National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 822
Submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee Inquiry into the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future
Generations) Bill 2026
25 May 2026
I write to object to the NDIS Future Generations Bill 2026 in its current form.
While I support measures that ensure long-term scheme sustainability, this Bill introduces significant structural changes that risk undermining participant safety, procedural fairness, individualised decision-making, and the foundational principles of choice and control.
My primary concerns are as follows:
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Expanded Ministerial Powers and Reduced Oversight The Bill allows funding reductions, support caps, and operational rule changes to be made through legislative instruments with limited parliamentary scrutiny and restricted review rights. Decisions that materially affect participant supports must remain subject to transparent consultation, co design, and merits review.
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Narrowing of Reasonable and Necessary Supports The proposed amendments introduce a more restrictive interpretation of disability-related need, including the insertion of “directly” into the reasonable and necessary test and an increased reliance on financial sustainability as a dominant decision-making factor. This risks excluding legitimate support needs arising from interacting disabilities and complex functional presentations.
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Restrictive Access and Reassessment Provisions The proposed “all appropriate treatment” requirement, new functional capacity test, and extended decision timeframes will create significant barriers to access and delay urgently needed supports. These provisions disproportionately impact participants with degenerative, complex, psychosocial, regional, and rare conditions.
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Risk to Participants with High and Complex Support Needs Percentage-based reductions to social and community participation funding fail to recognise that for many participants this funding is essential for safety, supervision, behavioural support, communication assistance, and prevention of hospitalisation or carer breakdown.
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Reduced Procedural Fairness The removal of deemed decision safeguards, longer reassessment timeframes, limited appeal pathways, and expanded automated decision-making powers expose participants to delays, uncertainty, and potentially harmful administrative decisions without adequate review mechanisms.
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Disproportionate Burden on Self-Managers and Nominees Reduced claim windows, strict record-keeping penalties, and automatic debt provisions create unreasonable administrative risk for participants and families who self-manage in good faith. I respectfully call on the Committee to recommend amendments that:
- Preserve participant merits-review rights
- Remove or amend restrictive eligibility and treatment provisions
- Retain the whole-of-person reasonable and necessary test
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Submission 822
- Maintain timely reassessment pathways, including emergency review mechanisms
- Require genuine disability-sector co-design and consultation
- Limit automated decision-making until enforceable safeguards are in place
- Ensure financial sustainability does not override individual assessed need
- Protect participants with complex support needs from blanket funding reductions The NDIS must remain a rights-based insurance scheme grounded in individualised support, not a fiscally constrained administrative system that shifts risk onto people with disability and their families.
The proposed Bill requires substantial amendment before passage to ensure sustainability is achieved without compromising participant safety, dignity, and access to necessary supports.