Have your say on the NDIS cuts

The Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee is currently taking submissions on the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026, which will arbitrarily cut 160,000 current NDIS participants from the scheme and make it even harder for new applicants to get the support they need.

Aged care receives significantly more funding than the NDIS, with significantly fewer complaints – even though 90% of disabled people acquire their impairments over their lifetimes. This isn’t about “us versus them”, this is about all of us – so we all have a responsibility to respond.

You are welcome to copy, paste and edit anything you find useful from my own draft response (below). It draws heavily from the Justice and Equity Centre’s Explainer on the NDIS ‘Future Generations’ Bill (with my thanks) and a range of other resources (listed below).

But responses don’t have to be long or academic. All you really need to say is ‘I do not like this Bill’ and why.

Draft submission

I am writing to express my dismay at the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 and accompanying Senate Inquiry, which threatens the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of Australians with rushed and un-evidenced plans to slash funding for the already-inadequate NDIS.

Flawed motivation

I am a non-disabled disability ally and non-profit consultant with the privilege of working with a range of disability-led advocacy and service organisations. In my former capacity as CEO of Arts Access Australia, I was proud to campaign for and welcome the introduction of the NDIS in 2013 – arguing at the time that it was a long-overdue, once-in-a-generation reform that would start to bring Australia into line with comparable Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries.

While far from perfect, the NDIS has made a good start in meeting these aims over the last 13 years – though with only 10% of disabled people eligible for the scheme, Australia is still one of the most difficult places to be Deaf or disabled within the Global North.

So much more needs to be done – which is why it’s devastating to watch as much of the good work the NDIS has achieved is being undermined and the scheme punished for its success. Particularly when Australia’s Defence Minister recently boasted that the country had also exceeded its forecasted budget spend on weapons, which was rewarded with an increase in the newly-announced budget. As Australian lawyer Hannah Thomas writes, apparently “fiscal responsibility is not important when it comes to our ability to kill people for our allies.”

This contradiction is also galling given the claims of NDIS fraud that motivated these reforms have both been outrageously overblown by the right-wing media and the Bill barely attempts to address any alleged fraud at all – limiting life-changing and life-saving NDIS access to individuals rather than addressing the systems and providers that administer it.

Indeed, some of the false or misleading arguments informing the Bill appear to border on hate-speech, which the Government has further endorsed by admitting the NDIS reforms are a direct response its so-called “loss of social license”. The proposed changes also purport to reduce the average cost of plans, but these ‘savings’ will have real impacts. There are real people behind these numbers, whose already-stretched supports risk being cut, undermining their ability to live full and connected lives.

As CEO of the Australian Federation of Disability Organisations (AFDO), Ross Joyce, writes: “The purpose of the NDIS is to support people with disability to live ordinary lives, with dignity, independence and participation in the community. If reform is driven primarily by cost control, we risk undermining that purpose.”

In doing so, the proposed reforms may actually cost Australia money by redirecting participants and new applicants to more expensive alternatives. As disability leader Jane Britt reminds us: “The Productivity Commission described the system the NDIS replaced as inequitable, underfunded and fragmented, producing need across disconnected programs at greater cost than meeting it directly. The NDIS was designed to end that pattern. Yet elements of fragmentation persist, documented across the 2019 Tune Review and the 2023 NDIS Review.”

Instead of criticising the NDIS for “growing too far, too fast,” we should be repurposing the funding allocated to entirely imaginary AUKUS submarines and working out how to grow the scheme and make it more accessible, so the process of applying for and receiving supports isn’t further disabling, as it is now.

A flawed process

In what has become characteristic of the Albanese Government’s style, concerned Australians have once again been set a shamefully short window to respond to this 109-page Bill and 300 pages of explanatory material (none of which have been made available in accessible formats), while requiring submissions must ‘specifically address aspects of the Bill,’ and failing to acknowledge the grief, panic and reduction in capacity the proposed reforms have caused. Just because we have been given longer to respond than the embarrassing 24-hour consultation period for the even more rushed and unevidenced teen social media ban does not make this process anywhere close to okay.

Australia’s Disability Representative Organisations (DROs) noted in their recent joint statement that this extraordinarily short timeframe creates “grave doubts that this will allow proper scrutiny of legislation, with major implications for the wellbeing, rights and supports for hundreds of thousands of people with disability, families and carers across Australia.”

Not only does the Senate Inquiry timeline not allow time for considered written submissions and public hearings, it is also inherently ableist – disregarding the access and communication requirements that make meaningful engagement with Deaf and disabled Australians possible. Once again, this effectively removes Deaf and disabled people from the decisions that most affect them, and on which they are best placed to provide expert advice.

“People with disability, families and carers have already experienced years of ongoing reform, uncertainty and disruption. Major reforms that affect people’s daily lives, supports and future security must be approached with care, integrity and proper scrutiny – not rushed through without adequate consideration of the real-world consequences,” the DROs said.

The Bill will also change the law so that several Federal Court decisions about the NDIS will no longer apply in the same way. While Parliament has the power to override court decisions, much of this case law established precedents that benefitted people with disability. By overriding them, the Bill will make the NDIS harder to access and reduce supports for the people who need it most.

To rush through this process as a cost-saving exercise is a horrific failure of duty of care, and yet another example of the Albanese Government’s disregard for human rights, equity and Australia’s now theoretical ‘fair go’.

A flawed Bill

The Bill includes several problematic proposals to how people access the NDIS, including:

  • Implementing a standardised assessment tool to test functional capacity and NDIS eligibility, instead of current requirement for expert health or medical reports. Removing individualised information and specialised advice means standardised assessments are likely to be inappropriate, ineffective and exclude and/or further marginalise significant groups of disabled people. They may also be used as blunt instruments to remove existing NDIS recipients who no longer meet an arbitrary threshold, regardless of their needs or experience.
  • The Bill changes the requirement for impairments to be ‘permanent’ and will remove or restrict people accessing the NDIS if there are treatments that could improve or reduce the effect of their impairments. This includes reversing the Federal Court’s decision of NDIA v Davis [2022] FCA 1002 (‘Davis’), in which the Court distinguished between possible treatment and ones that participants could realistically access in their area. This provision specifically contradicts Australia’s Disability Discrimination Act, which applies to everyone experiencing an issue or impairment lasting (or likely to last) more than one year. As such, the requirement to try ‘all appropriate treatment’ will have unfair or unpredictable impacts for people with progressive conditions, those living outside major cities, and those with intersecting marginalisations – or even just for those who wish to retain their rights to conrol their own bodies and treatments.
  • This Bill would also override the ruling of NDIS: NDIA v Sutherland [2026] FCA 3 (‘Sutherland’), in which the Federal Court decided that a person does not have to show other government programs or supports cannot meet their needs before accessing the NDIS. This would limit people accessing the NDIS if their impairment is from a car accident or workplace injury, or if their State or Territory Minister changes the rules to exclude other forms of support (such as aged care) – leading to unfair and inconsistent outcomes.

The flaws continue in the Bill’s proposed changes to NDIS planning, including:

  • Curtailing reassessments to only take place where needs or circumstances significantly change, rather than participants being able to request a plan reassessment at any time. According to the Explanatory Memorandum, this means that if a participant runs out of funding early, but their support needs have not changed significantly, their request for reassessment will be refused. The Bill also extends the time for the NDIA to decide a reassessment request from 21 to 90 days while removing safeguards for participants during the review period. This will radically increase the risk of participants living in unsafe, unsustainable and poverty conditions.
  • The Bill’s replacement of ‘reassessment dates’ with ‘end dates’ for plans (and prevention of funding carryover) shockingly removes the requirement for consultation with or even involvement of NDIS participants in their own plans – a truly bureaucratic ‘solution’ that will inevitably lead to poorer results for all.
  • The Bill also allows the NDIA to suspend plans while it is trying to get information from a participant, regardless of their access requirements – which means that disabled people who are unwell may lose supports precisely when they need it most.

The Bill also fundamentally changes the legal test for supports:

  • Substituting the reference to “reasonable and necessary supports” with “NDIS supports… consistent with the financial sustainability of the Scheme” shifts the focus away from the individual needs and goals of participants.
  • The Government has justified these changes on the basis that the current objects and principles have led courts and tribunals to favour participants and prospective participants. In any sensible design process, this should argue in favour of their retention, not removal.
  • The Bill undoes the ‘whole of person’ approach to funding supports secured in the 2024 amendments to the NDIS Act, which addressed how people with multiple impairments should be funded for supports where only one or some of their impairments qualify for access to the Scheme. These provisions was confirmed in February 2026 by the Federal Court in the case of CEO of the NDIA v Eastham [2026] FCA 147 (‘Eastham’), which made it clear the law requires supports to be funded even if the need for the support has multiple causes, as long as one cause is the impairment that gave the person access to the NDIS. Undoing the ‘whole of person’ approach will impose artificial distinctions in the way a person with multiple and interrelated disabilities accesses supports. A subjective test of ‘directly arising’ is also likely to be difficult to apply in practice.
  • The Bill also introduces new mechanisms to limit how much funding participants can use for particular supports, even when those supports are reasonable and necessary. Minister Butler has specifically referred to reducing funding for ‘social and community participation’ – again shifting the NDIS away from responding to individual needs, safety and risk to a bureaucratic tick-box approach that is setting itself up to fail. These proposed changes would also overturn the Federal Court decision in McGarrigle v National Disability Insurance Agency [2017] FCA 308 (‘McGarrigle’), which confirmed the NDIS must fully fund a participant’s reasonable and necessary supports. And it would remove the right of participants to challenge such decisions through available review processes.
  • The Bill also gives the NDIS Minister power to set arbitrary caps on the supports participants can receive – resulting in people receiving less support than they have been assessed as needing. Such ‘average plan’ figures don’t reflect reality and ignore individual complexities – with many existing NDIS participants already underfunded with complex and fragile collections of pieced-together supports.
  • The Bill alters how the existing criteria should be interpreted in ways that will further restrict the availability of supports under the Scheme.
  • It proposes to reintroduce a previous requirement to consider if another system should fund participant’s support, which means the NDIA could refuse a support request it if it decides another system should provide it.
  • It requires new factors to be considered in deciding whether a support is ‘value for money’, which is likely to push decisions towards lower cost supports regardless of quality.
  • The Bill will also prioritise decisions about whether a support is ‘effective and beneficial’ based on generalised research instead of a participant’s lived experience or evidence from their medical practitioners – deliberately ignoring relevant information to provide fewer supports and worse results.
  • Additionally, the Bill would change how risks to a participant or carer are weighted, setting a very high bar that is likely to result in supports being unreasonably denied.

While allegedly motivated by unquantified claims around NDIS fraud, the Bill includes a range of vague and inadequate anti-fraud measures:

  • This includes a proposal to change who is an ‘NDIS provider’ without sharing how this will be achieved.
  • The Bill gives the NDIA new powers to investigate both participants and providers, without explaining how those powers will sit alongside, duplicate or replace those of the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission, which is already set up as a NDIS regulator – while giving the NDIA power to impose civil penalties in a range of circumstances.
  • The Bill also dramatically increases the already-significant NDIS application workload by requiring more records and evidence to be kept for longer periods of time, while decreasing the time participants have to claim them from 2 years to 90 days – with no exemptions or defences for misplaced records. This lays the groundwork for future Robodebt-equivalent failures that unfairly penalise and put disabled Australians into unfair and unnecessary debt.
  • “The Government keeps talking about fraud,” Acting CEO of People with Disability Australia (PWDA) Megan Spindler-Smith says, “but when you read the legislation and the Government’s own Impact Analysis, this is not a fraud prevention Bill. It is a Bill that cuts supports, cuts access and cuts people with disability off from their communities. The Government’s own analysis admits these changes will reduce community access. If passed without amendment, people will be harmed through deterioration, injury and even death.”
  • “Integrity matters. Fraud must be addressed,” Australian lawyer Belinda Kochanowska writes. “But what is currently being proposed risks missing the mark and harming the very people the Scheme exists to support and the businesses that provide that support.”

The Bill’s proposed changes to NDIS pricing and administration are also problematic:

  • It allows the Minister to set maximum prices for supports that are Agency- or plan-managed, as opposed for the Independent Health and Aged Care Pricing Authority that should be responsible for NDIS pricing.
  • The Bill authorises the NDIA to use automated decision making (ADM) for decisions about payment or rejection of claims, and allows the Minister to expand the use of ADM in the future – though there is currently no whole-of-government framework outlining safeguards for the use of ADM by government agencies.
  • The Bill also allows the Minister to unilaterally make rules that change the effect of the NDIS Act, without those rules having to be passed by Parliament – without making provision for much-needed safeguards and further endangering current and potential NDIS participants.

As usual, the weight of these changes will fall heaviest on those who are already strategically under-valued or marginalised: including unwaged people and those with lower socio-economic capacity (of which disabled people make up a statistically higher proportion); families with multiple disabled family members; First Nations people (whose earlier eligibility for aged care supports is likely to see more confusion and more people fall between the gaps); as well as disabled children and their carers.

As Youth Disability Advocacy Network (YDAN) notes, “When participation supports are reduced, young people lose access to the therapy, connections, and opportunities that build independence, confidence, and community. These changes risk pushing young people further into isolation, increasing pressure on families, and undermining the core promise of the NDIS.”

This Bill will erase the difference between living and existing. It will increase disabled Australians’ isolation, burnout and use of more expensive medical care services, while reducing their independence, mental health, education and employment opportunities, and denying all of us the benefits of their participation in Australian society. As Kochanowska writes, reducing supports “risks re-segregating people with disability and undoing decades of progress toward community inclusion.”

The government’s own advisory committee on disability reform has already cautioned State and Federal ministers on how the Bill will harm thousands of disabled Australians.

This has already been demonstrated in the way this Bill has deliberately excluded Deaf and disabled Australians from any conversations about genuine NDIS reform, and has instead sacrificed their rights to access, equity and dignity through a cynical, un-evidenced economic argument that infers we cannot afford their participation in or contribution to Australian life – when any citing of the significant research into this area clearly shows that we cannot afford not to (against nearly every metric, including their impact on the economy).

Disabled people are not averages. Their participation is a right, not a luxury. I wholeheartedly reject this Bill, which flattens their needs into cost targets, treats their participation as optional or less valuable, and undermines the intent and possibility of the NDIS.

The Albanese Government must cease and address its reputation for such rushed and un-evidenced legislative change and its reputation for damaging and ‘disrespectful’ delays to the evidence it requests and receives (with more than 100 parliamentary committee reports currently overdue – some by as much as two years).

As the only liberal democracy without its own constitutional or statutory bill of rights, it must finally adopt the long-delayed national human rights act introduced into Parliament this week – and revisit NDIS reform only after it has reaffirmed the rights of Deaf and disabled Australians, and apologised for the harm this process has caused.

Other resources and responses

You can also read other people’s public submissions on the Parliament of Australia website.

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Author: katelarsenkeys

Writer. Rabble-rouser. Arts, Cultural and Non-Profit Consultant.

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