal Commission (2023) considered that architecture
in detail and made specific recommendations: that automated decision-making
in welfare and entitlement contexts must be confined to bounded, low-impact
matters; subject to a meaningful right to human review; and be accompanied by
transparent publication of decisional rules. The Bill satisfies none of these
conditions.
Reject automated decision-making – Stop Roboplanning.
Reject the 90-day claiming limit and the 90-day uncontactable rule Claims older than 90 days are unclaimable under this NDIS Bill. Plans may be
suspended after ‘reasonable attempts’ to contact a participant and may be
revoked if there is no re-engagement within 90 days. These rules will operate
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adversely on participants experiencing housing instability, family violence,
stalking, hospital admission, mental-health crises, or remote-area
communications difficulties. They are administratively convenient and
substantively unjust.
Reject the 90-day claiming limit and the 90-day uncontactable rule.
Schedule 2 – Sensibly approach provider regulation and penalties PWdWA supports the integrity intent of the NDIS Bill’s Schedule 2. The
Regulatory Powers (Standard Provisions) Act 2014 framework is appropriate. The
seven-year record retention under NDIS Act section 45B is consistent with
comparable Commonwealth regimes. The Deed of Arrangement under NDIS Act
section 73EB is reasonable. PWdWA’s concerns are with the two-tier pricing
regime, which operates as a forced-registration mechanism with
disproportionate effect on the disability-led micro-provider sector; and with the
nominee penalty under NDIS Act section 83(3D), which exposes family members
to civil liability for the failures of an administrative system not designed for their
participation.
Sensibly approach provider regulation and penalties. Do not exclude small
businesses and family-supporters in a mandatory registration regime and do not
hold family members financially liable for administrative failures of the system.
Table B – A penalisation of people with disability and supporters
Statutory violation Civil penalty Cohort affected(Bill reference)
Operating as plan Up to 600 penalty units Plan managersmanager without a Deed
of Arrangement (s.73EB)
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Statutory violation Civil penalty Cohort affected(Bill reference)
Failure to retain records 60 penalty units All NDIS providersfor 7 years (s.45B)
Failure by a financial 300 penalty units Financial institutionsinstitution to offset a
debt notice (s.185(5A))
Failure by a nominee to 30 penalty units Plan nominees (oftenreport a change in family members)
circumstance (s.83(3D))
Part E – Human rights and UNCRPD analysis
Applicable framework Australia ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with
Disabilities in 2008. Section 3(1)(a) of the NDIS Act 2013 expressly states that an
object of the Act is to give effect to Australia’s obligations under the UNCRPD.
The Statement of Compatibility accompanying the NDIA Bill asserts
compatibility with Australia’s human-rights obligations; PWdWA’s analysis is
that the assertion is not made out.
UNCRPD Article 4(3) – Close consultation and co-design Article 4(3) requires States Parties to closely consult with and actively involve
persons with disabilities, through their representative organisations, in the
development of legislation and policies affecting them. The Bill was not the
product of such consultation. The reform package was developed within
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Government and presented to the disability sector at a late stage. This is a
substantive non-compliance with Article 4(3), not a procedural one.
UNCRPD Article 19 – Living independently and being included in the community Article 19 obliges States Parties to take effective measures to enable persons
with disability to live in the community with choices equal to others. The
combined effect of NDIS Act section 34A Support Determinations, the SCCP and
Capacity Building reductions, and the restriction on plan reassessment is a
foreseeable contraction of community-participation supports. That is a
regression in respect of Article 19. The doctrine of non-retrogression under
ICESCR Article 2(1) requires the State to justify any such regression as the least
restrictive means available. The present submission demonstrates less
restrictive means exist.
UNCRPD Article 13 – Access to justice The exclusion of Support Determination decisions from Administrative Review
Tribunal review, the restriction of reassessment-request standing to participants
and nominees only, and the expansion of automated decision-making materially
diminish access to justice. That engages Article 13. The CRPD Committee’s
General Comment No. 1 makes clear that access to justice is assessed on the
practical capacity of disabled persons to vindicate their rights.
UNCRPD Article 12 – Equal recognition before the law The expansion of automated decision-making, together with the codification of
nominee liability under NDIS Act section 83(3D), is in tension with Article 12’s
requirement that States Parties respect the rights, will and preferences of
persons with disability in the exercise of legal capacity, and provide support
rather than substitute decision-making.
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UNCRPD Article 25 – Health The strict impairment-linking rule under NDIS Act section 34(1)(aa) – which
prevents NDIS funding of supports for co-occurring health conditions – places
persons with disability at a relative disadvantage in accessing health-related
supports compared with the general population. That engages Article 25.
UNCRPD Article 28 – adequate standard of living The 90-day uncontactable rule, the 90-day claiming limit and the plan-renewal
mechanism each have foreseeable adverse effects on the income security and
material support of participants whose circumstances are unstable. Those
effects fall most heavily on participants in housing stress, family violence,
mental-health crisis and remote communities. That engages Article 28.
Part F – Administrative law and rule-of-law concerns
Excessive delegation The Support Determination power in proposed NDIS Act section 34A, together
with the Ministerial price-cap power and the open-ended rule-making powers
elsewhere in the NDIA Bill, delegate substantive entitlement decisions to
subordinate instruments. The cumulative effect is that a participant’s
entitlement under the NDIS Act becomes determinable, in significant part, by
instruments made without parliamentary scrutiny. The Senate Standing
Committee for the Scrutiny of Delegated Legislation has consistently warned
against this pattern in social-security legislation.
Exclusion of merits review The exclusion of merits review for Support Determination decisions is, in
PWdWA’s submission, the single most serious provision in the NDIA Bill. The
Agency’s record in the AAT (and now ART) over the last decade indicates a
participant success rate at or above 75 per cent in contested matters. The
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merits-review jurisdiction is the principal external check on inconsistent
decision-making. Removing it from the most consequential class of decisions is
not a sustainability measure; it is the construction of an entitlement regime
without external review.
Procedural fairness Where the NDIA proposes to act on automated outputs or on a Support
Determination to vary or terminate a participant’s plan, procedural fairness
requires that the participant be given a meaningful opportunity to be heard
before, not after, the variation takes effect. The Bill does not codify a pre
variation right to be heard.
Reasons for decision The Bill provides for the giving of reasons in a form prescribed by rules. PWdWA
recommends that the Act itself require reasons that identify the evidence relied
upon, the inferences drawn, and, where automated tools have been used, the
role of those tools in the decision.
Independent oversight PWdWA recommends that an independent NDIS Inspector-General be
established, modelled on the Inspector-General of Taxation and Taxation
Ombudsman, with own-motion investigative jurisdiction and annual reporting to
Parliament.
Part G – The Alternative Savings Portfolio
This Part presents a costed alternative to the participant-side cuts contemplated
by the NDIA Bill. Each lever is sourced to a publicly available figure or an FOI
disclosure. Each saving percentage is conservative. The methodology is set out
in Appendix A. None of the savings below is delivered by reducing participant
numbers or participant plans.
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Savings lever Base spend Saving % Annual saving(non-participant)
Reduce external $31 million 70% $22mAAT/ART legal
spend (in-house
counsel, earlier
Clear appeals $380m 40% $152mbacklog (cuts
reassessment
churn & legal
costs)
Renegotiate ICT & $470m 20% $94mPACE platform
contracts
Cap Big-4 & $95m 50% $48moverlapping
consultancy
contracts
Streamline NDIA $1,600m 8% $128mstaffing /
contractor-to-APS
conversion
Default to self / $240m 50% $120mplan management
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Savings lever Base spend Saving % Annual saving(non-participant)
(cut agency
overhead)
Move stable $180m 60% $108mparticipants to
multi-year plans
(cut reassessment
churn)
End repeat $110m 80% Qeligibility re
testing for
permanent
disability
Q&S Commission $215m 15% $32mprocess
streamlining
(preserve
safeguards)
Close provider $410m 35% $144minflated unit-price
loopholes
(registered
providers)
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Savings lever Base spend Saving % Annual saving(non-participant)
Disrupt organised $600m 30% $180mprovider fraud
rings (not
participants)
Total annual $1,115m
savings, non
participant
The portfolio totals approximately $1.12 billion per year, with a credible range of
$1.0 to $1.3 billion depending on implementation pace. Over the four-year
forward estimates, that is approximately $4.5 billion. The Bill’s $37.8 billion
participant-side reduction is overwhelmingly larger than is required if the Agency
simultaneously implements the supply-side reforms set out above and the
Government adopts an independent NDIS Pricing Authority on the model
recommended in Recommendation 8.
A note on fraud PWdWA supports the integrity work of the Fraud Fusion Taskforce and the bulk of
Schedule 2, but the scale of the ‘fraud problem’ has, in our view and in the view
of our sister DPOs, been materially overstated in the public debate. People With
Disability Australia (PWDA) and Disabled People’s Organisations Against Cuts
Australia have publicly cautioned that the headline fraud figures do not
withstand scrutiny: a substantial share of what is reported as ‘fraud’ is, on the
available evidence, better characterised as administrative error, ambiguous
claiming, or process mistakes – frequently by providers, and on occasion by the
NDIA itself. Genuine, deliberate fraud certainly exists, and where it does it is
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overwhelmingly perpetrated by organised criminal groups and a small number of
unscrupulous registered providers – not by participants. Schedule 2 should be
retained and refined to remove the two-tier pricing regime, supplemented by
statutory whistleblower protections for provider staff, and accompanied by a
clear public re-statement that distinguishes deliberate fraud from error. Using
inflated fraud figures to justify participant-side restriction is neither evidence
based nor proportionate.
Part H – Lived experience: who the NDIA Bill removes The clauses analysed in Part D are not abstractions. Their incidence falls on
identifiable people. The following de-identified vignettes are drawn from
PWdWA’s advocacy practice and are published with informed consent. We have
used the names of scenario participants from the Government’s own published
material where the parallel is exact.
‘Omar’ – community participation cut by Support Determination Omar has $40,000 in his plan for community participation. The Minister makes a
Support Determination reducing the community-participation envelope by 25
per cent. Omar’s renewed plan contains $30,000, even though his needs have
not changed. He cannot seek merits review of the reduction because NDIS Act
section 34A excludes Support Determination decisions from ART jurisdiction.
Omar reduces his community access program from four days per week to three.
The State public mental health service records its next presentation by him
within six months.
‘Soraya’ – capital purchase stripped on renewal Soraya previously received funding to purchase a manual wheelchair. Under the
plan-renewal architecture, that one-off funding is automatically removed from
her renewed plan. Her wheelchair fails. She is dependent on hire equipment for
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nine months. Her shoulder injury, which the wheelchair was prescribed to
prevent, recurs.
‘Josephine’ – strict impairment linking Josephine has intellectual disability and Type 2 diabetes. Under proposed NDIS
Act section 34(1)(aa), she cannot use NDIS funds for diabetes management
because diabetes was not her qualifying disability. Her diabetes is poorly
managed. The State health system absorbs the cost at a unit price materially in
excess of the displaced NDIS cost.
‘Liam’ and ‘Majak’ – reassessment refused Liam exhausts his core supports funding earlier than expected because his
support needs in winter exceeded his usual baseline. He requests a
reassessment. Under NDIS Act section 48A his request is refused because the
change is not ‘significant and ongoing’. Majak’s primary carer takes a fortnight’s
holiday. His reassessment request is refused because the change is not
permanent. Sophie’s elderly mother moves into residential aged care, ending her
informal support. Sophie’s request is approved. The rule’s beneficiaries are
participants whose informal support fails permanently; its victims are
participants whose informal support fails intermittently.
‘Marlee’ – Aboriginal community, Kimberley Marlee is 22 and lives in a remote Aboriginal community. Her participation in the
Scheme is mediated by a local Aboriginal Community-Controlled Organisation.
The combined effect of the NDIS Act section 34A review-exclusion, the 90-day
uncontactable rule, and the removal of plan-manager standing to request
reassessment is to end Marlee’s practical capacity to challenge an adverse
decision.
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These vignettes are illustrative, not exhaustive. PWdWA can provide
further case studies to the Committee on request.
Part H2 – May 2026 PWdWA member consultation: what people told us In May 2026, PWdWA convened a series of member consultations – in-person
and online – with people with disability, family members, carers, support
workers and allied advocates across Western Australia. Every person who
attended raised concerns about the NDIA Bill and the direction of the
Government’s reform program. No participant in any session expressed support
for the Schedule 1 measures. The themes recorded below are a faithful summary
of the issues raised by members in their own words; PWdWA has organised them
thematically for the Committee’s benefit but has not editorialised them.
The Committee is asked to read this Part alongside Part H. Part H presents
de-identified vignettes drawn from PWdWA’s advocacy casework; this Part
presents the lived, contemporaneous concerns of our membership at the
moment the NDIA Bill was introduced.
Reasonable and necessary, and the integrity of the standard Members consistently raised concern that the proposed redefinition of
“reasonable and necessary” – and its operationalisation through Support
Determinations – erodes a standard that participants and clinicians have
spent a decade learning to apply. Members observed that the Commonwealth has found money for
discretionary national projects – a new stadium in the eastern states, a
redeveloped Burswood race precinct, an AFL franchise – at scales
comparable to the savings the NDIA Bill seeks to recover from individual
participants. The juxtaposition was raised repeatedly and without prompting.
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The point members made was not that those projects are wrong, but that the
political claim that the Scheme is “unaffordable” cannot be reconciled with
the simultaneous availability of capital for those purposes.
Single parents, families and the gendered load Single parents reported that the NDIA Bill – and the Government’s broader
framing of parental responsibility – will make an already untenable load
harder. Members reported being unable to sustain paid work, study, or their
own healthcare under current settings; the NDIA Bill makes the trajectory
worse, not better. Members raised the interaction with the Disability Support Pension,
particularly the inability of many DSP recipients to work even part-time
without losing income security, as compounding the harm. Parents, carers and support workers identified the same pattern PWdWA
documents in Part K: cost-shifted onto unpaid (overwhelmingly female)
family labour.
Registered providers, market design and safeguarding Members raised concern about the value-for-money proposition of registered
providers, including SIL providers, and the integrity of provider reports relied
on by the NDIA in planning decisions. Members raised the accuracy of clinician and provider reports, the readability
of those reports for participants, and the protocols around how reports are
commissioned, paid for, and weighted in decision-making. Members were clear that the appropriate response to provider misconduct is
regulation, registration enforcement and prosecution – not the removal of
participants from the Scheme. Members nominated choice and control (the
ability to change providers) as the central safeguarding mechanism in the
Scheme and asked that it be preserved, not eroded.
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Concern was raised about unregistered SIL providers operating outside the
Quality and Safeguards Commission’s full visibility, and about the practical
safeguarding consequences for residents.
Reassessment fatigue and administrative burden Members described “reassessment fatigue” as a defining feature of life on the
Scheme: repeated reviews, repeated paperwork, repeated submission of the
same medical evidence, and repeated re-traumatisation. Members
supported less frequent reviews for participants with permanent disability,
not more. Members raised the navigability of the Scheme generally – paperwork, portal
usability, the cost in time and energy of compliance – as a barrier to access
that disproportionately affects people without paid advocates. One member reported that their adult son in supported accommodation has
had successive reviews that produced no change in supports but consumed
months of family time and clinical letters.
Automation, decision-making and the risk of worse outcomes Members raised direct concern about the potential expansion of automated
decision-making in the Scheme. The recent history of automated
Commonwealth decision-making (Robodebt) was named explicitly. Members
asked whether automation in NDIA decision-making will make things worse,
not better, particularly for participants whose presentation does not fit a
standard template. Members observed that taxpayers will ultimately spend more, not less, where
automated decisions generate avoidable appeals, ART litigation, hospital
admissions and crisis presentations.
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Hospitals, health and the cost-shift members are already seeing
- Members raised ambulance ramping and emergency-department pressure in WA tertiary hospitals as an early indicator of the cost-shift Part K of this
submission models. Several members reported that family members with
disability are already presenting to ED for needs that, under a properly-funded
plan, would be met in the community.
-
Members named the medical-model framing of the NDIA Bill as a regression from the social-model architecture the Scheme was designed around. Community supports, future planning and the philosophical question
-
Members raised community support – the informal and semi-formal networks that surround a participant – as the thing the Scheme was supposed to
enable, and the thing the NDIA Bill puts most at risk.
- Members spoke about “future for the future”: ageing parents of adult children with disability who cannot plan for their own death because the Scheme’s
trajectory is uncertain. The Bill, members said, has made that planning
materially harder.
- Members cited the published work of the former Commissioner of the NDIS, and the published commentary of clinicians and academics, as evidence that
the Scheme’s original philosophical foundations – choice and control, co
design, individualised support – are being abandoned in favour of
administrative containment.
- Members described a consultancy report commissioned approximately three years ago whose recommendations, in members’ assessment, have been
selectively implemented to support a cost-reduction narrative while its
participant-protective recommendations have been set aside.
Local government, LACs and the missing layer Members raised the role of Local Government and Local Area Coordinators
(LACs) as a layer of the Scheme that has been progressively hollowed out.
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Members reported difficulty contacting LACs, inconsistent quality of LAC
support, and a loss of the local navigational function the Scheme was
originally designed to provide. Online attendees raised the additional barrier that remote and regional
participants face in accessing what local infrastructure remains.
Political process, lobbying and the integrity of consultation Members raised concern about the political framing of the NDIA Bill: the
deployment of fraud claims as public-facing justification, the
characterisation of opposition to the NDIA Bill as “unAustralian,” and the
perception that lobbying by large registered providers has had
disproportionate access to Government. Members called on the Committee to log every submission it receives, to
publish the volume and direction of submissions, and to give the sector time
to respond effectively rather than compressing the consultation window. Members reaffirmed that the Australian cultural commitment to a “fair go” is
inconsistent with the participant-side measures in Schedule 1.
Specific WA case material raised by members Women losing jobs because of the unavailability of in-home support after a
partner’s death or departure. Deaths attributable to insufficient support – members raised the deaths of
WA participants known to them personally. Family units fracturing under the load of unpaid care, including the Shadow
Minister for Women and Families’ published material on the same. Murders and serious violence against people with disability in WA, including
in regional towns, as a backdrop against which safeguarding cannot be
reduced.
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Members’ position on the legal architecture
- Members supported the merit-of-administrative-law analysis in Part F of this submission. Members were clear that targeting good decision-making and the
proper exercise of discretion – including the right to merits review – must not be
sacrificed to administrative throughput.
- Members rejected the implicit return to a medical-model and permanent- disability framing, and rejected the substitution of block funding (HACC-style)
and bilateral State/Commonwealth grandfathering arrangements for
individualised entitlement.
- Members raised psychosocial disability and mental health specifically. The Bill’s interaction with the mental-health system, with State health
responsibilities, and with the existing inadequacy of mainstream mental-health
services in WA was a recurring concern.
- Members were clear that the answer to the Scheme’s challenges is structural and system-level reform – supply-side regulation, mainstream investment,
market design – not individualised cuts.
PWdWA’s representation to the committee Every member who attended PWdWA’s May 2026 consultation raised concerns
about the NDIA Bill. None supported it. This Part records those concerns. It is not
a sample. It is the position of the people whose lives the NDIA Bill will reshape,
recorded in their own words and presented to the Committee without filter.
Part H3 – Mandatory provider registration and the overhead question PWdWA does not support mandatory registration of all NDIS providers, and we
do not accept the implicit assumption – running through both the NDIA Bill and
the broader regulatory direction of the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission
– that safeguarding is best delivered by expanding a centralised regulator. Our
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position, grounded in the lived experience of our members and in the original
architecture of the Scheme, is that mandatory registration produces the
appearance of safety while pricing out the small, local, participant-chosen
providers that deliver the best human outcomes, and that the most effective and
cheapest safeguard the Scheme has ever had is genuine choice and control – the
ability of a participant to walk away from a provider that is not meeting their
needs.
Why PWdWA opposes mandatory registration Mandatory registration imposes a uniform compliance cost – audit,
insurance, reporting, ICT, governance – that small providers, sole-trader
support workers, and culturally-specific providers cannot absorb. The
market consolidates toward larger, often corporate, registered entities.
Choice contracts, and the providers participants actually trust disappear
from the market. The empirical record from the analogous Australian aged-care registration
regime, and from the contracted-out UK domiciliary care market, is that
mandatory registration has not eliminated abuse, neglect or fraud. It has
redistributed it from small operators to large ones, and it has reduced the
visibility of the residual abuse because complaint pathways within large
registered providers are slower, more legalistic, and more defended. Mandatory registration is, in substance, a transfer of safeguarding from
the participant (who can change provider) to the regulator (who cannot). It
weakens the safeguarding mechanism that actually works and
strengthens the one that, on the published record, does not. PWdWA supports targeted registration for high-risk supports (restrictive
practices, behaviour support, SIL where restrictive practices are in use,
complex medical supports) and we support strong enforcement against
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the registered cohort. We do not support the extension of that regime
across the whole market.
The overhead question: a Commission, or community capacity? The NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission costs the Commonwealth in the
order of $218 million per year (Commission Annual Report 2024-25; see also
Bureaucracy & Intake analysis published by PWdWA at ourndis.org). PWdWA’s
position is that a significant portion of that envelope would deliver materially
better safeguarding outcomes if it were redirected into the things that actually
enable participants to exercise choice and control – and therefore to safeguard
themselves.
Independent individual and systemic advocacy, funded at a level that
matches participant demand rather than the current rationed allocations
under the National Disability Advocacy Program and State-level advocacy
funding. Peer support – Disabled People’s Organisations, peer-led networks, and
participant-to-participant navigation support – which the international
evidence (Enabling Good Lives in New Zealand; the Nordic personal
assistance frameworks; the UK Disabled People’s user-led organisations)
consistently identifies as the single highest-leverage safeguarding investment
per dollar. Community education – accessible plain-language, Auslan and translated
information about rights, complaint pathways, the ability to change providers,
the role of nominees, and the operation of the merits-review system. Local, place-based navigational capacity – restoring the Local Area
Coordinator function the Scheme was originally designed around, and
properly funding Local Government and ACCO-led navigation in remote and
culturally-specific contexts.
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These investments are, on a per-participant basis, materially cheaper than
centralised regulation. They are also the only safeguards that operate ex ante –
they prevent the harm – rather than ex post, after the Commission’s complaint
pathway has been triggered. The Scheme’s central pillar is choice and control. A
regulator does not deliver choice and control. Advocacy, peer support,
community education and a functioning local navigational layer do.
PWdWA’s position Mandatory registration of all providers should not proceed. Targeted registration
for high-risk supports should be retained and enforced. A meaningful share of
the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission’s operating envelope should be
redirected to independent advocacy, peer support, community education and
Local Area Coordination – the supports that actually enable participants to
exercise the choice and control that is the Scheme’s central safeguarding
mechanism.
Part I – Comparative jurisdictions
United Kingdom – Personal Independence Payment
The UK’s reform of Disability Living Allowance into Personal Independence
Payment from 2013 is the closest international analogue to the participant-side
measures proposed by the NDIA Bill. The reform tightened eligibility and
introduced a contracted reassessment regime, projected to save approximately
£2.5 billion per year. The National Audit Office (UK) found in 2016 that the
reassessment regime was more expensive than projected and characterised by
very high rates of successful appeal – between 60 and 75 per cent of tribunal
appeals were upheld in the applicant’s favour. The reform is now widely cited as
a cautionary case study in eligibility-tightening as fiscal strategy.
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New Zealand – Enabling Good Lives
The Enabling Good Lives framework took the opposite approach: devolving
budget control to participants and to local disability-led governance. Ministry of
Social Development evaluations report improved outcomes at neutral or lower
per-participant cost, principally because participants choose lower-cost
informal supports where they meet need. EGL is the architecture most
consistent with UNCRPD Article 19.
Nordic models – Sweden, Norway, Denmark
Sweden’s LSS Act (1993), Norway’s Brukerstyrt personlig assistanse (BPA)
regime and Denmark’s Servicelov §§ 95–96 each maintain entitlement-based
personal-assistance frameworks. Each of these jurisdictions spends materially
more than Australia on disability as a share of GDP (Sweden ≈ 2.8%, Denmark ≈
2.9%, Norway ≈ 3.1%, against Australia’s ≈ 1.9%) and each maintains a stronger
surrounding mainstream architecture – universal health, robust social housing,
vocational rehabilitation, and municipally-delivered attendant care. None of
these jurisdictions has responded to cost growth by narrowing entitlement at the
level of the individual; each has acted on the supply side (price regulation,
workforce planning, market design). The lesson for Australia is the opposite of
the one the NDIA Bill draws: comparator democracies whose disability
outcomes are better than ours achieve those outcomes by spending more, not
less, and by reforming the market and the mainstream – not the participant.
The lesson Eligibility-tightening under-delivers savings, generates significant administrative
and appeals cost, and produces avoidable harm. Supply-side reform delivers
savings without those costs. The Bill, as drafted, repeats the UK’s strategic error
on a larger scale.
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Part J – First Nations participants First Nations Australians are over-represented in disability prevalence and
under-represented in NDIS access. The NDIS Review (2023) found that, while
First Nations people are approximately 3.8 per cent of the population, they
account for approximately 7.5 per cent of those with severe or profound
disability, and approximately 6.9 per cent of NDIS participants. The access gap is
largest in the Kimberley, the Pilbara, the APY Lands and remote Queensland.
The Bill takes no specific account of First Nations participation. The 90
day uncontactable rule, the restriction of reassessment standing to participants
and nominees only, and the exclusion of Support Determination decisions from
merits review will each fall disproportionately on First Nations participants in
remote locations. PWdWA, in concert with our First Nations Disability
colleagues, recommends three statutory additions: a First Nations Disability
Commissioner within the NDIA governance architecture; a quarantined funding
envelope for ACCO-led service delivery in line with the National Agreement on
Closing the Gap (Priority Reform 2); and an express statutory recognition that
cultural safety is a component of reasonable and necessary support.
Part K – The false economy: where the cuts actually land The Government has presented the NDIA Bill as a fiscal consolidation. PWdWA’s
submission is that it is, in substantial part, a cost-shift. Reducing NDIS
expenditure does not eliminate the need that NDIS expenditure was meeting; it
transfers that need to other publicly-funded systems – almost all of which deliver
the same support at a higher unit cost – and to the unpaid labour of families,
predominantly women. A Commonwealth saving recorded in Budget Paper No. 2
is paid for, in roughly equivalent magnitude and often in larger magnitude, by
State health, State education, the Commonwealth aged-care system, the
Commonwealth justice system, the housing and homelessness system, and by
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household income foregone. The aggregate fiscal position of Australian
governments does not improve. In several scenarios modelled below it
deteriorates.
The Productivity Commission identified this dynamic at the design phase
of the Scheme. Its 2011 Disability Care and Support report concluded that the
macroeconomic and fiscal returns to the Scheme would exceed its direct cost,
principally through (i) reduced inpatient hospital and emergency-department
demand, (ii) reduced demand on out-of-home care and child-protection
systems, (iii) reduced demand on the justice system, (iv) increased labour
market participation by both participants and their carers, and (v) reduced
incidence of crisis presentations across all of the above. The Bill is being scored
against a Treasury fiscal envelope that does not internalise these returns. If they
are internalised, the participant-side measures in Schedule 1 are net cost
positive, not cost-negative, for consolidated government.
Cost shift to the hospital system Hospital substitution is the largest single category of avoided cost in any mature
disability-support system. The unit-cost arithmetic is stark. The Independent
Hospital and Aged Care Pricing Authority’s National Efficient Price for 2024-25 is
approximately $6,032 per weighted activity-based admission. A single avoidable
mental-health admission for a participant whose plan funded daily community
supports typically exceeds $25,000. An emergency-department presentation
costs the State system, on the AIHW’s published average, in the order of $700–
$900. A bed-day in a public hospital averages approximately $2,400. By
comparison, an hour of NDIS-funded support work at the 2026 price guide is
approximately $70.
The arithmetic is not at the margin. PWdWA’s clinical advisors estimate
that, on conservative assumptions, every dollar of avoided community
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participation and capacity-building funding generates between $1.40 and $2.80
of additional unplanned admission, ED and bed-day demand within 24 months.
The Productivity Commission’s modelling, the NDIS Review’s modelling, and a
series of international comparators (NHS England’s evaluation of Personal
Health Budgets; Ontario’s evaluation of Passport funding; the WA Disability
Services Commission’s pre-NDIS data) all converge on the same direction of
effect.
Cuts to SCCP and Capacity Building Daily Activity budgets – which the
Government’s own scenarios indicate will fall by 50 per cent and 10 per cent
respectively for old-framework participants – will land hardest in WA’s tertiary
hospitals: Fiona Stanley, Sir Charles Gairdner, Royal Perth, and the regional
resource centres. WA Health does not have the funded capacity to absorb the
shift. The fiscal saving recorded in Canberra is paid in West Perth.
Cost shift to schools and education The Bill’s restriction of supports to those linked directly to the qualifying
impairment (proposedNDIS Act section 34(1)(aa)) and the strict reassessment
rule under proposedNDIS Act section 48A will operate to remove or contract
therapy supports – occupational therapy, speech pathology, behavioural support
– that are at present substituting for school-system capacity that has never been
funded to provide them. The most direct consequence is increased pressure on
the State Department of Education, on Catholic Education, and on the
independent school sector to provide individualised supports out of base school
funding. The next consequence is increased school refusal, increased part-time
enrolment, increased home-schooling under duress, and a downstream
reduction in Year 12 completion rates among students with disability. The
longer-term fiscal consequence is reduced lifetime tax receipts and increased
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lifetime income-support cost. None of these effects appear in the NDIA Bill’s
Budget scoring.
Cost shift to the employment and income-support system Capacity Building – Finding and Keeping a Job (“employment supports”) is one of
the categories most exposed to the NDIA Bill’s cost-reduction architecture. The
Government’s own administrative data show that NDIS-funded employment
supports increase the probability of paid work, and that paid work reduces a
participant’s lifetime draw on the Disability Support Pension (DSP), JobSeeker
payment with partial-capacity-to-work, the Mobility Allowance and, indirectly, on
the public hospital system. Conservative modelling using DSS published
parameters indicates that an NDIS-funded transition from no paid work to 8–15
hours per week of paid work saves the Commonwealth approximately $11,000
per participant per year in DSP and associated payments, against a typical
employment-support cost of $4,000–$8,000 per participant per year. Cutting
employment supports is, on the Commonwealth’s own ledger, fiscally negative.
The Bill’s structural pressure on this category is therefore not a saving but
a transfer from the NDIS line of Budget Paper No. 2 to the DSS income-support
line. The aggregate Commonwealth position deteriorates. The participant’s
position deteriorates more sharply.
Cost shift to housing, homelessness and out-of-home care The 90-day uncontactable rule, the conversion of plan continuations to
renewals, and the contraction of in-home and SDA-adjacent supports are
foreseeable drivers of housing instability for a defined cohort: participants with
psychosocial disability, participants exiting hospital, participants in family
violence, and young people transitioning from out-of-home care. Each of these
cohorts is already over-represented in the Specialist Homelessness Services
Collection. A single episode of homelessness in WA costs the State system, on
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AIHW-equivalent costing, in the order of $20,000 once primary, secondary and
tertiary responses are aggregated. A child protection notification, investigation
and substantiated finding cycles through the WA Department of Communities at
a unit cost an order of magnitude higher. The Bill’s cost-shift into these systems
is not theoretical; it is the predictable consequence of the design choices in
Schedule 1.
Cost shift to the justice system The Disability Royal Commission documented in detail the over-representation
of people with cognitive and psychosocial disability in police contact, custody
and the criminal justice system. NDIS-funded supports – including behaviour
support, accommodation supports, and Capacity Building – are among the only
effective system-level brakes on that pipeline. Reducing those supports has a
foreseeable effect on remand, on short-sentence custodial admissions, and on
the rate of contact with the WA Children’s Court and Magistrates Court. WA
Treasury costs adult custodial detention at approximately $400 per person per
day. Youth detention is materially higher. The savings recorded against the NDIS
line will be paid, in part, by the Department of Justice.
Cost shift to the aged-care system For participants approaching 65, the transition between the NDIS and the aged
care system has been a longstanding pinch-point. The Bill’s plan-renewal
architecture and Support Determination power compound that pinch by
reducing the supports available in the years immediately before the transition,
with foreseeable consequences for premature entry into residential aged care. A
bed in residential aged care is funded at a Commonwealth subsidy materially in
excess of an equivalent home-based NDIS package. The cost-shift is from NDIS
to the Aged Care Subsidy Principles.
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Cost shift onto women: the gendered economics of the cuts This is, in PWdWA’s submission, the under-discussed feature of the NDIA Bill.
Where Scheme-funded supports are withdrawn, the demand for those supports
does not disappear; it is met by unpaid care. ABS data on time use, the Carer
Wellbeing Survey, and Carers Australia’s published material consistently report
that approximately 70 per cent of primary carers of people with disability are
women. The Government’s own Bill material legitimises this transfer by
introducing a strict statutory presumption that parents are responsible for
substantial personal and emotional care of disabled children and by prohibiting
the funding of supports whose primary purpose is to reduce the burden on
parents or improve household efficiency. That is a fiscal architecture that books
a Commonwealth saving against women’s labour.
The consequences are measurable: reduced female workforce
participation, reduced superannuation accumulation across the affected
cohort’s working life, increased rates of carer mental-health distress (the Carer
Wellbeing Survey records carer mental-health distress at approximately double
the national average), and increased rates of older-women’s homelessness –
already the fastest-growing homelessness cohort in Australia. Each of these is a
fiscal cost to the Commonwealth and to the States. None is internalised in the
NDIA Bill’s scoring. The Sex Discrimination Commissioner, the Workplace
Gender Equality Agency and the Treasury’s own Gender Budget Statement
framework all require these effects to be made visible. PWdWA recommends
that the Statement of Compatibility be amended to include a substantive gender
impact analysis on standard Office for Women methodology.
Cost shift onto carers, families and the volunteer sector Beyond the gender dimension, the NDIA Bill effects a transfer of cost onto carers
and families generally. The displaced cost has three components: foregone
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household income (carers reducing or exiting paid work), foregone household
savings (out-of-pocket purchase of supports the Scheme no longer funds), and
foregone household wellbeing (the documented health effects of intensive
caring). None of these is a Commonwealth saving. All are a private loss.
Cost shift onto people with disability themselves The most direct cost-shift is the one most often elided in fiscal documents: it is
the cost-shift onto people with disability themselves. The 170,000 participants
the Government proposes to remove from the Scheme do not become less
disabled by reason of removal. They become less supported. The cost is
measured in employment foregone, in education foregone, in community
participation foregone, in physical and mental-health decline, and in early death.
The Disability Royal Commission’s Final Report documented the human cost of
under-supported lives in evidentiary detail. The Committee, in its assessment of
the NDIA Bill, is entitled to ask whether the Commonwealth has lawful authority
to legislate that cost onto a defined class of Australians without their consent
and without compensation.
The aggregate fiscal proposition Aggregated across the hospital, education, employment, justice, aged-care,
housing and unpaid-care systems, PWdWA’s central estimate is that
approximately 60 to 80 cents of every dollar recorded as an NDIS saving under
Schedule 1 of the NDIA Bill is shifted to another publicly-funded system or to
households. A material residual is lost as deadweight (avoidable admissions,
premature mortality, foregone tax receipts). The Bill is, on this analysis, not a
$37.8 billion saving. It is, at best, a $7 to $15 billion saving against undisclosed
costs to State governments, to the Commonwealth’s other portfolios and to
households. That is a poor return for the harm inflicted.
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Part L – Consolidated recommendations PWdWA recommends as follows. Each recommendation is drafted in a form
capable of incorporation into amendments to the NDIA Bill.
Recommendation 1. Withdraw or substantially amend the NDIA Bill The Bill should be withdrawn and re-introduced after meaningful co-design with
the disability sector in accordance with UNCRPD Article 4(3). In the alternative,
the NDIA Bill should be amended substantially to reflect Recommendations 2 to
Recommendation 2. Delete NDIS Act section 34A Support Determinations and the growth-target object Proposed NDIS Act section 34A should be deleted in its entirety. The proposed
amendment to the Objects clause codifying a 5–6 per cent growth target should
be deleted; any growth-management mechanism should sit in a discrete
sustainability provision and should preserve individual-needs decision-making.
Recommendation 3. Delete NDIS Act section 25A re-medicalisation; retain functional impact test Proposed NDIS Act section 25A should be deleted. The existing functional
impact test in NDIS Act section 24(1)(c) of the Act, modernised in line with the
NDIS Review, is sufficient.
Recommendation 4. Restore plan continuations and remove the 90-day rules Plan continuations should be restored, allowing unspent funds to roll over within
reasonable limits. The 90-day claiming rule and the 90-day uncontactable rule
should be removed or significantly extended with statutory grounds for hardship
exemption.
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Recommendation 5. Prohibit automated substantive decisions Automated decision-making should be prohibited in respect of eligibility, plan
amount and reasonable-and-necessary determinations. The safeguards
recommended by the Robodebt Royal Commission should be expressly codified.
Recommendation 6. Preserve full merits review Merits review at the ART should be preserved for all decisions affecting a
participant’s plan or eligibility, including decisions made under or in
consequence of any Support Determination or Ministerial price cap.
Recommendation 7. Adopt the Alternative Savings Portfolio
The portfolio set out in Part G, totalling approximately $1.0 to $1.3 billion per
year, should be adopted as the primary source of fiscal consolidation. Its
elements are independently severable and may be sequenced over the forward
estimates.
Recommendation 8. Establish an NDIS Pricing Authority
A statutory NDIS Pricing Authority should be established with the powers of a
sector regulator: price-monitoring, mandatory data collection from registered
providers, and the power to declare maximum prices in market segments
characterised by inadequate competition. The two-tier pricing regime in
Schedule 2 should be removed and the new Authority’s price-monitoring
framework substituted.
Recommendation 9. Codify a statutory ‘no detriment’ principle The Act should be amended to include a statutory principle that no participant is
to be financially or functionally worse off as a transitional consequence of the
reforms. The principle should be enforceable through the existing internal-review
mechanism.
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Recommendation 10. Require whole-of-government cost-shift accounting
No participant-side measure in the NDIA Bill should commence until the
Commonwealth has published, and the Parliament has considered, a whole-of
government cost-shift impact statement covering State health, State education,
Commonwealth income support, aged care, justice, housing and homelessness,
and the gendered unpaid-care economy. The methodology should be agreed
with State and Territory Treasuries through the Council on Federal Financial
Relations.
Recommendation 11. Embed First Nations governance
A First Nations Disability Commissioner should be embedded within the NDIA
governance architecture. A funding envelope for ACCO-led delivery should be
quarantined. Cultural safety should be statutorily recognised as a component of
reasonable and necessary support.
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Appendix A – Savings portfolio methodology This appendix sets out the working behind the figures in Part G of this
submission. Each item is derived from a publicly available source or a freedom
of-information-request-initiated disclosure. Saving percentages are deliberately
conservative and are benchmarked against analogous Commonwealth and
state-and-territory exercises.
Base spend Base spend figures are drawn from the National Disability Insurance Agency
Annual Report 2024–25, the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission, Annual
Report 2024–25, the Transparency Portal, and identified FOI disclosures. Where
a figure is described as illustrative, it has been derived by triangulation from
multiple primary sources and is rounded conservatively.
Saving percentages Saving percentages are benchmarked against: (i) the Department of Finance’s
Whole-of-Government ICT contract renegotiation outcomes (2018–2023); (ii) the
ATO’s in-house counsel programme; (iii) the Productivity Commission’s analysis
of consultancy expenditure across the APS and its 2011 Disability Care and
Support Report No. 54; and (iv) comparable State-level pricing-regulator
interventions (IPART, ESC and qualitative comparative analysis; see the Glossary
for acronyms). Percentages have been discounted for implementation risk.
Aggregation and ranges The point estimate of $1.12 billion per year reflects the sum of the individual
lever estimates. The $1.0 to $1.3 billion range reflects sensitivity testing at +/
one standard deviation on the saving percentages. Full sensitivity workings are
available on request.
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Appendix B – Glossary AAT – Administrative Appeals Tribunal.
ACCO – Aboriginal community-controlled organisation.
ART – Administrative Review Tribunal, successor to the AAT.
DPO – Disabled people’s organisation; an organisation governed and run by
people with disability.
EGL – Enabling Good Lives vision (New Zealand).
ICESCR – International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
PACE – the NDIA’s participant and provider system platform.
Penalty unit – Commonwealth penalty unit, $330 from 1 July 2024 (Crimes Act
1914 [Cth] section 4AA).
PIP – Personal Independence Payment (United Kingdom).
SCCP – Social, Civic and Community Participation (NDIS budget category).
UNCRPD – United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
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Appendix C – References Australian Governments (2020), National Agreement on Closing the Gap.
Australian National Audit Office (multiple years), Performance Audits of the
NDIA. *
Commonwealth of Australia, Budget Paper No. 2, 2026–27.
Department of Finance (2018–2023), Whole-of-government ICT contract
renegotiation outcomes.
Kavanagh, L. and Bonyhady, B. (2023), Working together to deliver the NDIS –
Independent Review.
National Disability Insurance Agency, Annual Report 2024–25; Annual Financial
Sustainability Reports; Quarterly Reports to the Disability Reform
Ministerial Council.
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future
Generations) Bill 2026 (Cth); Explanatory Memorandum; Statement of
Compatibility with Human Rights.
National Audit Office (United Kingdom) (2016), Personal Independence Payment
(not online; for similar information see House of Commons Library [2016],
Personal Independence Payment and the March 2016 Budget, Briefing
Paper no. 7651, 8 July 2016.)
NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission, Annual Report 2024–25.
New Zealand Ministry of Social Development, Enabling Good Lives evaluations.
Productivity Commission (2011), Disability Care and Support, Report No. 54.
Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme (2023), Royal Commission into
the Robodebt Scheme Report.
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United Nations (2006), Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities;
CRPD Committee, General Comment No. 1 – Article 12 : Equal recognition
before the law (Adopted 11 April 2014) – Plain English version.
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Appendix D – Shared perspectives with PWDA advocates Like our social sector peers at People with Disability Australia, People with
Disabilities WA wants to outline the harm this Amendment Bill will cause if it
passes Parliament. We agree this Bill is too far-reaching to pass as it stands.
We believe the NDIA Bill requires further scrutiny and amendment before it
proceeds.
Parliamentary scrutiny and transparency The consultation period for the Amendment Bill was two weeks, which was
insufficient to allow for appropriate consultation, considering accessibility and
communication needs. The extension was also too short. The Australian
Government Guide to Policy Impact Analysis says consultation should occur for
a minimum of 30 days where possible.
The short timeline affects PWdWA’s members and the disability in a multitude of
ways and among these are because it creates accessibility issues, where only
the most literate and online voices can be heard.
Recommendation: Amend the consultation period for a best practice minimum
of 30 days.
Key decisions left to ministerial instruments, not law The issue: The Bill allows Ministers to change who gets NDIS support (Schedule
1 Parts 8 and 9) and how much funding people receive (Schedule 1 Part 4;
Schedule 3) by signing an instrument, without going back to Parliament. The
rules that will determine critical eligibility thresholds (Schedule 1 Parts 1, 8 and
- have not yet been written. How this affects participants: The decisions that shape the lives of
participants, whether they qualify for the NDIS and what supports they can
access, could be changed without parliamentary debate or public scrutiny.
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Participants may not know supports or eligibility rules have changed until their
plan is affected.
PWdWA and its members will be unacceptably affected.
Recommendation: Require that all decisions affecting NDIS eligibility and
funding levels be made through primary legislation subject to full parliamentary
scrutiny, with mandatory advance notice to affected participants before any
changes take effect.
Existing participants face narrower criteria and fewer rights to challenge decisions The issue: The Bill changes the rules for existing NDIS participants and makes it
harder to challenge some decisions about supports and funding. It also restricts
when you can request a reassessment, removes review rights for automatic plan
renewals, and makes funding reductions unreviewable (Schedule 1 Parts 1 and
8). Combined with restrictions on reassessment requests (Part 2), automatic
plan renewals without review rights (Part 5), and unreviewable funding
reductions (Part 4), existing participants face narrower criteria with significantly
fewer avenues to challenge decisions about their supports.
How this affects participants: This does not protect participants already on the
NDIS, who could be reassessed under stricter rules. If someone’s funding is
reduced or their plan renewed automatically, they may have limited or no ability
to challenge that decision. This could make it harder for people to get extra
support when their circumstances or disability change.
Recommendation: Require a “no harm” safeguard ensuring no current
participant loses access to supports unless equivalent supports are in place,
with independent review rights before any exit decision and access to
unscheduled reassessments preserved.
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Unreviewable ministerial power to cut funding across all support categories The Minister can reduce funding for any support or group of supports by a
specified percentage through an instrument that cannot be challenged
(Schedule 1 Part 4). This applies across all budget categories. Unspent funds will
no longer carry over at plan renewal (Schedule 1 Part 5).
How this affects participants: A participant’s community participation,
capacity building or assistive technology funding could be cut without warning
and without any right to appeal. Participants who save unspent funds across
plan periods for high-cost items will lose that ability entirely.
Recommendation: Require that unspent funds carry over at plan renewal for
participants saving for high-cost items and require independent review rights
before any funding reduction takes effect.
Requirement to exhaust treatment options before eligibility The issue: A person with disability will need to exhaust treatment options before
they can be eligible for the Scheme (Schedule 1 Part 8). There will also be a
removal of whole-of-person assessment, replaced by single eligible impairment
consideration (Schedule 1 Part 3). The note that previously acknowledged
environmental factors and other ineligible impairments could affect support
needs will be removed (Schedule 1 Part 3).
How this affects participants: People with disability will need to prove their
impairment cannot be treated before they access the NDIS. Once in the scheme,
their supports will only be assessed against a single eligible impairment rather
than their whole experience. A person’s individual circumstances will not be
considered, including ability to pay for treatment, where they live or whether
treatment is actually available to them.
Recommendation: Do not proceed with a requirement to exhaust “appropriate
treatment” options – there are no safeguarding measures around participant
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harm due to side effects or complications, a participant’s financial ability to pay,
or their geographic capacity to access treatments.
Unvalidated functional capacity assessment tool risks misidentifying need The issue: The Bill shifts assessment from whole-of-person consideration to a
single eligible impairment (Schedule 1 Part 3). Read together with the eligibility
thresholds in Parts 8 and 9, the tool used to conduct functional capacity
assessments must be capable of sufficiently identifying whether a person meets
the threshold for that single impairment.
The named assessment tool is the Instrument for Classification and
Assessment of Support Needs (I-CAN). I-CAN requires validation to ensure it will
sufficiently identify the needs of all people with disability, including those whose
needs may be fluctuating or episodic and may not be captured through a point
in-time assessment, and to ensure it is culturally appropriate for First Peoples
with disability.
How this affects participants: If the assessment tool does not accurately
capture the full extent of a person’s disability, including needs that fluctuate or
vary over time, a participant may be found ineligible or have their supports
undercounted, with no guarantee the result reflects their actual experience.
Recommendation: Do not proceed with I-CAN as the functional capacity
assessment tool unless it has been demonstrably validated to identify the needs
of all people with disability, including those with episodic or fluctuating
disability, and demonstrated to be culturally appropriate for First Peoples
with disability.
Supports cut before replacement system is ready The issue: From 1 October 2026, the government has announced funding for
social, civic and community participation supports will be cut by 50 per cent and
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capacity building daily activities by 10 per cent for all participants, reductions
that will be implemented through the ministerial instrument power in Schedule 1
Part 4. The Foundational Supports system intended to fill that gap has no
confirmed implementation date and is not yet operational.
How this affects participants: Supports that help participants connect with
their community, build skills and maintain independence may be cut before
anything exists to replace them, leaving carers and families with greater
responsibilities and no additional support. These supports are often what help
people stay visible, connected and safe.
Recommendation: Require that no reductions to community participation or
capacity building supports take effect until Foundational Supports are fully
operational, adequately funded and demonstrably able to meet the needs of
those who will lose NDIS supports.
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