Submission to the Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS)
regarding the Inquiry into Annual Report No.2 of the 48th Parliament
Hearing date: 7 October 2026
About the Submitter
JFA Purple Orange is an independent, social-profit organisation that undertakes systemic policy analysis and advocacy across a range of issues affecting people with disability and their families.
Our work is characterised by co-design and co-production, and includes hosting a number of user-led initiatives.
Much of our work involves connecting people with disability to good information and to each other. We also work extensively in multi-stakeholder consultation and collaboration, especially around policy and practice that helps ensure people with disability are welcomed as valued members of the mainstream community.
Our work is informed by a model called Citizenhood.
JFA Purple Orange 104 Greenhill Road Unley SA 5061 AUSTRALIA
Telephone: +61 (8) 8373 8388 Email: admin@purpleorange.org.au Website: www.purpleorange.org.au Facebook: www.facebook.com/jfapurpleorange
Contributors
Cathy Cochrane, Senior Policy Leader James Murphy, Policy and Research Leader Selena Maddeford, Manager – Policy and Projects Belle Owen, Interim Strategy Leader Tracey Wallace, Interim CEO
© 2026 Julia Farr Association Inc.
2
Acknowledgement of Country
JFA Purple Orange acknowledges the Traditional Owners of Country throughout Australia. We work on many Aboriginal lands, including Kaurna Country, where our head office is located. We extend our respect to all Aboriginal peoples on the lands where we work, live, and learn. We are committed to walking together and building relationships grounded in the self-determination of First Nations peoples.
Recognition of disability community
We recognise that JFA Purple Orange exists to advance the rights of people with disability. All our work aims to create a more inclusive world where people with disability have access to the same opportunities as everyone else.
3
1. Summary and recommendations
This submission acknowledges that there have been a range of mistakes and problems created
in the way successive governments have rolled out and managed the National Disability
Insurance Scheme (NDIS) and these have unnecessarily increased the cost of the Scheme. But
we cannot emphasise strongly enough that poor implementation does not turn a good idea into
a bad one. The NDIS was, and remains, a fundamentally good idea that should be defended
and strengthened to ensure it delivers its original promise. Our collective focus should be on
fixing the problems and building a stronger Scheme that delivers higher quality supports and
better outcomes for participants while being cost-effective and sustainable for taxpayers and
society. Unfortunately, recent rushed reforms have not done this. They aim to save money
through blunt and arbitrary cuts without doing the hard work of comprehensive evaluation and
detailed policymaking through genuine co-design, as repeatedly promised.
Our submission is presented in three parts. First, we urge the Committee to reflect on the
origins of the NDIS and its core tenets of dignity and inclusion for Australians with disability.
Understanding the origins and the path the NDIS has taken to date is crucial to charting a better
course forward that holds true to the fundamental essence of the Scheme while protecting it for
future generations. The Social Model of Disability should underpin this with the recent
regression to the outdated tropes of the Medical and Charity models firmly rejected. The NDIS
is an insurance scheme for the benefit of all Australians and not a ‘welfare’ measure or a ‘care’
system. Importantly, inclusion does not mean segregation or ‘special’ provisions, which are
inevitably more expensive because they fail to leverage existing resources in our communities.
Recent political denials of the link between segregation and isolation on the one hand, and
violence, abuse, neglect, and exploitation on the other, are unconscionable given the findings of
the Disability Royal Commission. Strong safeguarding requires investment in both natural and
formal approaches.
Second, we highlight some of our concerns with recent reforms that have largely focused on
making arbitrary cost cuts and cost shifts rather than addressing the underlying causes of waste
and fraud. Unfortunately, these cuts punish people with disability – including those with
significant and permanent disability, the very people the Scheme was established to support –
rather than those responsible for the waste and fraud or those who let it occur over so many
years. It is critically important that the Scheme considers the ‘whole person’ including their
environmental and personal circumstances, because these impact and shape functional
capacity and support needs. Excluding participants from planning under the New Framework
Planning approach will not save money but will increase costly disputes, reviews, and appeals.
Embedding the current process of plan rollovers into a formal designation of a ‘new’ plan will
exacerbate the existing inflationary effect of set-and-forget budgets for capacity building and
therapy supports. Likewise, intermediary and navigation supports should be comprehensively
reformed to ensure they effectively support participants through local knowledge, connections,
and responsiveness. It is also not clear that new accountability mechanisms, including provider
registration, are fit-for-purpose and this requires closer scrutiny.
Third, we focus on supports outside the NDIS. Despite governments committing to the roll out of
Foundational Supports in December 2023, we still do not know how the majority of the $10
billion allocated will be spent. The development of Thriving Kids has started but the roll out is
well behind schedule and it is uncertain that the initiative will be available in many parts of
Australia, especially regional, rural, and remote areas, before 1 January 2028 when new
eligibility criteria begin. Rushing to meet this deadline for Thriving Kids, and/or other
Foundational Supports that are yet to be announced, will result in lower quality services and
supports and less beneficial outcomes. Meanwhile, investments in Tier 2 grant programs are
tiny relative to the overall cost of the NDIS and this drives demand for individual plans. Both the
new Disability Peer Support and Connections (DPSC) Program and Inclusive Communities
Fund would benefit from additional funding to ensure they have adequate reach across
Australia and can produce worthwhile results.
We recommend:
Recommendation 1: The Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance
Scheme should examine and make recommendations about the underlying causes of the
waste and fraud in the Scheme that are being cited as justifying cuts to some of the
assessed reasonable and necessary supports of Australians with significant and
permanent disability. In particular, the Committee should scrutinise the role of
successive governments and ministers, the public service, management and Board of
the NDIA, and the NDIS Commission in allowing waste and fraud to reach the high levels
currently reported in order to help ensure there is full accountability and to prevent any
repeat in the future.
Recommendation 2: The Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance
Scheme should examine and make recommendations about the Department of Health,
Disability, and Ageing’s current poor-quality approach to consultations about changes to
the Scheme. It should consider how the expertise, resources, and value of the disability
sector and community is best harnessed toward constructive and collaborative purposes
that lead to high-quality outcomes.
6
Recommendation 3
The Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme should consider the many benefits of establishing genuine co-design processes involving lived experience and subject matter experts in decision making for the success of reform processes and make a clear recommendation that the Federal Government adopt this approach regarding the NDIS and Foundational Supports. If genuine co-design continues to be objectionable to the Federal Government despite its rhetoric to the contrary, then, at the very least, it should reconsider how it seeks and uses the expertise and input of the disability sector and community to ensure this significant effort is not discarded and wasted.
Recommendation 4
The Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme should reflect on the content of the landmark ‘Shut Out’ report and its core tenants of dignity and inclusion in considering how the NDIS has been rolled out and managed, including how unnecessarily rigid rules have both failed to adhere to these values and often led to more expensive supports than necessary.
Recommendation 5
The Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme should ensure its work reflects the Social Model of Disability and avoids deferring to outdated understandings of disability based on the Medical and/or Charity Models of Disability. Likewise, the Committee should emphasise that the future course of the NDIS should be based on the Social Model of Disability and not a regression to outdated practices of the past.
Recommendation 6
The Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme should examine the consequences of practices and policies of discrimination, segregation, and exclusion under the NDIS, including their immediate and long-term cost implications. It should make recommendations about ending discrimination, segregation, and exclusion in the NDIS as part of building a higher-quality, more cost-effective, and, ultimately, more sustainable Scheme.
Recommendation 7
The Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme should examine and make recommendations about how NDIS reforms should drive further segregation and isolation that results in increased incidents of violence, abuse, neglect, and exploitation of Australians with disability. In particular, it should make clear it accepts this evidence-based link and recommend the Federal Government do the same.
Recommendation 8
The Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme should recognise and make recommendations about the cost-effectiveness of
Recommendation 9
The Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme should examine and make recommendations about the urgent need to amend the NDIS Act 2013 to ensure prospective participants’ environmental and personal circumstances are taken into account in determining eligibility for an individual NDIS plan per previous arrangements.
Recommendation 10
The Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme should examine and make recommendations about the complex and expensive participant pathway currently operating in the NDIS and recommend participants’ author their own plans based on their assessed budget with support available utilising best-practice supported decision-making approaches. This approach should be embedded in New Framework Planning.
Recommendation 11
The Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme should examine and make recommendations about requirements to appropriately evaluate participant plans that include budgets for capacity building and/or therapies at their end date to ensure they are effective and to avoid the inflationary practice of set-and-forget budgets. Plans only containing core supports can have a three-year duration to avoid unnecessary reviews once support needs are generally settled.
Recommendation 12
The Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme should examine and make recommendations about how the use of funding periods and funding component amounts for irregular supports, such as capital supports, are disrupting delivery, creating uncertainty, and, in some cases, leading to increased costs.
Recommendation 13
The Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme should examine and make recommendations about the urgent need for the Federal Government and Department of Health, Disability, and Ageing to broaden their reform agenda to consider a full range of potential options for reform of intermediary and navigation supports in the NDIS. Options should reflect the importance of:
- a clear separation between roles undertaken on behalf of the NDIA and those undertaken on behalf of participants;
- limit the number of intermediary and navigation roles to those that are necessary
to achieving high-quality outcomes to eliminate duplication and overlap;
- ensure these roles are deeply embedded in local communities in order to leverage genuine local knowledge, connections, and responsiveness;
- maintain participant choice of who supports them in these roles.
Recommendation 14: The Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme should examine the adequacy of oversight and accountability mechanisms in the NDIS and make recommendations to ensure these are placed at the core of the Scheme. It should critically assess whether registration requirements will address identified problems or just add to existing administrative burden without improving accountability or safeguarding.
Recommendation 15: The Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme should recommend governments establish genuine holistic co-design processes involving lived experience and subject matter experts in decision making to develop, trial, adjust, roll out, and evaluate Foundational Supports, including Thriving Kids, because this approach offers the best chance of success.
Recommendation 16: The Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme should consider and make recommendations about how the Information, Linkages, and Capacity Building (ILC) program, soon to be renamed the Disability Peer Support and Connections (DPSC) Program, can be strengthened into the future, including, but not limited to, an increased funding allocation, financial certainty for organisations, and a clear overarching public-facing strategy.
Recommendation 17: The Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme should recognise that replacing about $9.9 billion over three years in individual NDIS budgets for social and community participation supports with only $200 million invested in a national Inclusive Communities Fund is grossly insufficient and will have profound consequences for Australians with disability. It should recommend reversing the cuts or, at the very least, allocate a minimum of five per cent of the savings to the Fund – a very modest and reasonable request.
Recommendation 18: The Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme should recommend that the Department of Health, Disability, and Ageing should engage with the disability community to co-design a holistic Theory of Change for the Inclusive Communities Fund that accounts for how it works alongside existing and
reformed systems, including the NDIS, and what barriers and gaps remain. It should also recommend governments invest in addressing these barriers and gaps to maximise the cost-effectiveness and value of the Fund in achieving outcomes.
10
2. Introduction
JFA Purple Orange welcomes the opportunity to provide this submission to the Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) regarding its Inquiry into Annual Report No.2 of the 48th Parliament. We also appreciate the invitation to appear before the Committee in Adelaide on 7 October 2026 to provide evidence and answer questions from members. We understand this submission and our evidence will inform the Committee’s annual report on the implementation, performance, governance, administration, and expenditure of the NDIS, which is a key part of its oversight functions regarding the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) and the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission (NDIS Commission).
We acknowledge there have been a range of mistakes and problems created in the way successive governments have rolled out and managed the NDIS and these have unnecessarily increased the cost of the Scheme. But we cannot emphasise strongly enough that poor implementation does not turn a good idea into a bad one. The NDIS was and remains a fundamentally good idea that should be defended and strengthened to ensure it delivers its original promise. Our collective focus should be on fixing the problems and building a stronger Scheme that delivers higher quality supports and better outcomes. Winding back or dismantling parts of the NDIS now discards the enormous value already created from the investment so far. A return to block funding through various commissioning models currently proposed for some supports, including Supported Independent Living (SIL) and support coordination, will not solve these problems. Neither are they likely to save money. Instead, they will bring new and different expenses with little evidence to suggest it will be cheaper over the long term, especially once cost shifts are accounted for. The primary reason that these types of service provisions seemed cheaper prior to the NDIS is because there was so much unmet need and poor service quality, while violence, abuse, neglect, and exploitation occurred largely unchecked. The original modelling for the NDIS understated the extent of each of these problems and, therefore, the cost of fixing them.
We despair at characterisations that suggest there is a single choice between a ‘free-market free-for-all’ or a rigid, government-controlled, block-funded, one-size-fits-all service provision. We believe there is a credible middle path that can deliver high-quality outcomes for participants who have genuine choice and autonomy to live good ordinary lives in community while ensuring the financial sustainability of the Scheme. Clear straightforward processes, fit-for-purpose oversight mechanisms, and strong accountability are critical to this middle path; all of which have been lacking in the NDIS to date. Recent reforms have not changed this. We implore all members of this Committee, and Parliament more broadly, to work together, and alongside the
11
disability community, to improve the NDIS and ensure it fulfills its promise to enable Australians
with disability to live valued meaningful lives in our communities – something that enriches us
all.
Compounding successive governments’ poor implementation of the NDIS has been the chaotic,
disjointed, and often inept way they have also sought to run various ‘reform’ processes,
including the most recent iteration involving the National Disability Insurance Scheme
Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026. Despite repeated
commitments to genuinely co-design changes to the Scheme, people with disability have largely
been sidelined with governments and ministers taking charge, then failing to match their rhetoric
with results. The NDIS has now been under ‘reform’ for more than half its 13-year lifespan,
kicked off by Stuart Robert when he assumed the role of Minister for the NDIS on 29 May 2019
and carried forward by ministers Linda Reynolds, Bill Shorten, Amanda Rishworth, and Mark
Butler. The disability community and broader Australian public can be forgiven for wondering
why the experiences and outcomes for participants seem to be getting worse and the political
rhetoric about cost overruns continues into its tenth year.1 As current Minister for the NDIS Mark
Butler acknowledged at the National Press Club on 22 April 2026, the changes to the Scheme
over recent years have not contributed in any substantive way to improving its quality, safety, or
sustainability.2 This should ring alarm bells about continuing to approach reform processes in
the same way – yet that is what the Federal Government is currently doing.
We strongly believe the best path forward is for the Federal Government to adopt a genuine
comprehensive co-design process that includes lived experience and subject matter
expertise in decision making, implementation, and evaluation to ensure the NDIS is fit-for-
purpose now and into the future. So far, what has been called co-design has, in fact, been
piecemeal consultations with ineffective outcomes resulting in a drawn-out period of upheaval in
the Scheme and in the lives of participants. Anecdotal evidence suggests individual NDIS plans
have recently been cut in random and inconsistent ways to meet an arbitrary cost saving
percentage without any coherent or transparent framework for decision making or the delivery
of high-quality disability supports.
Now, Minister Butler has used the new support determination power to cut the assessed
reasonable and necessary supports of Australians with significant and permanent disability –
the very people the Scheme was established to support – as a substitute for doing the hard
1 On 20 January 2017, then Treasurer Scott Morrison asked the Productivity Commission to undertake a study of
NDIS costs. See further Productivity Commission, ‘National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) Costs: Study
Report’, October 2017, available at https://assets.pc.gov.au/inquiries/completed/ndis-costs/report/ndis-costs.pdf.
press-club-22-april-2026?language=en.
12
2.1. Accountability for failures in the NDIS
It is critically important that the Committee fully examines the underlying causes of problems in the NDIS to ensure lessons are learned and mistakes are not repeated. Waste and fraud must be eliminated, but this will only happen if the reasons it was allowed to occur over so many years are identified, understood, and rectified. This should include scrutinising the roles of successive governments – predominately federal but also state and territory governments – and
3 See https://purpleorange.org.au/library/ndis-review-pointers/.
their ministers, the public service, the Board and management of the NDIA, and the NDIS Commission, as well as the impact of the Federal Government’s highly politicised attack on the Scheme that has left many participants and honest workers fearful of verbal abuse or worse from other Australians. Recent political and media commentary that the NDIS is losing its ‘social license’ is cited as a justification for cutting the Scheme, yet it is politicians and the media who are largely responsible for generating this negative public sentiment. Additionally, many previous parliamentary committees have examined a smorgasbord of matters related to the NDIS over a dozen years, yet they have seemingly been unable to direct governments to solutions that would have prevented the problems that many now use to argue the NDIS has failed. Further, as described above, the failures of the repeated reform processes since 2018-19 should be scrutinised.
We note that the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) gave evidence to this Committee in September 2026 that the NDIA Board has been operating “largely effectively”. Inevitably the question then arises of how the level of waste and fraud in the Scheme could have reached the levels the Federal Government states if, indeed, the Board has been doing its job effectively over the past 13 years? The public and organisations like JFA Purple Orange do not have any line of sight on the Board’s work, but we strongly urge the Committee to delve more deeply into governance and management issues at the NDIA to ensure that they are urgently addressed. This is particularly pertinent as NDIS participants bear the brunt of the consequences of the waste and fraud they are not responsible for, especially through arbitrary ministerial support determinations that cut some of the assessed reasonable and necessary budgets Australians with significant and permanent disability – the very people the Scheme was designed to support – rely on.
Recommendation 1: The Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme should examine and make recommendations about the underlying causes of the waste and fraud in the Scheme that are being cited as justifying cuts to some of the assessed reasonable and necessary supports of Australians with significant and permanent disability. In particular, the Committee should scrutinise the role of successive governments and ministers, the public service, management and Board of the NDIA, and the NDIS Commission in allowing waste and fraud to reach the high levels currently reported in order to help ensure there is full accountability and to prevent any repeat in the future.
14
2.2. Poor ‘consultation’ processes for current reform agenda
The NDIS Bill was introduced to Parliament without any consultation with the disability community or even an Exposure Draft for public comment per best practice. It was then rushed through Parliament without the scrutiny that such a substantial and wide-ranging piece of legislation requires. Since the Bill passed, the Department of Health, Disability, and Ageing has released a wave of overlapping consultations with short timeframes for feedback. The quality of the consultation documents varies, with the SIL Commissioning Discussion Paper being especially short and underdone at just seven pages, with only three pages of substantive content comprising disparate aspects of only one reform option without any modelling.
This makes it very hard to respond in a useful way. NDIS home and living supports are a critical area within the Scheme that need holistic and detailed consideration. A substantial Options Paper that presents a range of well-considered proposals should underpin this consultation if it is to guide meaningful fit-for-purpose reform rather than narrow piecemeal changes.
All the recent consultations have been very limited in scope and released in an ad hoc manner rather than being part of a cohesive approach. For some, the substantive aspects of reform were determined in the Bill, so the consultation is likely too late to effect any real change, for example the consultation regarding access changes. For others, the narrow scope is unexplained, particularly for the recent Support Coordination consultation. There are significant overlaps between Support Coordination and other intermediary and navigation supports in the NDIS, something that is identified as one of the problems. Therefore, approaching the topic in such a narrow and piecemeal way is unlikely to yield worthwhile outcomes. We discuss intermediary and navigation support reform further in a later section of this submission.
This approach is also unfolding in the context of the disability community still waiting for the Federal Government to formally respond to the recommendations of the NDIS Review, which it received almost three years ago. There has been no genuine co-design for any of these reforms – indeed, the misuse of the term co-design to mean anything but actual co-design is significantly undermining trust and confidence in politicians, public servants, and the process. Given the poor processes, it is also unsurprising that many are questioning whether there is any real desire to receive feedback or if the Federal Government is simply undertaking box-ticking exercises. The Department’s defence of its approach at this Committee’s September 2026 hearing was unsatisfactory – keeping a website up to date with due dates is not the same as ensuring
4 See Consultation Paper available at https://consultations.health.gov.au/disability-and-carers-group/sil-consultation/.
15
2.3. Genuine co-design is still the best path forward
The Federal Government’s reform processes, which have taken many different names over the past five years, continue to be disjointed and incoherent. Successive Budget Papers also demonstrate the expense of what appears to be a strategy of spending money to save money that has not demonstrated clear outcomes commensurate to the cost. Savings to date mainly come from cutting the plans of participants rather than systemic improvements to the
5 Over its past four budgets, the Federal Government has allocated hundreds of millions of dollars to various National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) reform processes: in 2022-23, a budget measure titled Plan for the National Disability Insurance Scheme; in 2023-24, a measure called Improving the Effectiveness and Sustainability of the National Disability Insurance Scheme; in 2024–25, another measure, this time called Getting the NDIS Back on Track; in 2025-26, yet another measure, Strengthening the National Disability Insurance Scheme; and this year, a new iteration called Securing the National Disability Insurance Scheme for Future Generations.
Many people with disability feel anxious, fatigued, and distrustful of those making decisions, which is exacerbated by repeated unfulfilled Federal government promises to genuinely co-design changes with the disability community.
We believe the best approach to reforming the NDIS is to undertake a genuine overarching co- design process that involves lived experience and subject matter expertise in decision making, implementation, and evaluation to ensure the Scheme is fit-for-purpose now and into the future.
As the Committee is likely aware, genuine co-design is an inclusive, collaborative process whereby a diverse range of people with relevant knowledge, lived experience, and interests come together in partnership with governments to provide advice and make decisions about a project, policy, or program. It will ensure reforms benefit from a full diversity of input into decision making throughout the entire reform process. This provides many benefits not just to the development of the program but also for the ‘buy in’ of intended beneficiaries and the broader community that flows through to implementation. Nevertheless, we continue to be concerned many of the processes that governments are currently referring to as co-design fall well short of best practice and do not include active involvement of intended beneficiaries in decision making. The Committee may find our Guide to Co-Design with People Living with Disability, which was itself co-designed, helpful in considering the essential steps required in undertaking genuine co-design processes. It is available via our website.
Recommendation 3: The Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme should consider the many benefits of establishing genuine co-design processes involving lived experience and subject matter experts in decision making for the success of reform processes and make a clear recommendation that the Federal Government adopt this approach regarding the NDIS and Foundational Supports. If genuine co-design continues to be objectionable to the Federal Government despite its rhetoric to the contrary, then, at the very least, it should reconsider how it seeks and uses the expertise and input of the disability sector and community to ensure this significant effort is not discarded and wasted.
6 See https://purpleorange.org.au/library/guide-to-co-design-with-people-with-disability/.
3. Context of the NDIS
Understanding the origins of the NDIS and the path taken to date is crucial to charting a better
course forward that holds true to the fundamental essence of the Scheme. In this section, we
highlight some of the core foundations of the NDIS that we believe should inform how the
Committee undertakes its work and the recommendations it makes. We emphasise the
groundbreaking work of the ‘Shut Out’ report in encapsulating the need for change away from
the outdated approaches of the past; something that is now being undermined through recent
reforms. We also emphasise the importance of the Committee’s work reflecting the Social
Model of Disability and that segregated models have no place in a genuinely inclusive society.
We reiterate the findings of numerous inquiries that segregation and isolation are causal factors
in violence, abuse, neglect, and exploitation of people with disability despite the Federal
Government’s recent downplaying of this reality during debate about the NDIS Bill. Strong
safeguarding requires investment in both natural and formal approaches.
3.1. Original promise still holds true
The NDIS has many ‘parents’ and ‘grandparents’, but, in our view, the landmark ‘Shut Out’
report released in 2009 best encapsulates why the Scheme is needed and the essence of what
it should achieve. We implore each member of this Committee to take the time to read and
reflect on the content of this report and its call for fundamental change. Its core tenets of dignity
and inclusion for all Australians with disability should underpin the work of this Committee and
the recommendations it makes to governments. We do not suggest that the NDIS has, to date,
done justice to the change the report called for, but we strongly believe this should continue to
motivate and guide how the Scheme evolves into the future. As a person with disability shared
in a submission to the ‘Shut Out’ report team:
We desire a place within the community! This place is not just somewhere to lay down our heads, but a place which brings comfort and support with daily living, friendship, meaningful work, exciting recreation, spiritual renewal, relationships in which we can be ourselves freely with others. And out of this, great things may flourish… Perhaps then we will belong and our gifts (perhaps meagre, perhaps spectacular) freely shared. And from there will flow all the delights and tragedies
18
of a life lived in the community, shaped not by exclusion and oppression but by
everyday ordinariness (whatever that might be)!7
The NDIS has sought to achieve these core tenets of dignity and inclusion through a
commitment to reasonable and necessary supports based on choice and a goal of advancing
participants into meaningful social, economic, cultural, and community participation. Yet, even
before the new support determination power and its associated cuts began, we have seen
umerous examples of the NDIA failing to properly uphold these, even when doing so would be
much cheaper. By reducing flexibility further and introducing even more rigid requirements
about how plans can be used, it is likely the recent reforms will exacerbate this problem. One
example is the requirement for supports to be ‘disability specific’, which undermines the goal of
social participation and genuine community inclusion.
For example, when participants request support to participate in mainstream community-based
art or music activities, this is rejected because they are not considered to be a disability-specific
s \n support. Anecdotally, Local Area Coordinators (LACs) and NDIA planners have suggested to
many participants that more expensive art and music therapies would be an alternative way to
fund these activities because they are deemed disability-specific and within the rules. Other
participants have then followed this lead and also sought funding for art and music therapies for
non-therapeutic reasons. This approach is failing to achieve the goal of community participation
and has directed many participants into more expensive supports than they were seeking. It is
but one example of how rigid rules have led to poorer participant outcomes from more
expensive supports. The current reform agenda is pursuing more and more rigid rules despite
the fact that experience demonstrates inflexibility is often inflationary.
Recommendation 4: The Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance
Scheme should reflect on the content of the landmark ‘Shut Out’ report and its core
tenants of dignity and inclusion in considering how the NDIS has been rolled out and
managed, including how unnecessarily rigid rules have both failed to adhere to these
values and often led to more expensive supports than necessary.
3.2. The Social Model of Disability should underpin the NDIS
The NDIS has long suffered from the mischaracterisation of it as a ‘welfare’ measure. Now, with
responsibility for the NDIS moved to the Department and Minister for Health, there is an equally
7 Australian Government, ‘Shut Out: The Experience of People with Disabilities and their Families in Australia’,
2009, p. viii, available at https://disability.royalcommission.gov.au/system/files/exhibit/DRC.1000.0001.0001.pdf.
19
Recommendation 5: The Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme should ensure its work reflects the Social Model of Disability and avoids deferring to outdated understandings of disability based on the Medical and/or Charity Models of Disability. Likewise, the Committee should emphasise that the future course of
At JFA Purple Orange, we characterise the benefits of the NDIS to individuals in two broad categories: transactional and transformational. To understand the difference, we consider the nature of the consequences of disability. First, there are consequences that impact on daily life that result in the need for practical supports, such as for toileting, that reoccur over time. These are transactional benefits. Second, there are consequences that impact on life chances that require supports designed to create permanent positive change, for example speech therapy, that will enable the pursuit of life goals. These are transformational benefits that require investment for a limited period of time. While it may, broadly speaking, be possible to characterise transactional benefits as part of a system of ‘care’ (although not recommended), this terminology is wholly inadequate in describing what the NDIS was designed to achieve.
Hence, our reiteration that the NDIS is an insurance scheme designed to deliver transformative benefits in the lives of people with disability, which reflects the fact that any Australian could acquire a disability at any stage of life and benefit from these supports to enable them to live a good ordinary life in their community. For more information about transactional and transformational benefits, we urge Committee members to engage with the papers in our NDIS Review Conversation Series,8 which are available here.
8 JFA Purple Orange, ‘NDIS Conversation Series’, 2023, available at https://purpleorange.org.au/news- resources/ndis-conversation-series.
To be clear, the NDIS is an insurance scheme, and it is intended to provide a broad range of supports that enable Australians with disability to take up their rightful place as equal, included, and contributing citizens with the same opportunities to pursue their interests and reach their full potential as all others. As the Social Model of Disability makes clear, people with disability are not ‘damaged’ or inherently ‘vulnerable’ and in need of others’ care and charity. Instead, disability arises from the widespread barriers that exist in a world not designed to include everyone. These barriers may be physical, systemic, social, communicational, or attitudinal and should be the primary target of change and reform. It is essential Committee members undertake this Inquiry in line with the Social Model of Disability and avoid deferring to outdated understandings of disability based on the Medical and Charity Models of Disability.
concerning pattern of mischaracterising the Scheme as a ‘care’ system and viewing disability as a ‘problem’ to be ‘fixed’ rather than an ordinary part of human diversity. This is in line with the outdated Medical and Charity Models of Disability rather than the contemporary Social Model of Disability.
3.3. Inclusion is not segregation
Further to the above discussion about the importance of dignity and inclusion to the NDIS, it is essential to underscore what these are not: dignity and inclusion are not any form of segregation or separate ‘special’ settings and programs. ‘Special’ provisions are inherently more expensive than making mainstream settings and programs work for everyone and, therefore, they undermine the sustainability of the NDIS. The NDIS should be part of a broader strategy to end the segregation of people with disability in any setting, including in education, employment, and housing. Segregated and congregated services will not advance people with disability into meaningful contributing lives in community in the way well-orchestrated inclusive alternatives do. Separate ‘special’ disability-focused services, programs, and settings reinforce a community perception that people with disability are best served by having separate ‘special stuff’. This has been termed ‘othering’ and is inflationary.
The broader context here is important. The progress Australia has made toward deinstitutionalisation has unfortunately not resulted in an end to the segregation of children or adults with disability. Indeed, in numerous instances, it has simply heralded the creation of new forms of exclusion, marginalisation, and inequality in Australia, such as group houses and congregate living sites. Children and adults with intellectual disability and those with multiple or complex disabilities or high support needs are more likely to be funnelled into segregated and congregated settings and services. These settings are highly institutionalised in their character, and this has serious impacts on the quality of life for those relegated to these offerings. They have significant impacts on each person’s quality of life and the opportunities available to them as they move through life stages – from infancy to childhood to adolescence to adulthood to older age.
The findings from the Disability Royal Commission offer a compelling argument in terms of understanding why people are drawn into segregated disability-specific settings. The Final Report recognises that people with disability and their families are systematically taught there are no safe or viable mainstream options, forcing them to access segregated settings, something that can be described as ‘coercive choice’.
9 Disability Royal Commission, ‘Final Report, Volume 7: Inclusive education, employment, and housing - Summary and recommendations’, 2023, p.65, available at https://disability.royalcommission.gov.au/publications/final-report.
are funnelled from ‘special schools into a sheltered workshop, known as an Australian Disability
Enterprise (ADE) and a group house; a trajectory that Catherine McAlpine, CEO of Inclusion
Australia, calls ‘The Polished Pathway’.
Not only does this Pathway severely limit a person’s
opportunities and prospects for taking up meaningful valued roles in our communities, it
perpetuates underlying messages that people with disability do not belong in community, are
lesser or defective, and it is okay to devalue people and treat them as second-class citizens.
These messages are deeply entrenched in society and are a consequence of the legacy of
institutionalisation and ongoing policies and practices of segregation.
It is in this broader context, and because of this context, that people with disability and their
families are forced to turn to segregated disability-specific settings and services. When
mainstream options continue to operate in ways that are inaccessible, exclusionary, and/or
discriminatory, these options are taken away. People become exhausted and disillusioned by
repeated poor and unsafe experiences and begin to perceive segregated options as ‘easier’ to
deal with. It cannot be left to the disability community alone to shoulder the responsibility to
change this reality. It requires all levels of government – and Committees like this one – to take
a strong position against disingenuous claims, particularly those of sector lobbyists with vested
interests, that segregated options can constitute ‘choice’. ‘Choices’ made in a context where
safe, high-quality, and inclusive alternatives are not available are not genuine choices.
Notwithstanding this, it is important to note that people with disability can and do have positive
meaningful relationships with their peers who also have disability. These relationships do not
constitute segregation or congregation and are not an excuse for such policies and practices.
We fully support the funding of peer networks, associations, and similar, and emphasise the
value of these opportunities in the lives of people with disability. There is a clear distinction
between funnelling people into segregated disability-specific settings in the absence of any
ordinary alternatives being available, compared to the availability of peer networks and spaces
led by and for people with disability. The latter is generally a freely chosen association that can
exist among a smorgasbord of options and form only one aspect of a person’s life, as opposed
to being shut out of community altogether as a consequence of segregation. Many families with
vvarious cultural heritages gather for positive community fellowship without being restricted to
only living, learning, and working with people who share that particular characteristic in
segregated settings – such an approach would rightly appal most Australians. Peer networks
and similar provide genuine opportunities to develop freely given meaningful connections and
facilitate a sense of identity, belonging, value, and respect. They support the growth and mutual
10 See, for example, Catherine McAlpine’s speech to the NDIS Jobs and Skills Summit on 17 August 2022, at
https://www.inclusionaustralia.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/The-Polished-Pathway-Final.pdf.
22
3.4. Segregation and isolation are causal factors for abuse
The Disability Royal Commission and the NDIS Commission, among others, have identified a clear link between isolation in segregated and provider-orientated facilities on the one hand, and violence, abuse, neglect, and exploitation of people with disability on the other. We are deeply concerned about the Federal Government’s downplaying of this link, recently arguing to the Senate Standing Legislation Committee on Community Affairs that cuts to social and community participation supports do not matter for safeguarding so long as people receive support for assistance with personal hygiene.¹¹ The Disability Royal Commission identified institutional and segregated settings and the isolation they create as key system and setting factors, and social isolation as a societal level risk alongside economic disadvantage and financial insecurity.¹² The NDIS Commission’s Own Motion Inquiry into Aspects of Supported Accommodation examined seven providers and a combined 6,269 reportable incidents and 851 complaints, finding they overwhelmingly occurred in group houses and involved serious injury, abuse, neglect, and unlawful physical contact.¹³ As the next subsection explains, social and community connections and relationships are a strong prevention and deterrence because they make incidents more visible and more likely to be noticed.
The consequences of violence, abuse, neglect, and exploitation are extremely costly in both human and financial terms. For example, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare’s (AIHW) research demonstrates a multi-billion-dollar cost impact of domestic abuse across the
¹¹ See hearing transcripts, available at https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Community_Affairs/NDISFutureGenBill/Public_Hearings. ¹² See Volume 3 of the Final Report available at https://disability.royalcommission.gov.au/publications/final-report- volume-3-nature-and-extent-violence-abuse-neglect-and-exploitation. ¹³ See chapter 4 of the Inquiry Report available at https://www.ndiscommission.gov.au/rules-and-standards/quality- practice/supported-accommodation.
23
3.5. Need to balance natural and formal safeguards
People are more likely to be safer when they are connected to their neighbourhood, local community, and social groups based on their interests and goals. Being an active member of local community life, and the mutually valued relationships that emerge from that, is a compelling safeguard. Freely given relationships of mutual support and benefit offer the greatest protections and safeguards for us all, and it should be no different just because a person has a disability. When people know other people, they are safer because someone else will check in and/or notice when something is wrong. Natural informal safeguards are not separate to or outside the remit of the NDIS. The NDIS has a critical role in advancing social, economic, and cultural participation and investing in supports that create opportunities for authentic freely given relationships to emerge. Critically, for an examination of the administration of the Scheme, investing in natural safeguards is extremely cost-effective because it leverages existing
14 See https://www.aihw.gov.au/family-domestic-and-sexual-violence/responses-and-outcomes/economic-financial-impacts. 15 See https://aifs.gov.au/resources/policy-and-practice-papers/economic-costs-child-abuse-and-neglect.
Recommendation 8
The Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme should recognise and make recommendations about the cost-effectiveness of informal natural safeguards for people with disability living in inclusive neighbourhoods and communities and consider ways these can be enhanced alongside adequate investment in strong formal oversight and accountability mechanisms.
16 See https://purpleorange.org.au/library/ndis-review-conversation-series-paper-no-6.
25
4. Responses to latest NDIS reforms
We now turn to some of the problems with the recent reforms to the NDIS, including those in the
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026. Given the scale of change without genuine consultation, we can only address a few of the most critical issues here. Most of the changes are aimed at cutting costs with little concern for the quality of the experiences and outcomes for participants. It is likely that many of the cost- cutting measures will simply shift the expense elsewhere, especially to already overwhelmed public hospitals and mental health services.
As we have already stated, there have been many mistakes and problems created in the way successive governments have rolled out and managed the NDIS, and these have increased the cost of the Scheme. Yet, the reforms predominantly cut participants’ budgets rather than fix fundamental problems. The focus should be on working together to make sensible changes that will improve the quality and sustainability of the Scheme rather than arbitrary cuts, including to the plans of participants with significant and permanent disability – the very people the Scheme was established to support. Below, we address the importance of considering the ‘whole person’, the benefits of including participants in planning, the cost of set-and-forget budgets, the adverse consequences of funding periods for irregular supports, the urgent need to comprehensively reform intermediary and navigation supports, and the importance of placing accountability at the core of the Scheme.
4.1. Focus on ‘the whole person’ is critically important
Excluding a person’s environmental and personal circumstances as far as possible from assessments of functional capacity will create a Scheme that no longer considers “the whole person, not just their impairment”, as former Minister for the NDIS Bill Shorten described the intent of the NDIS in 2022.¹⁷ Likewise, the requirement that support needs “directly” arise from a eligible “impairment”. As the Social Model of Disability describes, people are disabled by barriers in their environment; not by “impairments” in isolation of the environment, as the outdated Medical Model would suggest. What matters is a person’s functional capacity to, for example, have a shower using the only shower available to them in real life; not some other theoretical shower, especially if the real-world shower is inaccessible while the theoretical
¹⁷ See https://ministers.dss.gov.au/speeches/8276.
26
Recommendation 9
The Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme should examine and make recommendations about the urgent need to amend the NDIS Act 2013 to ensure prospective participants’ environmental and personal circumstances are taken into account in determining eligibility for an individual NDIS plan per previous arrangements.
- Stripping away context to impose one-size-fits-all
- gatekeeping on the NDIS risks the wellbeing and safety of people with disability.
The greatest impact of excluding considerations of environmental and personal circumstances will be on participants for whom these realities are the furthest from the theoretical ideal; in other words, people experiencing low socio-economic circumstances. To extend the shower example, a person living in a modern well-appointed house is more likely to have a shower that is sufficiently accessible to ensure they have the functional capacity to shower independently. But if the same person is relegated to, say, an old rundown public housing rental with an inaccessible shower-over-bath combination, they may no longer have the functional capacity to shower, as a direct result of their changed environment, not of their “impairment”. Finding alternative housing to match a theoretical accessible shower is difficult and often unaffordable in the current housing crisis. Therefore, a person living in the latter circumstance will be more impacted by the pursuit of systemic consistency, thereby resulting in systemic classism.
Contexts, circumstances, and environments are crucial to accurately determining functional capacity within the life that a person is actually living. Excluding these will detach functional capacity assessments from reality. Among the groups for whom this change is likely to have a greater impact are those with fluctuating and/or episodic disability, such as psychosocial disability, fatigue-impacted disability, and similar. People with disability with lower capacity for self-advocacy and without informal supporters, such as parents, who are well-versed in navigating complex government systems will continue to be disadvantaged. This underscores the importance of any new eligibility assessment tool/s being genuinely co-designed with lived experience and subject matter experts to ensure they are fit for purpose. The process should require that new Rules are drafted in a transparent co-design process that identifies the purposes and tasks the tools need to perform, and the parameters for their desired outputs, before progressing to any commissioning and/or developing of the tools needed to meet these specifications. We acknowledge time is running out for this to occur, but it should be urgently prioritised.
4.2. Let participants author their own plans
Each NDIS participant should be the ‘author’ of their own plan (or, in the case of a child, their parent/s or guardian/s should be). It should reflect their authentic choices based on their individual goals. This approach would increase participants’ ownership of their plans and reduce the adversarial tone of planning that encourages disputes. However, the current complex and expensive participant pathway results in NDIS plans that are largely ‘owned’ by the NDIA and often disliked or rejected by the participant. This will be made worse under the proposed approach to New Framework Planning that is expected to exclude participants from planning altogether. We understand people with disability will participate in the support needs assessment, then the NDIA will determine the budget and produce the plan without the involvement of the person. Complexity in the NDIA’s processes inevitably increases its control and inflates the costs of formulating plans while restricting participants’ choices.
As we have written elsewhere about a simple pathway18 and assessment tool19, we believe the NDIA should adopt a straightforward participant pathway whereby the NDIA assesses eligibility and provides the person with an indicative overall budget based on their needs and circumstances, then allows the participant to develop their own draft plan covering the supports they choose to prioritise, before the NDIA checks and calibrates the final plan and budget. At the end of the plan, the NDIA evaluates the impact of the plan alongside the participant, asking what has achieved results and what has not, then, based on this information and the person’s updated circumstances, provides an indicative budget for the next plan, and the process repeats. At the check and calibration point, the NDIA can ensure the new plan reflects the learnings from the previous plan about what each support did or did not achieve. A person could choose what, if any, informal or formal supports they need to draft their plan.
We note that there has recently been conjecture that too much is expected of NDIS participants, particularly those with intellectual or cognitive disability. This is a result of the inadequate and poor-quality support that is being provided to them, not because agencies and professionals need to take more control and double down on outdated modes of substitute decision making.
As the Disability Royal Commission emphasised, there is an urgent need for Australia to embed supported decision-making approaches across all systems and processes. Unfortunately, the roll out of the NDIS has increased the number of Australians subjected to formal substitute decision-making mechanisms, such as guardianship, and it is likely recent reforms, including to who can request an unscheduled plan reassessment, will exacerbate this.
18 See https://purpleorange.org.au/library/ndis-review-conversation-series-paper-no-1/. 19 See https://purpleorange.org.au/library/ndis-review-conversation-series-paper-no-3/
28
4.3. Repeated plan rollovers create set-and-forget budgets
The current practice of plan rollovers has played a significant role in increasing the demand for unscheduled reassessments. This will continue under the new automatic plan renewal process.
When scheduled reviews do not happen, sometimes many years in a row, the chances that a participant will need to apply for a reassessment increases. Originally, it was intended that every plan would be reviewed at its end but process and workload issues at the NDIA resulted in the introduction of what we understood at the time to be a temporary measure of automatic plan rollovers. Like many temporary measures where underlying causes are never addressed, it became a permanent practice. The recent reforms make automatic plan rollovers without
29
consulting the participant even more likely; it simply designates them as “new” plans for legal reasons. Therefore, the underlying cause of the problem is still not addressed. Arguably, there is too much focus on gatekeeping who enters the Scheme and not enough on evaluating the results that come out of it. Budgets are left in place for years without considering progress or achievement of outcomes.
In our view, plans should be reviewed at their end date because this enables a full evaluation of the effectiveness and outcomes of supports, particularly those intended to produce transformational benefits for participants, for example capacity building supports and therapies.
We explained the distinction between transactional daily living supports and transformation capacity building supports earlier in this submission. To not regularly carry out a comprehensive evaluation of the benefits and progress achieved through transformational supports in order to tailor the participant’s next plan accordingly is irresponsible, yet it has become a standard practice. This is a contributing factor to Scheme inflation. We acknowledge this is less important for core supports like daily living, although even these should be evaluated from time to time.
This can be accommodated through setting a plan’s duration to three years if it only includes transactional supports. In other words, plans intended to produce transformational benefits can have a duration of one year enabling effective evaluation at that end date, while plans that are focused on core or transactional supports can have a duration of three years allowing reviews to occur less frequently.
Disability support needs are dynamic. They can change due to ageing carers, housing changes, burnout, relationship breakdown, workforce participation changes, and episodic mental ill- health. Only allowing plan reassessments for significant and ongoing changes in support needs presents clear safety and wellbeing risks when a temporary change of circumstances arises.
Further, by not providing flexibility for timely plan reassessments, there will be a strong incentive to maximise permanent support elements in plans to avoid any chance of disruption, which would have the perverse consequence of inflating plan costs.
Additionally, restricting requests for plan reassessments to participants, plan nominees, and parents of child participants will significantly disadvantage participants with lower capacity for s \nself-advocacy and without active informal supporters, such as parents, who can step into this role. Removing the ability for support coordinators to make a request for a plan reassessment on behalf of a participant is likely to be particularly detrimental. Participants with budgets for support coordination usually have more complex support needs and/or circumstances. There is no justification for targeting participants’ genuine reassessment needs because of alleged poor behaviour or misconduct by some plan managers or support coordinators, which should instead be addressed through regulatory action.
30
Recommendation 11: The Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme should examine and make recommendations about requirements to
appropriately evaluate participant plans that include budgets for capacity building and/or
therapies at their end date to ensure they are effective and to avoid the inflationary
practice of set-and-forget budgets. Plans only containing core supports can have a three-
year duration to avoid unnecessary reviews once support needs are generally settled.
4.4. Funding periods not practical for capital supports
The use of funding periods can be helpful for regular core supports when plans cover multiple
years as they assist in ensuring funding is used proportionately over time and does not run out.
However, for irregular supports, particularly capital supports, they are a hinderance to both
participants receiving the supports they need in a timely manner and in the efficient and cost-
effective use of funding. Providers have reported to us that portioning the total funding amount
over multiple periods causes disruption, uncertainty, and increased expenses. For example,
implementing assistive technology or home modifications to enable greater independence
requires multiple steps: an occupational assessment, design of the best solution, ordering and
purchasing equipment and/or materials, installation, and support and training to enable the
person to implement the change in their daily life. We have heard examples where the first
funding component meets the cost of an assessment only, then providers must wait for the next
period some months later before the funds become available to purchase the equipment, then
again before installation can occur, and so on. Sometimes these gaps mean prices have
increased or a person’s function has changed requiring further adaptations. For irregular
supports, funding should be made available in plans without periods or component amounts to
ensure practical and efficient delivery and the best possible outcomes. The use of funding
periods and component amounts for irregular or one-off supports does not save money; in fact,
they are more likely to lead to unforeseen costs and delays. In some cases, they mean a person
remains reliant on a higher level of daily supports that could be reduced through the timely
delivery of supports that increase independence.
Recommendation 12: The Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance
Scheme should examine and make recommendations about how the use of funding
periods and funding component amounts for irregular supports, such as capital
supports, are disrupting delivery, creating uncertainty, and, in some cases, leading to
increased costs.
31
4.5. Establish Clearly Defined Intermediary and Navigation Roles
NDIS intermediary and navigation supports are provided through Partners in the Community (PITC), which include both Local Area Coordinators (LACs) and Early Childhood Partners; support coordinators and psychosocial recovery coaches; and plan managers. There is currently too much confusion about who does what within these roles. They are not clearly defined, have overlaps, and present significant conflicts of interest. This results in waste and Scheme inflation and should be a priority for holistic reform. Yet the Federal Government seems reluctant to undertake anything other than piecemeal reform of individual aspects, including the just closed consultation about support coordination commissioning that was framed with very arrow scope despite identifying role overlap and duplication as a problem. There is a significant opportunity for the Committee to examine what holistic reform to these roles could achieve prior to the Federal Government locking in the current flawed approach with block funded contracts.
The first principle that should guide this reform is a clear separation between roles undertaken on behalf of the NDIA and those undertaken on behalf of participants. Currently, Partners in the Community are expected to serve both the NDIA and the participant even when the interests of each diverge. This results in poor quality outcomes in both roles leading to a lack of trust, more conflicts and disputes, and increased referrals of decisions to review and appeal processes. We strongly believe NDIA delegates/planners should be the “agent of the Scheme” and separate intermediary and navigator roles should be “agents of the participant”. Intermediaries and avigators should not be official or unofficial NDIA delegates or planners and there should be no overlap between these functions. Further, without separation, work on behalf of the NDIA overwhelms the task of supporting people with disability to access the mainstream services they need and make authentic community connections. Consequently, more demand falls to NDIS- funded supports, resulting in Scheme inflation. This is a perverse outcome of the current approach that should be addressed.
The second principle underpinning reform should be to limit the number of intermediary and navigation roles to those that are necessary to achieving high-quality outcomes. A streamlined approach would address confusion about which role does what within the Scheme. The current overlap and duplication between roles, as described above, is wasteful. Currently, support coordinators and plan managers are categorised as capacity building supports even though both have a perverse incentive not to build participants’ capacity because if they do, in most cases they will no longer be needed or receive the associated payments. We believe there is an opportunity to reassign the responsibilities of Partners in the Community, support coordinators, and plan managers into two clear participant-supporting roles separate from the NDIA without overlap or duplication.
32
A redefined navigation and connection role could undertake traditional LAC-type functions and assume the parts of the current support coordination and plan management roles that align with being an “agent of the person” – a demand-side role. This role should not include any Agency tasks, per above. Specialist navigators could focus on children, psychosocial recovery, housing and living, health, and similar areas of need within a new model. The role would support NDIS participants, prospective participants, and people with disability who are not eligible for individual plans to build community connections and access mainstream supports and new general and targeted Foundational Supports to enable a good ordinary life in community, per the original intent of the Scheme.
A redefined intermediary role could provide support on the provider / supply side of the Scheme in support of NDIS participants with a focus on ensuring support continuity, facilitating relationships between providers who are supporting a participant, managing complex support arrangements and the interface with other systems, resolving payment issues, and similar (sometimes referred to as a “case manager” role but we suggest avoiding this dehumanising term). This role would include the current provider / supply side responsibilities of support coordination and plan management and also have no overlap with the administrative tasks that are best performed within the Agency, such as the invoice data entry/capture role of plan management. Outsourcing invoice data entry/capture and charging each individual plan for this so-called “support” is expensive and unnecessary.
These two distinct roles will prevent the urgency of supply-side tasks overwhelming the proactive nature of demand-side support as currently occurs, contributing to poor participant outcomes and Scheme inflation. Each role also aligns the distinct skills and experience required for demand and supply-side functions and will provide a clear and focused career path to support worker retention. A gradual transition, rather than a hard change date of 1 July 2028, would ensure readiness and continuity, while also enabling learning and adapting as necessary. High-quality Partners in the Community could transition to the demand-side navigation and connection role, plan managers to the supply-side intermediary role, and support coordinators could be matched to either based on the best fit for their skills, experience, and interests.
The third principle should be that both the navigation and connection role and the intermediary role should be deeply embedded in local communities because evidence and experience demonstrate this will produce the best outcomes for people with disability and the sustainability of the Scheme. The perceived savings of block funding large providers covering vast geographic areas is a false economy as it fails to maximise existing local supports and services and drives people to seek individual NDIS plans and/or budget allocations. Failures to effectively engage with local supports and services also cause additional hospitalisations, housing crises, and similar that result in cost-shifts to other systems. It is not possible for organisations covering large distances and populations with limited resources to establish and
33
maintain the degree of local embeddedness required to do these roles well. The cost savings of streamlining intermediary and navigation supports, as described above, would more than offset an investment in grassroots providers and workers with deep local knowledge, connections, and responsiveness.
The fourth principle should be participant choice of who supports them in these roles. Different organisations and workers bring different skills, knowledge, and understanding to the roles and ensuring a range of choices are genuinely available will allow best-fit matching of support needs and provisions. It also supports innovation in the market while block funded approaches generally lead to one-size-fits-all services. This is not to diminish the need for improved quality and consistency, but achieving this is not dependent on the commissioning model; something we expand on in the next section of this submission. Issues of thin markets should be addressed in partnership with local communities to co-design the best bespoke solution to meet local needs. Indeed, providing theoretical service coverage on paper through largescale, block- funded commissioning usually does not result in genuine local provision in practice.
These ideas should be on the table as part of a genuine co-design process with the aim of edesigning the approach to clarify and streamline intermediary and navigation roles. There are l likely to be other ideas also worthy of consideration. What we hope this section has demonstrated is that the current narrow reform agenda should be opened up with a broader scope to ensure all options are considered and the best possible outcome for participants and the Scheme is found. Pilots of various approaches would also be very beneficial to enable refinement before scaling, something that concurs with the NDIS Review’s recommendation that the NDIA should “design, test, and implement the navigation function gradually“ (recommendation 4.4).
Recommendation 13: The Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme should examine and make recommendations about the urgent need for the Federal Government and Department of Health, Disability, and Ageing to broaden their reform agenda to consider a full range of potential options for reform of intermediary and navigation supports in the NDIS. Options should reflect the importance of:
-
a clear separation between roles undertaken on behalf of the NDIA and those undertaken on behalf of participants;
-
limit the number of intermediary and navigation roles to those that are necessary to achieving high-quality outcomes to eliminate duplication and overlap;
-
ensure these roles are deeply embedded in local communities in order to leverage genuine local knowledge, connections, and responsiveness; and
-
maintain participant choice of who supports them in these roles.
34
4.6. Place accountability at the core
Unfortunately, oversight and accountability took a backseat in the roll out of the NDIS. While the
Scheme was created in 2013, the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission (NDIS
Commission) was not set up until five years later in 2018. This meant the NDIS Commission
missed the opportunity to grow and mature alongside the NDIA and NDIS and seems to have
been playing catch up ever since. It also meant governments did not receive advice as early as
they might have about problems in the roll out of the Scheme and with the poor-quality systems
and processes that the NDIA was embedding in it. This failure to design the Scheme with
oversight and accountability at its core has been a significant contributor to the problems that
many now use to claim the NDIS has failed.
There needs to be much greater focus on oversight and accountability in the NDIS going
forward. This needs to be fit-for-purpose and have a clear link between actions and outcomes.
Too much of the regulation in the NDIS currently involves tick-and-flick paperwork rather than
purposeful oversight. Critically, ‘auditing’ a disability support provider to make sure it is
compliant with quality and safeguarding expectations must go beyond a review of
documentation. Observation is much more important. Oversight must include people visiting
sites to observe what happens and speak directly with NDIS participants without gatekeeping.
This is more likely to reveal the quality and character of the supports being provided than the
presence of relevant documentation. There also needs to be greater attention given to building
and retaining a high-quality workforce. Notwithstanding this, the workforce issues that affect the
NDIS are not an inevitable result of the Scheme itself. Rather, they are a consequence of poor
design and implementation of oversight and accountability mechanisms.
Much of the discontent about provider registration requirements arises from the expectation that
these will be burdensome and largely ineffective, per the current approach. It is critically
important that the root causes (not symptoms) of the problems registration requirements are
trying to solve be identified. For example, a graduated risk-proportionate and compulsory
registration approach appears to be seeking to safeguard participants, prevent fraud, and
ensure Scheme financial sustainability. We do not dispute these as important objectives, but it
is critical to ask whether the proposed measures are likely to accomplish these ends or if they
are the best method by which to achieve them? In relation to safeguarding, registration has not
prevented harm or service quality issues in the NDIS to date, with numerous problems and
incidents involving registered providers not detected until after harm has already occurred. As
such, it is unlikely that compulsory registration will be significantly more effective in this
endeavour than the current voluntary regime, and certainly not without an investment of
Recommendation 14
The Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme should examine the adequacy of oversight and accountability mechanisms in the NDIS and make recommendations to ensure these are placed at the core of the Scheme. It should critically assess whether registration requirements will address identified problems or just add to existing administrative burden without improving accountability or safeguarding.
20 NDIS Review, ‘Working together to deliver the NDIS - supporting analysis’, 2023, p.911, available at https://www.ndisreview.gov.au/resources/reports/working-together-deliver-ndis-supporting-analysis. 21 NDIS Review, ‘Working together to deliver the NDIS – Final Report’, 2023, p.214, available at https://www.ndisreview.gov.au/resources/reports/working-together-deliver-ndis/.
36
5. Supports outside the NDIS
As has now been widely recognised, the decisions of federal, state, and territory governments to withdraw funding from a range of essential services under the guise of the NDIS roll out left many children and adults with disability without the supports they required and drove significant increased demand for individual NDIS plans. This has resulted in higher participant numbers than would otherwise have been the case. Since the release of the NDIS Review’s Final Report, it has been broadly accepted that supports outside the NDIS should be reinstated across Australia. But progress has been slow and the actions of governments are yet to match their words. It is critically important that supports are re-established and functioning well before participants are removed from the NDIS or denied entry. This is particularly important for regional, rural, and remote communities where reinstating alternative supports is likely to take longer; something that has yet to be reflected in governments’ timelines. In this section, we focus on Foundational Supports, including Thriving Kids, and grant programs under what the Productivity Commission originally referred to as Tier 2.
5.1. Slow to act on Foundational Supports
In its 2011 report that led to the creation of the NDIS, the Productivity Commission envisioned a comprehensive set of Tier 2 supports that would exist alongside Tier 3 individual plans. In 2023, the NDIS Review recognised the failure of Tier 2 until then and recommended governments fulfil this responsibility through appropriate investment in what it now called Foundational Supports.
There appears to be a general commitment to do this despite the very slow pace of delivery. National Cabinet agreed to a $10 billion investment in Foundational Supports in December 2023 but almost three years later we still do not know what most of this money will be used for.
Indeed, a comprehensive co-design process could have occurred during this time and would have allowed time for programs to be piloted and evaluated before expansion and scaling. The delay is disappointing, but there is still time to undertake genuine co-design. The sustainability of the NDIS will be significantly enhanced if all Foundational Supports are well designed and effectively rolled out in constructive partnership with the disability community at both jurisdictional and local levels.
The $4 billion of the Foundational Supports funding pool that has been committed so far will be invested in Thriving Kids to support children with low to moderate support needs related to austism and/or developmental delay aged eight and under. The development of Thriving Kids has started but the roll out is well behind schedule and it is uncertain that the initiative will be
5.2. Under investment in Tier 2 continues
Foundational Supports are welcome and, if done well, we believe they can lead to better outcomes for some children and adults with disability and enable many to have all or some of their support needs met outside the NDIS. However, in relative terms, $10 billion for Foundational Supports continues to be a very small investment compared to the NDIS itself. Further, as this investment is yet to occur, any consideration of the costs and administration of the NDIS to date needs to account for the significant mistake of government’s making inadequate investment in Tier 2 supports and in reforming mainstream services to embed accessibility and inclusion over the past 13 years. This is despite the stated commitments in Australia’s Disability Strategy 2021-2031, where there continues to be a lack of investment and action to match the words. The Productivity Commission’s clear vision was that all three tiers, being Tier 1 mainstream services, Tier 2 general disability supports, and Tier 3 individual NDIS plans, should work together and be complementary but this has not happened. Additionally, a lack of accessible, knowledgeable, and locally connected information and navigation supports to clearly identify and enable access to alternative options are also barriers that have led people to seek individual plans.
One element of the Tier 2 vision that has been in place since 2017 is the Information, Linkages,
and Capacity Building (ILC) program, which will soon be renamed as the Disability Peer Support
and Connections (DPSC) Program. Yet, while it has achieved many benefits, it is not having the
extent of impact it could be due to underinvestment. Again, the funding allocated to the ILC
program is tiny compared to the overall cost of the NDIS. The 2025-26 Budget indicated the
ongoing annual funding for the ILC program will be just $150 million per year compared to
almost $50 billion for the NDIS. The Committee should consider the potential for much greater
impact to be achieved through the ILC/DPSC program with an increased funding allocation to
support projects that demonstrate successful outcomes. Despite the low investment, we do
welcome the commitment that the future DPSC program will provide longer funding periods and
more financial certainty for high-performing projects as this will support continuity and impact.
Nevertheless, this has not occurred to date, undermining the impact of the program.
Recommendation 16: The Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance
Scheme should consider and make recommendations about how the Information,
Linkages, and Capacity Building (ILC) program, soon to be renamed the Disability Peer
Support and Connections (DPSC) Program, can be strengthened into the future,
including, but not limited to, an increased funding allocation, financial certainty for
organisations, and a clear overarching public-facing strategy.
5.3. Under investment in new Inclusive Communities Fund
The Federal Government has recently set aside $200 million over three years to be invested in
a new Inclusive Communities Fund to support community connection, participation, and
inclusion of Australians with disability in mainstream activities. Despite being announced as a
replacement in lieu of budget cuts to NDIS individual plans under the new ministerial support
determination provision in the recently passed NDIS Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future
Generations) Act 2026, the Federal Government has since indicated the Fund will support
capacity building for community organisations rather than directly funding participation activities
for individuals as many expected. It is hoped that this will create more opportunities for people
with disability to participate in their local communities.
However, it will be a one-off investment, and this amount is inadequate to make a genuine
impact across the country. There will be a tension between delivering a breadth of funded
activities and the quality of each, or, in other words, between reach and impact. Spread too
thinly to maximise geographic and population reach, investments are likely to be superficial and
not embed lasting impact. Conversely, investing in achieving deep impact through more
intensive funding commitments in some places will result in a scatter gun approach that fails to reach many locations and populations, thereby creating a different challenge in how to scale results without further funding. NDIS participants enduring blanket budget cuts will face a postcode lottery to determine whether their local community receives any assistance to boost access and inclusion or not. This is likely to be a particularly significant issue for people with disability living in regional, rural, and remote communities that do not receive this attention.
Given the cuts to individual NDIS plans are slated to achieve about $9.9 billion dollars in savings during the same period, there is clear scope to increase the $200 million committed to the Fund. An amount of $495 million would represent about five per cent of the savings for just the first three years yet would enable much broader scope and impact in what the Fund could achieve.
The link between what the Fund does and how this enables greater social and community participation for people with disability, particularly NDIS participants with significant and permanent disability enduring significant budget cuts, also needs to be explained through a clear Theory of Change. Assuming the Fund succeeds in making mainstream community activities fully accessible and inclusive, many NDIS participants will no longer have the necessary supports they need to leave their house or accommodation to attend these community activities. The arbitrary budget cut will force many of those affected to prioritise essential activities, such as shopping for food and attending medical appointments, while cutting discretionary social and community participation opportunities. This is a fundamental contradiction in the reform approach that could have been avoided if the Federal Government had engaged with the disability community to design sensible reforms to the NDIS to improve both how it supports participants and its long-term sustainability. Instead, taking the short-cut to reform through blunt and ill-considered cuts to NDIS plans has opened a new gap that will undermine the value of the Fund. There is a clear risk that the Fund enables the building of capacity for access and inclusion within community organisations only for the intended beneficiaries to be unable to participate due to these cuts and other barriers.
Additional barriers, such as inaccessible buildings, limited public transport, and unreliable access taxis, will also affect whether many people with disability can participate, particularly those in regional, rural, and remote areas. Investment is needed to ensure mainstream services, especially government services, such as public transport, become accessible. The delay in achieving the Disability Standards for Accessible Public Transport 2002, despite the generous 20-year timeframe originally set, is but one example of government failure that results in shifting costs elsewhere. Further, there are other areas of NDIS reform that have been
Recommendation 17
The Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme should recognise that replacing about $9.9 billion over three years in individual NDIS budgets for social and community participation supports with only $200 million invested in a national Inclusive Communities Fund is grossly insufficient and will have profound consequences for Australians with disability. It should recommend reversing the cuts or, at the very least, allocate a minimum of five per cent of the savings to the Fund – a very modest and reasonable request.
Recommendation 18
The Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme should recommend that the Department of Health, Disability, and Ageing should engage with the disability community to co-design a holistic Theory of Change for the Inclusive Communities Fund that accounts for how it works alongside existing and reformed systems, including the NDIS, and what barriers and gaps remain. It should also recommend governments invest in addressing these barriers and gaps to maximise the cost-effectiveness and value of the Fund in achieving outcomes.
6. Conclusion
Thank you for the opportunity to contribute a submission to the Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) regarding its Inquiry into Annual Report No.2 of the 48th Parliament.
The NDIS has been an extremely beneficial innovation in Australia but unfortunately numerous missteps in successive governments’ implementation of the Scheme have impacted the quality of supports it delivers, had an inflationary impact on costs, and rendered it vulnerable to political attack. It is critically important that the origins of the NDIS and the key tenets of dignity and inclusion continue to sit at the centre of the Scheme and inform its evolution. It is highly regrettable that recent reform processes have sidelined the disability community in favour of a focus on arbitrary cost cuts and cost shifts to other systems. This approach has failed to fully grapple with the issues that underly problems in the Scheme. We urge the Committee to play its role in addressing the flaws in the recent legislative changes through recommending amendments to Parliament, and to actively engage with the role out of Foundational Supports, including Thriving Kids, to ensure actions match words.
We are looking forward to attending the Committee’s Adelaide hearing on Wednesday, 7 October 2026. Beyond this, we are available to discuss matters related to the NDIS whenever this can be useful in supporting the Committee’s ongoing work. To arrange this, please contact Tracey Wallace, Interim CEO, JFA Purple Orange, on (08) 8373 8333 or traceyw@purpleorange.org.au.
42