Submission 848
Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future
Generations) Bill 2026
Attention: Committee Secretary, Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs
Submitted by email: community.affairs.sen@aph.gov.au
Date: 27 May 2026
I welcome the opportunity to make a submission to the Senate Standing Committee on
Community Affairs about the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing
the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026.
I am both a parent of an NDIS participant and a former Specialist Support Coordinator.
I support genuine measures to improve Scheme integrity, reduce fraud, prevent exploitation
and ensure the NDIS remains available for future generations. However, I am strongly
opposed to provisions in this Bill that go well beyond integrity and instead reduce participant
rights, restrict access to reassessment, permit broad funding reductions, increase
administrative burden, expand suspension and revocation powers, and rely on other service
systems without ensuring those systems can actually meet disability-related need.
The central flaw in the Bill is that it treats sustainability as something achieved by restricting
access to support, tightening compliance and shifting risk away from the Scheme. That is not
sustainability. It is rationing by another name.
My experience of the NDIS, both personally as a parent/carer and through disability support
coordination, is that families usually seek review, reassessment or additional support
because they are trying to prevent crisis. They are trying to keep a child safe, maintain
school participation, prevent behavioural escalation, sustain informal care, keep supports in
place, avoid carer collapse and stop deterioration before it becomes irreversible.
This Bill risks requiring participants and families to prove crisis before the Scheme is
required to respond. That is a serious policy failure. A sustainable NDIS should prevent
crisis, not wait for crisis to become the evidence.
This submission directly addresses specific provisions of the Bill.
Submission 848
Schedule 1, Part 2 — limiting participant-requested plan reassessments
Schedule 1, Part 2 would limit when a participant-requested reassessment can occur. A
reassessment would only be available if the conditions in proposed section 48A are met. The
Bill also extends the timeframe for the CEO to make a decision on a reassessment request
from 21 days to 90 days.
This provision is too narrow, too slow and unsafe.
Disability-related support needs do not always change through one clear, sudden event.
Need often escalates gradually. A child’s school participation becomes more fragile.
Behaviours of concern increase. Informal supports become less sustainable. A carer’s
capacity reduces slowly until they can no longer safely continue. Families often seek
reassessment because they can see the crisis coming.
The Bill appears to require a participant or family to prove that significant and ongoing
deterioration has already occurred before reassessment is available. That creates a
dangerous incentive to wait until there has been breakdown, harm, escalation or service
failure.
A plan reassessment pathway should exist to prevent crisis, not merely to respond after
crisis has occurred.
The imbalance in this provision is also significant. The CEO would retain broad power to
initiate reassessments, while participants face tighter conditions, higher evidentiary hurdles
and longer timeframes. Participants and families are often the people with the clearest
knowledge that the current plan is no longer sufficient. The legislation should not make it
harder for them to have that risk recognised.
The proposed 90-day timeframe is particularly concerning. Three months is not a neutral
administrative period where a participant is deteriorating, a child is losing school
participation, behaviours of concern are escalating, supports are failing or a carer is
approaching breakdown. In those circumstances, 90 days can be the difference between
stabilisation and crisis.
Recommendation:
Proposed section 48A should be amended to allow participant-requested reassessment
where there is credible evidence that current supports are insufficient to prevent
Submission 848
deterioration, carer breakdown, loss of school or community participation, increased
behaviours of concern, increased restrictive practices, hospitalisation, homelessness,
institutionalisation or other crisis responses.
The Bill should also require an expedited reassessment pathway where delay would create
material risk to participant safety, essential supports, informal care arrangements or family
sustainability.
- Schedule 1, Part 4 — Ministerial determinations reducing funding for groups of supports
I am particularly concerned by proposed section 34A, which would allow the Minister to
reduce funding for whole groups of supports through a legislative instrument.
This is not an integrity measure. It is a broad cost-control power.
The provision could reduce funding across support categories even where those supports
have already been assessed as reasonable and necessary. The Bill expressly allows this
reduction to apply even if the funding provided is less than the actual cost of the support.
That fundamentally changes the nature of the NDIS. It means a participant’s support need
can be recognised, but not properly funded.
This is a profound departure from an individualised, needs-based Scheme. A participant’s
disability, functional impact, support needs and risks may not have changed at all, but their
funding could still be reduced because a category of supports has been reduced at Scheme
level. That is not individualised planning. It is category-based rationing.
The safeguard that the Minister must “have regard to” participant safety is grossly
inadequate. Safety should not be one consideration weighed against Scheme sustainability.
Safety, wellbeing, human rights and family sustainability should be threshold requirements.
A funding reduction should not be permitted unless the Minister is positively satisfied that it
will not create material risk.
In practice, underfunding reasonable and necessary supports does not remove the need for
support. It simply displaces it. The shortfall is pushed onto participants, families, unpaid
carers, providers, schools, hospitals, mental health services, child protection, youth justice,
housing and other state systems. This creates hidden costs and increases the risk of carer
Submission 848
breakdown, behavioural escalation, isolation, restrictive practices, crisis response and
institutionalisation.
From my experience, families do not seek supports because they are optional extras. They
seek supports because those supports keep daily life functioning. They keep children
engaged, carers standing, participants connected, risks managed and crises from
escalating. If funding is reduced below the real cost of support, the result is not efficiency.
The result is unmet need and preventable harm.
This provision also raises serious transparency, accountability and intergovernmental
concerns. A broad funding reduction should not be able to occur by Ministerial determination
alone. If such a power exists at all, it should be subject to the highest level of scrutiny. It
should require public reasons, published evidence, consultation, human rights analysis,
cohort impact analysis, consideration of downstream cost shifting and formal
intergovernmental agreement.
Category A NDIS Rules would be a more appropriate mechanism because they require
agreement of all states and territories. This is important because reductions in NDIS funding
will not only affect participants. They will shift cost and risk onto state systems, including
health, education, child protection, youth justice, housing and crisis services.
Recommendation:
Proposed section 34A should not proceed in its current form.
At minimum, any mechanism to reduce funding for a group of supports should not be
exercisable by Ministerial determination alone. It should be subject to Category A NDIS
Rules, requiring agreement of all states and territories.
The Bill should also require that any proposed reduction:
is subject to public consultation with people with disability, families, carers, providers
and states and territories;
is supported by published reasons and published evidence;
includes human rights analysis;
includes cohort impact analysis;
includes consideration of downstream cost shifting to families, carers, providers and
state systems;
Submission 848
cannot proceed unless the Minister is positively satisfied that the reduction will not
create material risk to participant safety, wellbeing, functioning, family sustainability
or human rights; and
includes an individual review or exemption pathway where a participant’s plan no
longer funds the supports they require.
A power that can reduce funding for supports already assessed as reasonable and
necessary must not sit solely with the Minister. Without these safeguards, proposed section
34A creates a mechanism for rationing disability supports without adequate oversight,
accountability or protection from harm.
- Schedule 1, Part 7 — plan suspension and participant revocation where a participant is “not contactable”
The Bill would allow a participant’s plan to be suspended where the participant is not
contactable, and may allow participant status to be revoked after a period of suspension or
continued lack of contact.
This provision is unsafe without much stronger safeguards.
Not being contactable is not the same as not needing support. In many cases, being difficult
to contact is itself evidence of disability-related need. Participants may be difficult to contact
because of psychosocial disability, intellectual disability, cognitive disability, trauma,
communication disability, family violence, unstable housing, hospitalisation, low literacy,
digital exclusion, executive functioning difficulties or lack of decision-making support.
The Bill risks punishing the very barriers the NDIS is supposed to understand and
accommodate.
From experience, families and participants under pressure do not always respond neatly to
letters, portals, calls or administrative requests. That does not mean they are disengaged by
choice. It may mean they are overwhelmed, unsafe, unsupported, unwell or in crisis.
Suspending a plan or revoking participant status is not an administrative inconvenience. It
may remove the supports that are keeping a person safe, housed, regulated, connected and
out of crisis. The legislation should not allow that to occur unless strong disability-informed
engagement and risk safeguards have been exhausted.
Submission 848
Recommendation:
Before any plan suspension or revocation, the Bill should require active outreach, use of
preferred communication methods, contact with nominees or trusted supporters where
appropriate, supported decision-making, consideration of disability-related communication
barriers, and a documented risk assessment.
Suspension or revocation should be prohibited where it would create a material risk of harm,
deterioration, loss of essential supports, carer breakdown, homelessness, hospitalisation,
institutionalisation or crisis response.
- Schedule 2, Part 5 — reducing NDIS claim times from 2 years to 90 days Schedule 2, Part 5 would reduce the timeframe for making an NDIS claim from 2 years to 90
days. The Explanatory Memorandum states that claims outside 90 days may still be
accepted where exceptional circumstances apply.
I understand the integrity rationale, but 90 days is too blunt, too short and poorly suited to
the NDIS context.
The NDIS is administratively heavy. Participants and families manage service agreements,
invoices, rosters, provider issues, therapy reports, plan reviews, school issues, behaviours of
concern, carer strain and daily care. For self-managed participants and families, delays are
not unusual. They may happen because of disability, carer burden, ADHD, executive
functioning difficulties, family crisis, hospitalisation, provider delay, technology problems,
bereavement, family violence or overwhelm.
A 90-day claim limit will not only affect fraudulent claims. It will affect real families using real
supports who are already carrying significant unpaid administrative labour.
It is also difficult to justify imposing a much tighter claim timeframe on NDIS participants than
applies in key Medicare contexts. Medicare online claims cannot be accepted for services
over 2 years old, and claims over 2 years old can be made by mail or at a service centre. For
bulk bill claims, services provided on or after 5 September 2025 must be submitted within
one year, with a late lodgement process available.
The NDIS supports people with permanent and significant disability. It is hard to understand
why participants and carers in this Scheme should face a 90-day claim limit when other
major Commonwealth payment systems allow longer periods and late lodgement pathways.
Submission 848
The “exceptional circumstances” safeguard is not enough if it becomes legalistic, narrow or
difficult to access. Disability and caring responsibilities should not have to be framed as
exceptional before they are recognised. A participant should not have to prove their life was
exceptional enough to justify an administrative delay.
Recommendation:
The 90-day claim limit should not proceed in its current form.
At minimum, the timeframe should be extended, and the Bill should include a clear,
accessible and non-punitive exception where delay is related to disability, caring
responsibilities, provider delay, family crisis, hospitalisation, bereavement, technology
barriers, family violence, nominee issues, administrative error or other reasonable
circumstances.
- Schedule 1, Parts 8 and 9 — permanence and reliance on other service systems Schedule 1, Parts 8 and 9 would tighten the meaning of permanence and require
consideration of other service systems when determining NDIS access.
I understand the NDIS cannot and should not fund every disability-related need. However,
there is a serious risk that people will be excluded from the NDIS because another system is
theoretically responsible, even when that system is not actually available, timely, accessible,
culturally safe, disability competent or capable of meeting the person’s needs.
This is not a theoretical risk. It is a common lived reality. Participants and families often fall
between systems. Health points to disability. Disability points to education. Education points
to health. Mental health points to the NDIS. The NDIS points back to mainstream services.
Families are left trying to hold together the gap between systems that each say the other
should respond.
The Bill should not entrench that failure.
A person should not be refused access to the NDIS because another system has theoretical
responsibility unless that system is actually available and capable of meeting the person’s
disability-related support needs in practice.
Recommendation:
The Bill should make clear that access cannot be refused on the basis of another service
Submission 848
system unless that system is actually available, accessible, timely and capable of meeting
the person’s disability-related support needs in practice.
The Bill should also require consideration of whether relying on another system would create
delay, unmet need, deterioration, carer burden, safeguarding risk or cost shifting to families
and state systems.
The Bill should not proceed in its current form.
The problem with this Bill is not that it seeks sustainability. The problem is how it seeks to
achieve it.
The Bill does not simply strengthen integrity. It creates a legislative architecture for rationing:
fewer reassessment rights, broader funding reduction powers, tighter claim timeframes,
greater suspension powers, and increased reliance on other systems that may not be
available in practice.
That is not securing the NDIS. That is reducing the Scheme’s exposure by increasing the
exposure of disabled people, families, carers and state systems.
The consequences will not disappear. They will show up as carer breakdown, school
disengagement, hospital presentations, mental health crises, child protection involvement,
youth justice contact, homelessness, restrictive practices and institutionalisation.
If the Parliament is serious about sustainability, it should not legislate avoidable crisis and
call it reform.
The Committee should recommend that the Bill be amended to ensure that no sustainability
measure can override participant safety, functioning, dignity, family sustainability or human
rights. The NDIS should be protected from fraud and exploitation, not redesigned in a way
that makes it harder for disabled people to obtain the supports they need to live safely and
with dignity.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Exhausted Autistic mother of an Autistic ADHD Pathologically Demand Avoidant child