Submission 73
Submission — NDIS Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission to the Inquiry into the
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment
(Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submitted to the Community Affairs Legislation Committee
Submitter: “Name Withheld”
Capacity: Individual - NDIS participant Date: 20/5/2026
Executive summary
I am a late-diagnosed autistic adult, an NDIS participant, and a survivor of childhood and adolescent sexual abuse, experiences that were compounded by vulnerabilities associated with undiagnosed autism and the failure of systems around me to recognise and appropriately support my disability. I gave a written submission to the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability (Royal Commission). I am currently self-represented in an Administrative Review Tribunal matter against a plan reduction decision made under the existing legislative framework. I write from inside the system this Bill seeks to amend, with direct experience of how the current framework already fails participants - and a substantiated view of how this Bill will compound those failures. The Bill’s stated objective is to secure the NDIS for future generations. In practice, it is likely to narrow access, weaken the practical operation of the statutory entitlement to reasonable and necessary supports, transfer decision-making power from individualised assessment toward executive discretion, and entrench evidence-base biases that systematically disadvantage women, autistic adults, late-diagnosed participants, regional Australians, and people without financial means. The cumulative effect of these reforms is a scheme that becomes harder to access, harder to challenge, and less responsive to the real-world circumstances of disabled people whose needs do not fit standardised or easily generalised models. The Bill responds to cost pressures primarily through mechanisms that restrict or constrain participant access to supports, rather than addressing broader structural drivers of Scheme pressure, including mainstream service gaps, opaque provider pricing structures, and administrative practices that generate extensive review and litigation costs. Several provisions are also likely to increase, rather than reduce, administrative and tribunal burden by expanding areas of discretionary decision-making, reducing transparency, increasing contested eligibility questions, and shifting more participants into review and appeal pathways in order to secure supports previously obtainable through ordinary planning processes. This submission focuses on Schedule 1 Parts 1, 4, 5, 6, 8 and 9, and Schedule 3 Part 2. It does not contest the integrity-focused provisions in Schedule 2 in detail. Fraud, exploitation, and provider misconduct within the NDIS are real and warrant strong regulatory and enforcement responses. However, the need for integrity reform does not justify provisions that reduce participant protections, weaken review rights, or restrict access to supports for disabled people who legitimately rely on the Scheme. I make ten recommendations, summarised at section 5.
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1 About this submission
1.1 I made a written submission and a personal statement to the Royal Commission. That submission is on the public record. In it, I described, among other matters: the inaccessibility, inconsistency, and combative nature of NDIS decision-making; the routine disregard of expert assessments; the under-training of NDIS staff in the very disabilities they decide; the misapplication of generalised psychological research to the neurodivergent population; and the human cost of those failures for participants - particularly those with autism and psychosocial disability. Three years on, this Bill does not address those concerns. In significant respects these changes codify the very practices the Royal Commission was asked to investigate.
1.2 I am currently appealing an internal review decision that reduced my plan funding following an unscheduled reassessment initiated by the NDIA. The matter is before the Administrative Review Tribunal. I refer to aspects of my own experience only where they illustrate the operational consequences of provisions in this Bill. This submission is concerned with policy, not with the merits of my individual case.
1.3 I write as an individual. I have no organisational affiliation and no commercial interest in the NDIS.
2 The fundamental problem: the Bill rewrites the statutory entitlement
2.1 Item 60 of Schedule 1 amends section 3(1)(d) of the National Disability Insurance Scheme Act 2013 (NDIS Act) so that an object of the Act will be to:
“provide NDIS supports for participants in the National Disability Insurance Scheme that are reasonable and necessary, so far as is consistent with the financial sustainability of the scheme.”
2.2 The addition of the words “so far as is consistent with the financial sustainability of the scheme” materially alters the legislative framing of participant entitlement.
Under the current framework, the NDIS is fundamentally structured around the assessment of individual support needs and whether supports satisfy the “reasonable and necessary” criteria. The amendment elevates broader Scheme sustainability considerations directly into the statutory object concerning participant supports themselves.
This creates a significant risk that participant need may become increasingly subordinated to broad budgetary and fiscal considerations. In practical terms, supports may be refused not because they are unnecessary for the individual participant, but because they are considered inconsistent with the values and objectives of the government of the day.
2.3 This is not a technical amendment. It is a redefinition of the social compact the NDIS was understood to represent. Australia signed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) in 2008. Article 19 recognises the
“the equal right of all persons with disabilities to live in the community, with choices equal to others”
And requires State Parties to take effective and appropriate measures to facilitate:
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“full enjoyment by persons with disabilities of this right and their full inclusion and participation in the community”.
The proposed amendments risk moving the NDIS away from a rights-based and participation-focused framework toward a more restrictive and fiscally driven model in which access to necessary supports becomes increasingly contingent on shifting policy and budget priorities rather than the individual support needs of disabled people.
2.4 Every other provision of concern in this submission flows from this redefinition. The amendments to functional capacity (Part 1), the permanence test (Part 8), the alternative-supports framework (Part 9), the new ministerial power to reduce funding (Part 4), and the automation provisions (Schedule 3 Part 2) are mechanisms for delivering the cost reductions that the amended section 3(1)(d) authorises in principle.
2.5 The same drafting move is repeated in the new section 17B, inserted by item 65 of Schedule 1, which directs the CEO to have regard to “the financial sustainability of the scheme” when performing functions and exercising powers under Chapter 3. Sustainability becomes a mandatory consideration at every level of the decision-making chain.
Recommendation 1: Remove the words “so far as is consistent with the financial sustainability of the scheme” from the amendment to section 3(1)(d). Sustainability is a legitimate consideration in scheme administration and can remain in section 17B. It does not belong in the statement of the Scheme’s purpose.
3 Six specific provisions of major concern
3.1 Section 9B - Defining functional capacity in a vacuum (Schedule 1, Part 1) 3.1.1 Proposed section 9B defines a person’s functional capacity in relation to an activity as the person’s ability to undertake that activity:
“(a) without assistance from other people, assistive technology or modifications; and (b) in a context that excludes, as far as possible, the impact of the person’s environmental and personal circumstances.”
3.1.2 This definition is incompatible with the social model of disability that the CRPD adopts. Article 1 of the CRPD provides that persons with disabilities include those with long-term impairments that, “in interaction with various barriers may hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others.”
Disability, in international human rights law, is not a property of the person alone; it is the product of interaction between the person and their environment. Section 9B defines functional capacity to deliberately exclude that interaction.
3.1.3 Proposed section 9B directs assessment toward an abstracted concept of “intrinsic” functioning that may not accurately reflect how many disabilities operate in practice. For participants with context-dependent disabilities such as autism or psychosocial disability, the operative impact of impairment is significantly mediated by environment, predictability, support structures, stress, sensory load and social context. For these
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participants, an assessment conducted under section 9B risks producing a notional figure that bears little reliable relationship to the participant’s actual capacity in the world.
3.1.4 The practical consequences for autistic participants are severe. Autistic functioning is highly context dependent and cannot be meaningfully separated from environmental conditions, sensory load, predictability, communication demands and support structures. An autistic adult who appears to manage in a quiet, predictable, supported environment may collapse in a noisy or demanding one. Many autistic women particularly late-diagnosed autistic women like me - present as “high functioning” in masked, structured contexts and as profoundly impaired in unmasked or unstructured ones. Assessing functional capacity in “a context that excludes, as far as possible” environmental and personal circumstances will systematically misrepresent autistic functioning. The predictable consequence is that some participants who currently meet the disability requirements will not do so under the amended Act, despite no material change in their actual functional capacity, because the assessment framework no longer reflects how their disability operates in practice.
3.1.5 The Royal Commission described in detail the harms done to neurodivergent Australians by approaches that ignore the role of environment in producing disability. Section 9B reverses that learning at the level of statutory definition.
Recommendation 2: Remove paragraph (b) from section 9B(1). Functional capacity must be assessed in
conditions that reflect the participant’s actual environmental and personal circumstances, not aconstructed ideal context that does not exist in the participant’s life.
3.2 Section 25A(2) - Punishing the inability to access treatment (Schedule 1, Part 8) 3.2.1 The Bill tightens the permanence test. New subsections 24(5) and 25(1B) provide that an impairment is not permanent unless the person has undertaken “all appropriate treatment” for the impairment and any further treatment is unlikely to materially improve, reverse, or alleviate it.
3.2.2 The inclusion of the word “alleviate” significantly broadens the permanence threshold beyond treatment capable of reversing or materially improving an impairment. Many disabilities, particularly autism and psychosocial disability, may be partially alleviated through therapy, environmental supports, coping strategies or symptom management without ceasing to be lifelong and substantially impairing conditions. The provision risks creating a framework in which participants are expected to perpetually pursue interventions that may marginally reduce aspects of impairment, regardless of whether those interventions meaningfully alter the person’s long-term disability-related support needs.
3.2.3 New section 25A(1) defines appropriate treatment as treatment that is evidence-based, can reliably be expected to materially improve or reverse the impairment, and is regularly undertaken in Australia. Section 25A(2) then provides:
“Treatment may be appropriate treatment for a person’s impairment or impairments regardless of whether the person’s individual circumstances restrict the person from accessing the treatment.”
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3.2.4 The Note to that subsection states: “A person’s individual circumstances include the person’s financial circumstances and geographical location.”
3.2.5 In plain English, a treatment counts as one a person was required to have undertaken even if they are unable to afford it, or if it is not available where they live. The legal consequence is that if a person has not undertaken such treatments, their impairment is not deemed permanent and they may not be eligible for the NDIS. The only express exception is for treatment that cannot be undertaken for medical reasons (section 25A(3)(a)). Beyond that, the question is left entirely to ministerial rules (section 25A(3)(b) and (4)).
3.2.6 This is an explicit legislative choice to treat treatment as ‘appropriate’ even where it is inaccessible due to poverty or geography. The drafters knew this provision would disadvantage participants who cannot afford private treatment, and those in regional and remote Australia where evidence-based treatment is often unavailable. The Bill expressly contemplates those barriers and proceeds regardless.
3.2.7 The Explanatory Memorandum justifies the broader permanence amendments by reference to action 3.9 of the NDIS Review. Action 3.9 recommended that legislative change to strengthen the operation of the permanence criteria be considered; it did not recommend that financial and geographic access barriers be ignored. The drafting choice in section 25A(2) is the Government’s, not the Review’s.
3.2.8 The CRPD recognises the rights of persons with disabilities to equality and non-discrimination, access to health services, independent living, and social protection. A framework that conditions disability support eligibility on access to treatment that may be financially or geographically inaccessible risks undermining those protections. In practice, section 25A(2) risks operating as a de facto economic and geographic barrier to access to the NDIS. Eligibility may depend not only on disability-related impairment, but on a participant’s capacity to privately fund treatment, navigate long waitlists, or live near specialist services. It is one of the most plainly inequitable provisions in the Bill.
Recommendation 3: Remove references to treatment capable of ‘alleviating’ impairment from proposed subsections 24(5) and 25(1B). Repeal proposed section 25A(2). At minimum, the section should be amended so that a person is taken to have undertaken treatment they cannot reasonably access on financial, geographical, or service-availability grounds.
3.3 Section 34A - Ministerial power to reduce funding for groups of supports (Schedule 1, Part 4) 3.3.1 Proposed section 34A empowers the Minister, by legislative instrument, to determine a percentage (lower than 100%) by which the funding component amount for a specified group of supports is reduced. The constraints on this power are limited to two requirements: the purpose must be “ensuring the financial sustainability of the National Disability Insurance Scheme” (section 34A(1)), and the Minister “must have regard to the safety of participants” (section 34A(3)).
3.3.2 The determination expressly has effect, in the words of section 34A(5), “even if the result is” that funding under a participant’s plan for “a reasonable and necessary support is less than the total cost of the support,” or that total plan funding falls below the total cost of all reasonable and necessary supports under the plan. The plan text is not altered (section 34A(4)); the funding simply ceases to match the supports the
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plan identifies. The practical effect is that a participant may hold a plan identifying supports as “reasonable and necessary” while being denied sufficient funding to actually obtain those supports. This fundamentally alters the meaning of statutory entitlement under the NDIS framework.
3.3.3 The Note to section 34A(1) confirms that the determination is exempt from the standard ten-year sunset under Part 4 of Chapter 3 of the Legislation Act 2003. Determinations have indefinite effect unless and until rescinded.
3.3.4 The constraints in sections 34A(1) and 34A(3) are administratively weak. “Financial sustainability” is not defined. There is no independent oversight requirement, no requirement for public consultation, and no express requirement for a regulatory impact statement. “Regard to the safety of participants” is the weakest available administrative-law fetter as it requires only that safety be considered. The Minister can have regard to safety and proceed with the cut anyway, and there is no merits review of that conclusion.
3.3.5 The result is an executive-level power to reduce funding for any group of supports through delegated legislation subject to significantly less parliamentary scrutiny than amendments to the principal Act without sunset and notwithstanding that the reduced funding will not meet the cost of supports the Scheme itself has determined to be reasonable and necessary for the participant.
3.3.6 If the policy intent is that NDIS supports should be subject to ministerial cost containment, that policy should be implemented by Parliament through transparent reform of the principal Act, not by reserving to the Minister a power to reduce funding below the level required to obtain supports the Scheme itself has identified as reasonable and necessary.
Recommendation 4: Either remove proposed section 34A entirely or, at minimum: (a) require the Minister to be satisfied, on reasonable grounds, that reductions will not materially compromise participant safety or ability to access supports identified as reasonable and necessary; (b) require independent actuarial certification that the reduction is necessary for sustainability and that alternatives have been considered; (c) require a public consultation period of not less than 60 days; (d) apply the standard ten-year sunset; (e) provide that no funding component amount may be reduced below the cost of providing the supports the plan identifies as reasonable and necessary.
3.4 Section 50A - 12-month renewals, no review (Schedule 1, Part 5) 3.4.1 Proposed section 50A provides for the automatic renewal of old framework plans on their end date. The renewed plan adopts the same text as the previous plan, with the end date reset to the 12-month anniversary of the previous end date (section 50A(2)(a)). One-off funding is stripped from the renewed plan (section 50A(2)(b)). Further alterations can be made by ministerial legislative instrument (sections 50A(2)(c) and (3)).
3.4.2 Section 50A(4)(b) provides:
“the making of the new plan does not involve the making of any reviewable decision.”
3.4.3 Two consequences follow. First, the provision shifts the Scheme further away from individualised planning toward an administrative rollover model in which plans may continue automatically without meaningful reconsideration of whether they remain appropriate to the participant’s circumstances.
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Participants may remain on outdated or inadequate plans unless they separately navigate reassessment processes elsewhere in the Act.
Second, subsection 50A(4)(b) expressly provides that renewal does not involve the making of a reviewable decision. This removes a layer of merits-review protection at the point plans are automatically continued and potentially modified through associated delegated legislative instruments.
3.4.4 The Note to section 50A(3) confirms that ministerial instruments making “alterations” at renewal are also exempt from the standard sunset. The combined effect is a power to alter renewed plans through legislative instrument, immune from sunset, with no individual review right at the point the alteration takes effect.
Recommendation 5: Amend section 50A to: (a) make the renewal decision a reviewable decision; (b) apply the standard ten-year sunset to instruments made under section 50A(3) (c) provide a clear mechanism for substantive reassessment and participant consultation where a renewed plan no longer appropriately reflects the participant’s circumstances and support needs.
3.5 Section 34(1E)–(1F) - The evidence hierarchy that will exclude under-researched populations (Schedule 1, Part 6) 3.5.1 New section 34(1E) requires the CEO, in deciding whether a support will be “effective and beneficial” for a participant, to consider the following kinds of evidence in the following order of importance:
“(a) research and evidence in relation to the support that is published, peer reviewed and generalisable; (b) evidence as to the effectiveness of the support, having regard to the participant’s circumstances (including age and impairment); (c) evidence as to outcomes for the participant, arising from their use of the support in their previous plan …; (d) other matters the CEO considers appropriate.”
3.5.2 New section 34(1F) then provides that the CEO “may decide that the CEO is not satisfied” that a support will be effective and beneficial if there is “limited or no research or evidence of the kind mentioned in paragraph (1E)(a),” even if there is evidence under (1E)(b) or (c) or both.
3.5.3 The provision structurally disadvantages under-researched populations. Historically, autism research has disproportionately focused on male children, with comparatively limited research relating to autistic women, late-diagnosed autistic adults, and trauma-informed neurodivergent presentations. Therapeutic approaches that are clinically effective for late-diagnosed autistic adults may lack the large-scale randomised controlled trial base contemplated by paragraph (1E)(a), despite substantial clinical evidence of benefit in practice.
Section 34(1F) permits the CEO to give determinative weight to the absence of “published, peer reviewed and generalisable” research even where participant-specific evidence, clinical evidence, or evidence of previous effectiveness exists under paragraphs (1E)(b) and (c). The result is a framework that risks disadvantaging populations that have historically been underrepresented in disability research.
Evidence-based practice does not operate solely through large-scale generalisable studies. In many areas of disability practice, particularly involving heterogeneous and historically under-researched populations, clinical
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judgement, participant outcomes, and individualised evidence remain critical components of responsible decision-making.
3.5.4 The evidence hierarchy risks producing decisions that appear more defensible on paper because they rest on “generalisable” research, while delivering poorer outcomes for participants whose circumstances are poorly represented in that research. The concern is compounded by the additional statement in section 34(1F) that:
“This subsection does not limit the circumstances in which the CEO may decide that the CEO is not satisfied”.
This further broadens the CEO’s discretion to refuse supports, including in circumstances where peer-reviewed evidence does exist but is considered insufficiently generalisable or robust.
Recommendation 6: Amend section 34(1E) to require the CEO to consider all forms of evidence on a non hierarchical basis, with particular weight given to evidence of effectiveness for participants with similar impairments and circumstances. Repeal section 34(1F).
3.6 Section 59B - Automating evaluative decisions (Schedule 3, Part 2) 3.6.1 Proposed section 59B authorises the CEO, in writing, to “arrange for the use, under the CEO’s oversight, of computer programs to take administrative action” under designated provisions of the NDIS Act and instruments made under it.
3.6.2 Section 59B(4) explicitly extends that authority to administrative action that involves:
“(a) a discretion being exercised; (b) an evaluative judgement being made; (c) a state of mind being formed.”
3.6.3 In a country still living with the consequences of Robodebt, the proposal to authorise automated administrative action that involves the exercise of discretion and the formation of states of mind requires a far stronger justification than the Explanatory Memorandum provides. The Robodebt Royal Commission found that automated decision systems that exceed the legal authority of the human decision-makers they replace produce mass injustice. The class of decisions covered by section 59B(4) is precisely the class of decisions Robodebt should have warned us never to automate.
3.6.4 The protections in section 59D (standard operating procedure instruments) depend on the CEO’s own assessment that the circumstances of an evaluative determination can be reduced to objective criteria capable of being assessed by a computer program. These instruments are not disallowable legislative instruments subject to ordinary parliamentary scrutiny. They are internal procedural safeguards, not substitutes for human judgement in decisions that materially affect access to disability supports.
The concern is heightened by section 59E(3), which expressly provides that failure to comply with safeguard obligations does not affect the validity of the automated administrative action. The result is that safeguards characterised as central to the scheme’s integrity may not provide an effective remedy where they are breached.
3.6.5 The NDIS already produces wrong decisions at scale. The Administrative Appeals Tribunal, and now the Administrative Review Tribunal, have repeatedly overturned NDIA decisions on plan content. Automating
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evaluative determinations and applying standardised assessment frameworks across diverse and complex disability populations risks increasing the scale at which contested and potentially flawed decisions are produced, while further shifting the burden of correction onto participants through appeals and review processes.
Recommendation 7: Limit section 59B to administrative action that does not involve the exercise of discretion, the making of an evaluative judgement, or the formation of a state of mind. Decisions involving evaluative determinations must remain with human decision-makers.
4 Distributional impact: who bears the cost of these reforms
4.1 The Bill consistently shifts burden and risk to participants who are already marginalised within the disability community. The pattern is visible across the provisions discussed in section 3:
• Section 9B will disadvantage participants whose disability is most context-dependent, includingautistic adults, people with psychosocial disability, and people whose functioning is substantially shaped by environmental conditions.
-
Section 25A(2) will disadvantage participants who cannot afford private treatment and those who live in regional and remote Australia. The Bill expressly contemplates this and proceeds anyway.
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Section 34(1E)-(1F) will disadvantage participants from populations whose disability presentations have historically been under-researched, including women with historically under-recognised
disability presentations, late-diagnosed adults, ethnic and language minorities, and people with co occurring conditions.
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Section 34A and section 50A will disadvantage participants without the capacity, capability or legal support to challenge plan-level decisions through the Administrative Review Tribunal.
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Section 59B will disadvantage participants whose circumstances are atypical, and whose lives are therefore poorly modelled by any automated system.
4.2 An example of the cumulative profile of the participant most disadvantaged by the Bill is a late diagnosed autistic woman in a regional area with co-occurring hypermobility and trauma, on a modest income, without legal representation. That description matches a substantial proportion of the participants I know personally. It also reflects populations whose experiences of diagnostic delay, under-recognition, and service exclusion were repeatedly described in evidence before the Royal Commission.
4.3 The Bill therefore operates as a regressive reform within a scheme already characterised by substantial access inequities. It may produce savings, but those savings will disproportionately be extracted from participants least able to absorb the loss. That is not merely a sustainability measure. It is also a cost-shifting measure.
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5 Summary of recommendations
I make the following recommendations. The first seven are restated from sections 2 and 3. Recommendations 8 to 10 are additional.
Recommendation 1: Remove the words “so far as is consistent with the financial sustainability of the scheme” from the amendment to section 3(1)(d).
Recommendation 2: Remove paragraph (b) from section 9B(1). Functional capacity must be assessed in real-world conditions.
Recommendation 3: Repeal proposed section 25A(2), or at minimum amend so that financial, geographical, and availability barriers do not produce loss of access.
Recommendation 4: Remove proposed section 34A, or impose the safeguards set out at paragraph 3.3.6 of this submission.
Recommendation 5: Amend section 50A to permit longer plans for stable support profiles, make renewal decisions reviewable, and apply the standard sunset to associated instruments.
Recommendation 6: Amend section 34(1E) to remove the evidence hierarchy; repeal section 34(1F).
Recommendation 7: Limit section 59B to non-evaluative administrative action.
Recommendation 8: Require, before any provision affecting eligibility or access takes effect, that the Minister table a regulatory impact statement showing the projected impact on women, regional participants, autistic and psychosocial participants, and participants without legal representation.
Recommendation 9: Implement the Royal Commission’s actual recommendations on decision-making transparency, evidence-handling, and accessibility before, not after, the cost-containment provisions of this Bill commence.
Recommendation 10: Defer commencement of Schedule 1 Parts 1, 4, 6, 8 and 9, and Schedule 3 Part 2, pending genuine consultation with autistic, psychosocial, and regional participants and their representative organisations, as required by Article 4(3) of the CRPD.
6 Conclusion
6.1 At the Royal Commission I described what it was like to grow up undiagnosed, traumatised, and unsupported, and to later spend years fighting to have my own and my children’s needs recognised within systems that repeatedly failed to understand neurodivergence.
While the NDIS has in many ways been life changing for me and my family, navigating it has also at times been deeply traumatic. Staff often do not appear to understand the disabilities they are assessing, decisions lack transparency, and the process of getting legitimate disability needs recognised frequently feels combative.
Three years later, I am still fighting - this time against plan cuts arising from an NDIA-initiated unscheduled review that appears to have completely disregarded the evidence provided. I am now facing a tribunal process
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without representation or advocacy, against experienced private lawyers engaged by the NDIA. It is a process that has become increasingly adversarial, inconsistent, and difficult to navigate even for participants with education, resources, and support.
6.2 The Bill before the Committee will make that fight harder, longer, and effectively unwinnable for many participants who lack the cognitive, financial, or legal resources to sustain it.
Participants already bear the burden of complex review processes and prolonged litigation over decisions that are frequently overturned on merits review.
The broader costs of restricting access to disability supports do not disappear. They are often displaced onto hospitals, schools, carers, homelessness services, and other overstretched systems, while also reducing jobs across the disability sector and increasing the long-term social and economic consequences of unmet disability need.
6.3 I urge the Committee to reject the Bill in its current form. If the Committee declines to do so, I urge it to recommend the substantive amendments set out above. The case for sustainability is real. The case for delivering sustainability through measures that disproportionately burden disabled participants, in primary legislation, is not.
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