Submission 998
25 May 2026
Committee Secretary
Community Affairs Legislation Committee
Re: Inquiry into the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS
for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Dear Committee Secretary,
Thank you for the opportunity to provide a submission regarding the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026.
I acknowledge the importance of ensuring the long-term sustainability, integrity, and effectiveness of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). However, sustainability must not be pursued in a manner that diminishes the rights, dignity, autonomy or safety of people with disability. The NDIS was established to support inclusion, independence and equal participation in society. Any reforms should strengthen those principles rather than weaken them.
In its current form, the Bill appears to shift the Scheme away from participant-centred supports and toward a more restrictive, centralised and compliance focused system. Many proposed amendments expand Ministerial and Agency discretion while reducing transparency, individual safeguards, and meaningful participant choice and control. These changes risk increasing exclusion and hardship by narrowing access pathways, restricting supports, and reducing practical opportunities for people with disability to participate in community life.
Bill reference: Schedule 1, Part 8, “Tightening meaning of permanence to reduce access where an impairment can be treated”, together with related access provisions in Schedule 1, Parts 1 and 9.
I understand the rationale for ensuring that the NDIS does not become a substitute for services more appropriately delivered by mainstream health or rehabilitation systems. However, tightening permanence and treatment requirements creates a substantial risk of unfair exclusion.
Across Australia, many people face extensive waiting periods, regional service shortages, financial barriers, cultural barriers and significant gaps in specialist care. Others may be unable to pursue treatment due to trauma, co-existing conditions, clinical risk or personal circumstances.
A person should not be denied NDIS access because treatment exists on paper while remaining practically unavailable. The existence of a theoretical treatment pathway should not automatically disqualify a person from accessing disability supports where that treatment is inaccessible, delayed, inappropriate, unsafe, unaffordable or ineffective in practice The
Submission 998
legislation should require decision-makers to assess treatment accessibility in real-world circumstances, including geographic availability, affordability, waiting times, clinical suitability, disability-related barriers and cultural safety. The Commonwealth should not withdraw disability supports on the basis that another system is responsible unless that system is demonstrably capable of delivering timely and appropriate care.
Bill reference: Schedule 1, Part 4, “Support determinations”, and Schedule 1, Part 6, “Reasonable and necessary supports”.
One of the most concerning aspects of the Bill is the proposed power allowing funding reductions across categories of supports through Ministerial determinations. Although framed as a broad administrative mechanism, these powers may have profound impacts on individuals.
Reducing funding for support categories such as social and community participation, transport, support coordination, psychosocial recovery coaching, behaviour support, assistive technology or daily living assistance may significantly compromise a participant’s safety, wellbeing, independence and quality of life. For many participants, these supports are not optional extras. They are essential to maintaining social connection, preventing deterioration, sustaining employment or education participation, reducing carer burnout, and avoiding crisis intervention or hospitalisation.
The Bill appears to treat these determinations as broad legislative actions rather than decisions warranting individual safeguards and review rights. However, a decision that applies broadly can still result in serious individual harm. The legislation should ensure that no broad funding reductions occur without transparent publication of supporting evidence, independent expert advice, meaningful consultation with the disability community, human rights impact assessments, participant safety assessments, parliamentary scrutiny and accessible individual review mechanisms. Importantly, no reduction in supports should proceed where it would create a material risk of harm, neglect, homelessness, institutionalisation, deterioration in mental health, carer collapse or avoidable crisis.
Bill reference: Schedule 1, Part 3, “Strengthen link between an impairment and need for support”, and related planning changes in Schedule 4, including wording requiring supports to arise “directly” from impairments.
The proposed narrowing of support eligibility to needs arising directly from a participant’s eligible impairment is deeply concerning for people with complex, overlapping or fluctuating disabilities. Disability does not exist in isolated diagnostic categories. Many people experience support needs arising from the interaction between physical, psychosocial, cognitive, sensory, intellectual, neurological and chronic health conditions, together with environmental and social factors.
Submission 998
A narrow interpretation risks forcing decision-makers to artificially separate a person’s support needs into eligible and ineligible components that do not reflect lived reality. This may particularly disadvantage participants with psychosocial disability, neurological conditions, chronic illness, multiple impairments or fluctuating support needs. The legislation should instead adopt a holistic functional approach that recognises the interaction between impairments, environments and individual circumstances. Reasonable and necessary supports should be assessed based on a participant’s actual functional needs and their ability to participate safely and equally in the community.
Bill reference: Schedule 3, Part 2, “Automation of administrative action”.
The proposed expansion of automated decision-making within the NDIS raises serious concerns regarding procedural fairness, transparency and accessibility. NDIS decisions are often highly complex and context-dependent. Circumstances affecting participants may include communication barriers, trauma, hospitalisation, cognitive impairment, psychosocial disability, provider failure, family violence or nominee issues. These are matters that automated systems may fail to appropriately recognise or interpret.
While automation may improve administrative efficiency, efficiency should never come at the expense of fairness, accuracy or human rights. Any use of automated decision-making should be subject to strict legislative safeguards, including public disclosure of automated systems and their functions, accessible explanations of decisions, immediate access to human review, independent auditing processes, disability impact assessments, publication of error and complaint rates, and protections against discriminatory outcomes. Automated systems should never replace meaningful human oversight in decisions that may significantly affect a participant’s access to supports, safety or wellbeing.
Bill reference: Schedule 3, Part 1, “Decision-making on pricing”.
The Bill’s proposal to centralise NDIS pricing powers under Ministerial control also raises concerns. Appropriate pricing regulation is important to protect participants from overcharging and to ensure value for public investment. However, pricing decisions directly affect participant access, workforce sustainability, provider viability, service quality and regional service availability.
If pricing decisions are made primarily through a cost-containment lens without adequate transparency or independent oversight, there is a risk that essential supports will become economically unviable. This may particularly affect rural and regional areas, thin markets, specialised services and workforce retention. Pricing decisions should therefore be informed by independent expert advice, transparent methodology, workforce analysis, participant consultation and assessment of real-world service impacts. Pricing must support the sustainability of quality
Submission 998
care and skilled disability support workforces rather than functioning as a hidden mechanism for reducing access to supports.
Bill reference: This concern relates particularly to Schedule 1, Parts 8 and 9, and more broadly to access, planning and support provisions that may condition disability support on treatment pathways or external service availability.
As someone working within the medical field, I am particularly concerned about the increasing movement toward a more medicalised approach to disability support reflected throughout this Bill.
Disability support should not be reduced to a narrow clinical or diagnostic exercise. Effective care and support require recognition of the whole person, including their lived experience, personal goals, social environment, cultural context, mental wellbeing, communication needs, and right to autonomy. A purely medicalised model risks overlooking the complexity of disability and reducing participants to diagnoses rather than recognising them as individuals with equal rights and aspirations.
Choice and informed decision-making are essential principles in both healthcare and disability support. Individuals must retain the right to participate meaningfully in decisions about their treatment pathways, supports, risks, and quality of life. Not every treatment is appropriate, accessible, clinically advisable, or personally acceptable for every individual. Some treatments may involve significant risk, trauma, side effects, or limited likelihood of success. Others may simply not align with a person’s values, cultural circumstances, or broader wellbeing.
A system that conditions access to disability supports on compliance with prescribed treatment pathways risks undermining bodily autonomy and informed consent principles that are fundamental within ethical healthcare practice. People with disability should not be pressured into medical interventions in order to prove eligibility for essential supports.
The NDIS was intended to move beyond outdated models that viewed disability solely through a medical lens. Reforms should strengthen participant empowerment, independence, and social inclusion — not reintroduce restrictive systems that place bureaucratic assessments and medical gatekeeping above individual lived experience.
Human Rights Obligations
The Bill also raises significant concerns regarding Australia’s obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), including Article 3 on respect for individual autonomy and freedom to make one’s own choices, Article 5 on equality and non-discrimination, Article 19 on living independently and being included in the community, Article 21 on freedom of expression and access to information, and Article 28 on an adequate standard of living and social protection.
Submission 998
The Government’s own human rights materials acknowledge that the Bill engages multiple protected rights under the CRPD. This is an important recognition. The proposed amendments are not merely administrative changes; they directly affect how people with disability live, communicate, participate in society, maintain safety and exercise autonomy. Any reforms to the NDIS must therefore be approached with extreme caution and with a clear commitment to protecting the rights, dignity and inclusion of people with disability.
Conclusion
The NDIS is one of Australia’s most important social reforms. Ensuring its long-term sustainability is essential, but sustainability cannot be achieved through measures that reduce participant protections, undermine autonomy, restrict supports or increase exclusion.
I respectfully urge the Committee to oppose the Bill in its current form and to recommend significant amendments that preserve participant rights, uphold Australia’s human rights obligations, and maintain the NDIS as a genuinely person-centred scheme built on dignity, inclusion and choice. Any further reform should be developed through genuine co-design and consultation with people with disability, their families and carers, disability representative and peak bodies, First Nations disability organisations, psychosocial disability advocates, providers, clinicians and independent experts. Consultation must be accessible, adequately funded, transparent and long enough to allow meaningful participation.
The Committee should also recommend that any significant reforms to the NDIS be developed through genuine consultation and co-design with people with disability, NDIS participants, families, carers, disability representative organisations, First Nations disability peak bodies, psychosocial disability advocates, providers, clinicians, and rural and regional communities. Reforms of this scale should not be implemented primarily through broad discretionary powers or future rules without transparent evidence, meaningful public consultation, parliamentary oversight, and clear safeguards to ensure participants are not left without safe, appropriate, and accessible supports.
Thank you for considering this submission.