Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Regional Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In continuation, I want to turn now to the changes to eligibility and access in relation to the NDIS. The National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 proposes a new framework based on 'substantially reduced functional capacity', with new thresholds to be introduced in rules. On the face of it, consistency and evidence-based assessment are things we should support, but the reality is this: the thresholds have not yet been defined. We are being asked to pass a framework without knowing how restrictive it will ultimately be. We are told that, from 1 January 2028, new participants will be assessed under these new rules, while existing participants will be progressively reassessed. That raises some serious concerns, because, for many Australians, reassessment is not just a bureaucratic process; it is a very stressful, very intrusive and deeply disturbing and distressing experience. We must ensure that people are not being forced to repeatedly prove their disability.

The bill also tightens access to unscheduled plan reassessments. We are told this is necessary to control cost growth, but we must consider the other side of the ledger. For participants, flexibility is essential. People's circumstances will change and their needs will evolve. Unexpected events will occur in their lives. We've just got to be cautious not to lock people into plans that no longer reflect their lived reality.

One of the elements in this bill that I have concern with is the restriction of supports to those directly arising from a person's primary impairment. That might sound like it works in theory, but in practice people do not live with a condition in isolation. Health conditions often overlap and complications can arise. Under this proposal, supports for related or secondary conditions may no longer be covered. Instead, people will be pushed back into an already stretched health system, and that risks creating gaps in care and, ultimately, it risks shifting costs, not reducing them.

The bill also grants the minister the power to reduce funding across categories of supports. This includes areas such as community participation and capacity building, two really important parts of what the scheme set out to do. While critical supports are preserved, these categories are not necessarily optional luxuries. They are supports that help people build independence. They are the supports that help people gain employment, and they can help people engage with their communities. I think that, in some ways, as a society and as a parliament, we've lost sight of that—that we wanted to give the support to people with disabilities to help them not just do nothing and manage their disability but get involved in the community, get involved in employment, if they're able, and build that independence.

The introduction of fixed plan end dates and the removal of rollover funding is another significant change. For some participants, this may improve structure and accountability, but for others it may create pressure, particularly where services are delayed or they're difficult to access. This is common in many regional areas, and participants should not be penalised because the system fails to deliver supports in a timely manner. In changes to travel arrangements, we've already seen some regrettable changes to the provision of necessary services for people in regional areas. Again, I believe it's sometimes Canberra not understanding how things work out in regional Australia, where your primary service provider might be a two-hour drive away.

The bill also expands the minister's ability to set limits on what is considered 'reasonable and necessary'. This includes caps on funding, staffing ratios and frequency of supports. Again, we've got to be consistent, but flexibility is essential, because every individual is different. As I stated at the start of this contribution, we've got to make people feel like they are people. They are members of our community with families and needs, not just numbers in a bureaucracy. We must ensure that decisions are made based on real needs, not on administrative convenience.

There are elements of this bill that the coalition supports, particularly those aimed at strengthening integrity in the system: improved provider registration, stronger compliance powers and civil penalties for misconduct. I wish the parliament could have come together previously to sort some of this stuff out. It really did drag on too long, and I don't think the then Labor opposition did everything they could to work with the Morrison coalition government to try and straighten some of this stuff out. But these measures are necessary because fraud and exploitation undermine the scheme and erode public trust. We must be clear that the problem is not the participants. The problem is the bad actors in the system, and they do exist and they should be called out and held to account. Not only are they abusing the Australian taxpayer by rorting our money; they are also taking away from a scheme that needs every resource focused on giving meaningful and true help to people with disabilities. We've got to target that bad behaviour and hold it to account.

The bill also introduces automated decision-making processes, and I know that might improve efficiency, but we've got to proceed with caution in relation to that. Decisions about people's lives cannot just be reduced to algorithms. It's a tool, and I get that the world is moving in that direction, but none of us really understand exactly where that's going to go. I think that, in relation to these sorts of things, we need to use it as a tool to assist decision-making, not see it as a decision-making tool in its end. What that needs is human oversight and safeguards.

Finally, I want to address the transitional provisions, particularly the inclusion of what we call a Henry VIII clause. This allows rules to effectively override primary legislation for a limited period. That is an extraordinary power, and it should only be used in the most limited and justified circumstances. It is essential that this aspect of the bill is fully examined through a Senate inquiry, because parliament—it doesn't matter who's in government—has got to retain oversight of fundamental legislative changes. That's a really important principle that our democracy is based on.

In closing, the coalition believes in a strong, sustainable NDIS. I thought it was a really good moment when the then Gillard government presented the NDIS legislation and then Tony Abbott, the then opposition leader, talked about the NDIS as 'an idea whose time had come'. Everyone believes in the principle and the intent, but we've got to tackle the fraud and waste. We want a scheme that can support future generations, but we believe in protecting participants. We're not going to support changes that create uncertainty, undermine confidence or place vulnerable Australians at risk. We're going to engage constructively with this legislation. We're going to listen to participants, families, carers and providers—many of us have been doing that in our electorate offices across Australia—and we'll use the Senate inquiry process to properly interrogate these reforms. Getting the NDIS right is not just a fiscal responsibility; it is a moral responsibility.

The parliament must ensure that, in seeking to secure the future of the NDIS, we go back and understand what its purpose was. What was the principle in setting it up? I think that principle is to support Australians living with disability to live with dignity, independence and, critically, opportunity.

Alison Penfold (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026, and I do so acknowledging something that every member in this place should understand very clearly: behind every clause in this bill is a person—a child with profound autism whose parents are exhausted and frightened about the future, a young person with an acquired brain injury trying to rebuild their life, a mother caring for an adult son with disability and wondering what will happen when she is no longer there, a regional family already stretched by the cost of living and trying to navigate a system that too often feels confusing, adversarial and impersonal.

For many Australians, the NDIS is not an abstract policy debate; it is the way to help people with disability live their life. I can't imagine what life would be like now for people with disability without the NDIS. It remains one of the most significant social reforms in our nation's history. It changed the way Australians with disability are seen and supported. It recognised that people with disability deserve opportunity, inclusion and respect. But we also know that confidence in the scheme has been undermined by serious concerns about waste, exploitation, fraud and unsustainable growth.

Australians rightly expect that taxpayer money—their money—intended for vulnerable people is used properly. Participants themselves are often the first to say that the current system is not working as it should. Families are frustrated by inconsistent decisions. Participants are overwhelmed by bureaucracy. Good providers are being undercut by dishonest operators, and genuine participants are increasingly worried that the actions of a minority are threatening the long-term sustainability of the scheme itself. That is why there is broad support for measures that genuinely target fraud, abuse and exploitation within the NDIS. The disability community understands that, if public confidence in the scheme collapses, the people who will suffer most are those who genuinely rely on it.

The concern many people have with this bill is that, while it contains significant structural and access changes, it appears to do comparatively little to directly address the organised fraud and rorting that Australians have repeatedly been told is occurring inside the scheme. The bill does introduce some fraud related measures, including tightening record retention obligations, shortening claim timeframes from two years to 90 days, expanding some information-gathering and regulatory powers and enabling greater automation and digital oversight of payments and claims. Those measures may help improve compliance and administrative integrity, but many participants, carers and providers are asking a fair question: where are the measures that actually go after the criminal networks, organised exploitation and deliberate abuse that have so badly damaged confidence in the scheme?

This bill asks a great deal of participants and families. It tightens access requirements. It narrows assessment eligibility. It strengthens the connection between impairment and support needs. It introduces new powers to reduce support funding. It changes the definition of 'permanence'. It creates mechanisms for automatic plan renewals, and it gives significant additional discretion to the minister and the NDIA. These are substantial reforms, and, for many Australians living with a disability, they are deeply confronting.

One of the areas causing significant anxiety is the proposed change around 'reasonable and necessary supports'. The bill allows for maximum funding amounts, maximum support intensity and even maximum worker-to-participant ratios to be set through determinations. For government, that may sound like administrative efficiency, but for families it can sound like rationing. For a parent of a child with profound needs, it creates fear that supports will increasingly be driven by budget settings rather than individual circumstances. For people like the Melmeth family, they know this fear all too well. In October last year, I rose in this place to raise serious issues about the treatment of the Melmeth family, a family doing incredible work to give their severely disabled son Harry the best life possible, by the NDIA. Harry's story highlighted the systemic failings of the NDIS, showing how its processes can undermine the very people it is meant to serve. In my speech at the time, I shared these words from Marie, his mother:

It is clear in Harry's medical documentation that his disabilities are life-limiting, but instead of spending time and making memories with our family, I must waste my time fighting this David and Goliath battle that consumes and controls my life.

Harry passed away in January this year, an unthinkable loss for his family. Not only did the Melmeth family have to deal with the profound pain of losing a child, but they also had to experience the pain of a system that continued to let them and their boy down. The facts of this case are a shocking indictment of the NDIS, where pleas for help are met with silence or worse, silence from a minister having twice raised the concerns of the Melmeth family with no response whatsoever. We should acknowledge cases like these honestly and respectfully when considering reforms.

These proposed changes are already causing significant anxiety for people with disability and their families because the government has not clearly defined how these powers will operate in practice. That uncertainty matters because people living with disability already live with enough uncertainty. Another area of concern is the proposal allowing the minister to reduce funding across groups of supports through legislative instruments. While the bill states the minister must consider participant safety, many Australians will worry about the precedent being created. People want assurance that the supports they rely on will not simply become a budget balancing exercise.

Similarly, the changes to reassessments and eligibility tests raise understandable concerns. The bill proposes a far tighter framework for unscheduled plan reassessments, limiting them to situations involving significant and ongoing changes in circumstances. I understand why the government is doing this. There are around 12,000 unscheduled reassessments every month, and these have contributed significantly to plan inflation. But we must also remember that disability is not static. Life changes. Carers age, housing arrangements collapse, mental health deteriorates, children grow, medical conditions worsen unexpectedly and, in regional Australia, service availability can change overnight. We must ensure the system retains enough humanity and flexibility to respond when people genuinely need help.

There is also concern about the proposed changes to the definition of permanence. The bill seeks to ensure that all appropriate treatment options have been explored before access to the NDIS is granted. Again, there is logic behind that principle. The NDIS was never intended to replace every part of the health system, but Australians with disabilities should not feel pressured into treatments they do not want and should not fear losing support because the bureaucrats determine they have not done enough to pursue improvement. These are deeply personal decisions, and they must be approached with compassion, common sense and respect for every individual autonomy.

I also note concerns regarding the broad transitional rule making powers in the bill, including what has been described as a Henry VIII clause, allowing rules to effectively alter the operation of primary legislation. That is extraordinarily significant power, and parliament should always be cautious about handing over broad authority with limited scrutiny, particularly in legislation that affects vulnerable Australians.

Within my own electorate, I've been contacted by constituents working within the sector who, though initially strongly supporting proposed reforms to the NDIS and the implementation of the Thriving Kids program, now after completing the expression of interest process and reviewing the draft program specifications have serious concerns that in practice the implementation of reforms do not align with the stated aims. Nikki and Laura constituents working as speech pathologists in Maitland shared with me their concerns about the reforms. They say:

One of the stated aims is to support children where they live, learn and play by building the capability of the adults around them. Yet the current model appears to exclude early childhood educators from accessing meaningful therapeutic education and support.

This is deeply concerning.

Early childhood educators are among the adults best placed to positively influence a child's development through daily interactions.

If we are genuinely committed to building capacity where children learn and play, why are these key adults being excluded?

I am also concerned about access pathways for children who require targeted therapeutic intervention.

Who determines when a child needs therapy?

What developmental expertise will referrers hold?

What happens when progress is slower than expected?

Child development is not linear.

Rigid, short-term block models may work for some children, but they will not meet the needs of all.

There is also the very real issue of workforce capacity.

Australian Early Development Census data show increasing developmental vulnerability among children entering school, including communication-related domains. At the same time, speech pathology access was already stretched before COVID, particularly in regional areas.

The likely outcome is predictable: increased demand, reduced provider access and families waiting longer for support.

I am particularly concerned by the apparent intent to preference NGO and community providers while limiting access to experienced private providers except in exceptional circumstances.

Many highly experienced paediatric clinicians now work in private practice.

Excluding this workforce does not strengthen the system. It weakens it.

The longer-term implications concern me greatly.

We know unmet developmental and communication needs do not simply disappear. They often emerge later as school disengagement, behavioural distress, mental health challenges, family burnout, and greater reliance on more intensive and expensive systems of support.

This risks becoming a cost shift rather than true reform, moving pressure from the NDIS onto families, schools, health systems and communities.

I genuinely support reform that improves outcomes for children. But reforms must be built on developmental science, workforce reality, and practical implementation, not assumptions about where expertise currently sits …

Children only get one early childhood.

We cannot afford to get this wrong.

Alison, who is another speech pathologist that lives in my electorate, has raised her serious concerns. She says:

Children who would have got NDIS last year are now getting knocked back by NDIS with no plans to direct them into the Thriving Kids program, which as we know they are still trying to plan.

I talked to one provider coordinator who said they haven't been given any different criteria for their submissions on behalf of applicants to the NDIS but they are seeing more children refused.

They are also not keeping any sort of a list of possible eligibility for Thriving Kids (it wouldn't be hard for NDIS to do this or to ask providers to do this, to create a data base for those previously requesting assistance to receive a personalised contact from NDIS when Thriving Kids is due to be launched with instructions to help them access) and have in fact been told they will find out about Thriving Kids along with the rest of us, when it is in the Media.

That is so disrespectful to everyone, the families, the provider workers, everyone! It shows the organisations contempt for helping families with kids who are struggling to develop skills.

With them refusing kids entry without a possible alternative program to put them into immediately, they are creating a group of children who will probably remain in a gap between services or will never receive services and create a group of disadvantaged children for some time.

None of this means reform should not occur. Reform is necessary. The scheme must be sustainable. If costs continue to grow unchecked, future governments will face impossible choices. And, if fraud and waste continue to undermine confidence, the social licence that underpins the NDIS will weaken. But sustainability cannot simply mean reducing expenditure. True sustainability also means maintaining trust that genuine participants will be treated fairly, that vulnerable Australians will not be abandoned, that the system will remain centred on people rather than bureaucracy and that governments are targeting the real causes of waste and exploitation, not simply making it harder for vulnerable people to access support.

Australians with disabilities should never be made to feel like they are the problem. The overwhelming majority of participants are honest people trying to live their lives with dignity. The overwhelming majority of carers are doing extraordinary work under immense pressure, and many providers are deeply committed people that deliver essential support in difficult circumstances. They deserve a system that supports them and protects them from those who seek to exploit the scheme for profit. That is why many Australians will be looking closely at whether this bill genuinely cracks down on organised fraud and criminal behaviour or whether much of the burden of reform instead falls on participants and families already struggling to navigate the system. As legislators, we have a responsibility to get this balance right to protect taxpayers' money, to protect the integrity of the scheme and, also, to protect the people that the scheme was created to serve.

Andrew Wilkie (Clark, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yesterday I was delighted to meet Clare Waiss, the Tasmanian representative at the parliamentary carers event. What she had to say there was powerful and worth repeating here, at least in part:

Seven years ago, when our son Felix was born, we thought we understood what parenting would look like. What we didn't understand then was how quickly parenting would become advocacy, caregiving, administration, crisis management and constant negotiation with systems.

Felix lives with a rare genetic condition called ARF1, which has resulted in cerebral palsy, intellectual disability and significant support needs. He is non-speaking, requires assistance 24/7 and relies on mobility aids and AAC devices for communication. But to us, he's just Felix. He's funny, cheeky, stubborn, determined and full of personality. He's also a big brother to his 5 year old sister Lily.

Like many families entering the disability world for the first time, we suddenly found ourselves navigating specialists, hospital systems, therapy providers, education supports and the NDIS, all while trying to process the emotional reality of what our future now looked like.

For families like ours, there is no pause button. When therapies are reduced, children like Felix lose opportunities to build and maintain the skills that give them independence, mobility and connection to the world around them. When support worker funding is cut, families are left scrambling at the last minute, rearranging work, appointments and daily life just to keep everything functioning. When waiting lists blow out, children miss critical early intervention and families remain in crisis longer.

Every policy decision made in Canberra, every legislative amendment and every systems reform will eventually land somewhere very real, at a kitchen table like ours. It will land with parents trying to decide whether they can keep working. With carers already surviving on exhaustion. With siblings quietly adapting around systems that were never designed with them in mind. And with people with disability whose quality of life depends on whether support remains accessible, timely and sustainable.

Clare's personal experience eventually led her to create Care Plus Management, a support, coordination and plan management enterprise which, along with her own family experience, makes her insights supremely valuable. Indeed, in a recent letter to the Tasmanian disability minister, she had this to say, at least in part:

I have many concerns regarding the proposed legislation, however some of my biggest concerns relate to the increasing medicalisation of disability access and support eligibility. From my reading of the Bill and associated material, I am increasingly concerned that participants will effectively be required to demonstrate that all possible treatment pathways have been exhausted before disability support eligibility can be established or maintained. As a parent, this raises some really confronting questions for me. In Felix's case, he has Cerebral Palsy and has previously been assessed by his Rehabilitation Paediatrician through Tas Health as possibly not being an appropriate candidate for SDR surgery. However, another Paediatrician or Surgeon with less familiarity and clinical history of Felix may potentially form an entirely different opinion regarding whether he should undergo the procedure. That is what concerns me most about the direction of this legislation. Children and adults with disability may effectively be forced to pursue invasive and extremely expensive medical procedures with long and difficult rehabilitation timeframes simply to prove that their disability remains functionally impairing despite treatment attempts, even where there is conflicting medical opinion or significant uncertainty regarding the likely outcomes for that individual person.

For some people this may involve major orthopaedic or spinal surgeries, experimental treatments, intensive rehabilitation programs, or medications with significant side effects and limited evidence of long-term functional improvement. Families and participants should never be placed in a position where access to essential disability supports becomes contingent on undertaking high-risk medical interventions in an attempt to "prove" permanence. I worry about what this could mean more broadly for participants with Cerebral Palsy and other lifelong disabilities. Would families be expected to pursue spinal surgeries, orthopaedic procedures, or other invasive interventions in order to establish permanency? At what point does this shift from disability support into requiring families to medically "prove" their child cannot be fixed?

What concerns me further is that this approach simply shifts costs into other already overwhelmed systems, particularly Medicare, the PBS and the public health system, while placing enormous emotional pressure on families navigating incredibly complex decisions regarding their child's care. For many participants, therapies and interventions are intended to improve comfort, maintain mobility, reduce pain, or maximise quality of life, not cure disability. The existence of a possible intervention should not undermine recognition that a person still has a lifelong functional impairment requiring support. I also question where the line is drawn regarding expensive medical treatments, medications or therapies that may not even be fully covered under the PBS. Families living with disability already face enormous out-of-pocket medical costs. We are now potentially moving toward a system where participants will be pressured to pursue extremely expensive treatments, specialist interventions or medications simply to demonstrate they have "tried everything", even where the evidence of meaningful functional improvement is limited or the treatment is not considered clinically appropriate for that individual.

I am also deeply concerned regarding the proposed reduction of funding for social and community participation supports within Core budgets. Whilst these supports are often portrayed publicly as "nice to have" or non-essential, the reality is they are frequently the only mechanism allowing people with disability to meaningfully participate in their communities. The disability community has spent decades advocating for inclusion, accessibility and equal participation in society. We have finally started seeing real progress, inclusive playgrounds, accessible beaches, community events, schools, sporting programs and councils beginning to genuinely consider accessibility and inclusion in planning and infrastructure. On the Gold Coast last week I saw firsthand what genuine inclusion can look like. Free beach wheelchairs are available for families to access without cost or complex processes, allowing children like Felix to participate in spaces that historically excluded them entirely. These initiatives matter because inclusion does not happen naturally, it requires intentional investment, support and accessibility.

The Federal Government has publicly stated that the proposed NDIS reforms are expected to reduce projected scheme expenditure by approximately $35 billion over the coming 4 years. Whilst this is often framed politically as "slowing growth", the reality is that the NDIS is not simply a budget line item, it is a workforce. Aside from areas such as Assistive Technology (Disability Equipment), almost every dollar spent through the Scheme directly funds somebody's employment. Disability support workers, therapists, local area coordinators, support coordinators, plan managers, allied health professionals, administration staff, transport providers and community participation programs will all inevitably be impacted by reductions in funding flowing through the sector. This is likely to have significant broader economic consequences, particularly in regional communities where the disability sector has become a major source of employment growth over the past decade. It is also important to recognise that the disability and care workforce is overwhelmingly female, with women making up the substantial majority of the sector nationally. At a time when governments continue to speak about strengthening female workforce participation and investing in the care economy, these reforms risk doing the exact opposite, reducing jobs, suppressing wages, and destabilising one of the country's largest female-dominated workforces.

For decades, people with disability were largely hidden away from society. Many were segregated into institutions, group homes, or isolated within their own homes because they simply did not have the supports required to safely and meaningfully participate in the community. Over the past 10 years since the inception of the NDIS, we have slowly started to see genuine social change occur.

Disabled people are now visible in our communities every single day, at playgrounds, beaches, sporting events, shopping centres, schools and workplaces. Slowly, the stares from strangers have started to lessen. The whispered 'shh' from a parent when their child asks questions about a disabled person in public has started to lessen. Society has slowly started normalising disability as part of everyday Australian life, because people with disability have finally been given the opportunity to actually participate in society. My greatest fear is that these proposed policy directions risk taking us backwards. If social and community participation supports are significantly reduced, many people with disability will once again become isolated behind closed doors because participation will simply become inaccessible. Families already under enormous pressure will no longer have the support required to safely take their children into the community. Adults with disability will lose opportunities for connection, independence and visibility within society. I worry we are slowly moving back toward a system that values segregation over inclusion because inclusion is considered too expensive.

The NDIS was never supposed to simply keep disabled people alive. It was supposed to allow people with disability to live meaningful lives as visible and valued members of Australian society. Once disabled people disappear from public life again, society stops designing for them, thinking about them and including them. History has already shown us where that leads.

Unsurprisingly, Clare also has much to say about plan management—she's a plan manager—which, regrettably, I'll need to truncate heavily here for the lack of speaking time:

I remain extremely uneasy about the Government's position on Plan Management and the broader messaging around fraud within the sector.

Plan Managers are already one of the most highly scrutinised parts of the scheme. We operate under registration requirements, auditing obligations, compliance standards, financial accountability frameworks and direct NDIA oversight. There are currently only approximately 1,443 registered Plan Managers nationally supporting more than 460,000 plan-managed participants across Australia, despite the broader NDIS market consisting of more than 260,000 active providers across the sector. In that context, registered Plan Managers already represent a relatively small and highly regulated subset of the overall disability workforce.

More concerningly, the direction of the reforms appears to be moving toward consolidation of Plan Management into a small number of very large multinational or corporate providers. From an NDIS perspective, I worry this risks fundamentally undermining participant choice and control, one of the core principles the scheme was built upon. Smaller community-based Plan Managers often provide highly individualised support, understand local services, identify emerging safeguarding concerns early, and assist participants to navigate increasingly complex systems in ways that large, centralised providers simply cannot replicate at scale.

I believe another critical issue within the proposed reforms is the ongoing public narrative being presented about the role of Plan Managers, including statements made by the NDIS Minister which do not accurately reflect either the legislation or the operational realities of Plan Management. For example, there have been repeated suggestions that Plan Managers are driving unnecessary plan reassessments or financially benefiting from early plan reviews. However, Plan Managers cannot and have never been able to request a plan review on behalf of a participant under the legislation.

Similarly, the suggestion that Plan Managers financially benefit from participants seeking earlier reassessments is fundamentally incorrect. Early plan reviews create significantly more administrative work, manual processing, participant communication, compliance monitoring and financial risk for Plan Managers, without any additional payment being received.

I could go on and list my own concerns, like the financial inability of the Tasmanian government to fund the additional services that will be expected of it. But, you know what, I think I'll stick with Clare because she's done a better job than I ever could have done. I'll give her the last word:

I fully appreciate the complexity of managing a scheme of this size and absolutely recognise the importance of ensuring the NDIS remains financially sustainable long term. My son Felix will rely on the NDIS for the entirety of his life, which means I have a deeply vested interest in ensuring the Scheme continues to exist and remains viable not only for him, but for future generations of Australians living with disability.

Families like mine understand better than anyone that sustainability matters. However, sustainability cannot come at the expense of the fundamental purpose and philosophy of the NDIS itself. I strongly believe the current direction risks shifting the Scheme away from one centred on inclusion, participation, independence and quality of life, toward one focused predominantly on cost containment, functional minimisation and restricting access to support. The NDIS was never intended to simply deliver the bare minimum required to keep disabled people alive. It was designed to allow people with disability to participate meaningfully in society, exercise choice and control, and live with dignity as valued members of their communities.

I say thank you to Clare. She gives voice to countless people.

Aaron Violi (Casey, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for the Digital Economy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Firstly, I want to commend the member for Clark for bringing Clare's voice to Canberra. I echo his sentiment, and I let Clare know that we are listening and we have heard that, so thank you. We have an important role to speak, as members of parliament, but the most powerful role we can play, particularly in this conversation, is in bringing the voices of participants and those involved. So thank you, Member for Clark, and please let Clare know that people have listened.

This is an important conversation that we are having. We need to get this right. Last month, the Minister for Health and Ageing dropped a bombshell on every single person who relies on the NDIS during a speech at the Press Club. He announced that every person with a disability who receives support through the NDIS would face being reassessed to get vital and often life-saving supports. Since that announcement and that bombshell, my office and, I know, every office across our community has been inundated with calls and emails from distressed locals and their support workers, uncertain of what the future holds.

In my electorate of Casey, there are 5,459 individuals who rely on the NDIS, and that's just the individual participants. Beyond that number are their families, their communities, their loved ones, their support networks. These changes will impact tens of thousands in my community and millions of Australians all across the country, which is why it's so important that we get it right. As I stand here today and speak on this bill, the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026, I want those Australians to know that I hear their concerns loud and clear.

For Australians navigating significant and permanent disability, the NDIS is much more than a safety net. It is the bridge between isolation and community. It brings independence, the ability to work and the supports to thrive and live a life of dignity rather than limitation. For families and loved ones, it gives them a support network and it gives them hope and certainty for the future. For so many families, the NDIS is a lifeline. It provides people with disabilities and their families with hope, structure, support and guidance. In some cases, the support of the NDIS is what holds families together. At the moment, too many of these families feel like that hope is slipping away. They've seen their supports reduced and their funding cut. What is just a line item in the budget in Canberra is the difference between hope and despair for the families impacted. We need to remember that behind every number and every budget saving the government talks about, we are talking about people.

We are talking about people like Jackson in my electorate of Casey. For Jackson, the NDIS has changed his life and changed his family's life. It's provided him with the supports that allow him to work and get back into our community, and that give his parents the support they need and the break that they need. I had the opportunity to meet with Jackson's parents and hear firsthand from them about Jackson's story. When I first met with them—I've engaged with them quite a lot—they brought a photo of Jackson to make sure that I knew there was a person behind the conversation, because Jackson wasn't able to attend. Then they invited me to, and I had the honour of attending, Jackson's work to see him working with his carer, and to meet Jackson and talk to him about the football that he plays at the Montrose football club in the all abilities team and really see firsthand the life that Jackson is building and how important it is to him and his family, and that is because of the NDIS.

We need to make sure that people like Jackson can get the support that they need, and part of that, clearly, is making sure that the NDIS is sustainable. It's clear that the status quo isn't working. Fraud and rorting have infiltrated the scheme, and it's broken. The NDIS was intended to be a participant-friendly system, yet I continue to hear from families within our community that they are struggling to navigate the system and are living in fear of funding cuts and what that means to their loved ones.

I want to share the story of a family in the upper Yarra who reached out to my office this week. This is a single-parent family already experiencing severe financial and social hardship. They are currently living without permanent secure housing. This family relies on the NDIS support for their son and recently applied for a review, given the son's escalating aggressive behaviours and difficulty attending a mainstream school. Not only were they unsuccessful in getting further support; the NDIS reduced the supports the family already had, severely reducing the son's plan at the time they needed it most. This included the removal of support coordination and reductions in behaviour support, including spreading funding that was initially intended for a 12-month period over a three-year period, as well as almost halving the therapy supports available. Despite clear risks, these critical supports have been cut at a time of worsening behaviours and financial distress for the family.

There are a lot of people right now who are exceptionally worried about whether they themselves or their child, family member or loved one will still be eligible for support through the NDIS. The answer isn't clear, and where do they go? Our state health systems are already at capacity, and people are being turned away from daily services. We have a situation where NDIS participants are too scared to ask for a plan to be reviewed for fear that it will be cut, like the family that I just spoke about—and this from a prime minister who said that no-one would be left behind. At the moment, those on the NDIS are feeling left behind and forgotten by this prime minister. Let's chalk that up as another example of the Prime Minister saying one thing before an election and delivering another after it.

There is no doubt that the NDIS has rapidly grown since its establishment. Originally intended to support around 410,000 Australians, the NDIS now supports 760,000 participants, and the number continues to grow. Originally estimated to cost $13.6 billion, the NDIS now costs around $50 billion, and this is expected to reach $70 billion by the end of the decade. Clearly, this isn't sustainable and changes are needed; however, how the changes happen also matter. The fact is that one of the reasons this is the first piece of legislation the government introduced after the budget is that they need to rush this through the parliament so they can start to bank the savings that they've already spent in other areas of their budget.

This is now the Albanese government's third attempt to slow the growth of the scheme. They set a target of eight per cent in 2023. In January this year, that was reduced to five to six per cent. In April this year it was revised down again to two per cent. Right now, growth in the NDIS is sitting at 10.3 per cent, meaning this government is failing on every metric. They've banked savings previously that they've failed to hit, and they've banked more savings into the future. That's what makes those on the system so nervous right now.

Without a clear implementation strategy, policy guidelines and consultation with the disability community to get these significant changes right, the government's growth targets will be nothing more than an aspirational target to fix their bottom line and there will be significant damage done to those on the system as they rush to get this number banked. As I said, the government has already banked the number. They've spent the savings from the NDIS in this budget. While the NDIS has to be sustainable and spending needs to be reduced, this cannot be because the government and this Treasurer cannot manage the budget. This Prime Minister cannot punish those on the NDIS and their families because of his failures and his Treasurer's failures.

Labor's bill makes a number of changes to the scheme. The bill will restrict a person's ability to ask for an unscheduled reassessment of their plan. It will establish a framework to assess a person's eligibility for full support through the NDIS. Until now, eligibility has been based primarily on a person's diagnosis. This bill will change that to be based on a person's reduced functional capacity as a result of the diagnosis. This bill establishes the legislative mechanism to change the way a person is assessed but provides no detail of what that new assessment will look like. This hasn't been developed yet. This in and of itself has caused a level of fear and anxiety amongst the community.

As the shadow treasurer would know, this government is big on making announcements but providing no detail. Whether it is the NDIS, capital gains or negative gearing—so many things about this government are big headlines with no detail and more damage done. But when it's impacting people on the NDIS—

Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's deceitful.

Aaron Violi (Casey, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for the Digital Economy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is deceitful, and it's disgraceful. 'My word is my bond—no Australian left behind.' This prime minister has not delivered one shred of honesty or integrity in his time as Prime Minister. Changes of this magnitude need to be done right. People need to be consulted, and they haven't been. There will also be changes to plan renewals, and the caution we have for the government on this is to ensure that there is no gap between a person's plan ending and the new plan being created and no delay in supports for people with disability because of slow bureaucracy. They need to make sure that the states are ready to provide the services through Thriving Kids and other mechanisms. At the moment, we're hearing stories and we're seeing the government pull funding to go into a state service that is not ready. Again, they're looking to bank a number in the budget at the expense of Australians that need the support.

One of the most disappointing aspects of the NDIS has been the rise of fraud and rorts within the system. Week after week, we are seeing stories of criminals exploiting the scheme for personal gain—in some cases, in the millions—often for services that were never provided. In the calendar year of 2025, $48.83 billion was spent on paid supports to participants. If six to 10 per cent of those transactions were non-compliant, fraudulent or incorrect, that would equate to a $2.9 billion to $4.8 billion cost to the scheme per annum. It sounds very similar, shadow treasurer, to the CFMEU and the Allan Labor government. There's a connection between Labor promising things and not delivering and providing services that have been for fraud and corruption for their friends.

Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's a pipeline from public money into organised crime.

Aaron Violi (Casey, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for the Digital Economy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A pipeline from public money into organised crime—well said, shadow treasurer. Evidence from investigations and prosecutions shows that these losses arise from a range of activities, including outright fraud, deliberate overservicing, false invoicing, claims for services never delivered, and collusion between providers and participants.

This bill goes some way to addressing the rising number of bad actors taking advantage of participants and taxpayers by introducing additional provider registration requirements. Right now, around 94 per cent of providers are unregistered. The controls and fraud protection mechanisms are far too weak, and we see this nearly every day in the papers and on social media. This is absolutely unacceptable. These providers are taking advantage of NDIS participants, and they are taking advantage of the taxpayers who are funding this work. There are a few measures in this bill that stamp out this fraud. The digital payments platform needing to retain receipts and evidence of services and the 90-day claim timeframe will help with some of this, but it will not stamp out the rorts. That's why the coalition has called for a Senate inquiry into this bill. Submissions are currently open to participants, families, carers, providers and advocates right across the country. We must carefully scrutinise these changes. NDIS participants can't be expected to trust reforms that this government can't even explain, and they need more information on what these changes will mean for their future.

Sophie Scamps (Mackellar, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026. The intent of this bill is to ensure a sustainable NDIS for future generations by slowing growth of scheme costs, reducing fraud, strengthening provider regulation and improving governance. I recognise the need to rein in the NDIS, to make it sustainable, fair and protected from fraud and poor providers. Like me, many providers and families in Mackellar support sensible reforms. We want the scheme to work for the people it was designed to support, and we want to ensure that public money is used well. However, several core issues must be addressed before this bill proceeds to ensure that participants are not left without important supports they need. Such issues include the ministerial power to cut support determinations, the ministerial pricing power, changes to the permanence test, the hierarchy of evidence for reasonable and necessary supports, the reliance on automation and the lack of readiness for alternative supports outside the NDIS. Until these issues are fixed, the risk of unintended consequences and people being left behind without adequate support is simply too high.

We cannot ask families to trust a new system when the details are unpublished, the rules are not clear and the services outside the NDIS are not yet established. Parents, carers, participants and local providers in my electorate are deeply anxious about this bill. Elise, mum of Rafferty, a 14-year-old hot-shot wheelchair basketballer in Mackellar, fought to get him on the NDIS. But Rafferty has recently been given a five-year plan that has no funding for physiotherapy and allows only 12 hours a year for exercise physiology. There's also no funding for a new day chair, even though he will grow out of his current adjustable chair in about six months. There is no funding for a sports chair to enable him to continue the sport he loves. There is no funding for the changes that happen between 14 and 19: growing independence, learning to access the community safely and building confidence. His mother puts it plainly: 'These are not nice-to-have items; they are core necessities for functional capacity and basic daily living.' This is why people are frightened by broad ministerial powers to cut supports. If this is already happening, families rightly ask: what will happen when wider ministerial powers are added?

I've also heard from Nora, from North Narrabeen. Nora is 69. Her daughter is a young, vibrant, happy adult and an NDIS participant. Nora's husband had a stroke seven years ago and uses a wheelchair. Nora's daughter is non-verbal. She cannot read or write. She cannot drive, and she cannot go to the shops alone or meet friends safely without support. Nora is deeply concerned about cuts to social and community participation funding. For her daughter, this support is not an optional extra. It's what lets her leave the house, meet people, be safe and live a life beyond four walls. It took years to build the right team of support workers. These are trusted relationships that were built slowly and carefully. Nora is worried that the changes to provider rules and pricing may disrupt these relationships. She also asked a simple question about review rights: 'If funding is cut where is the fair opportunity to challenge it, and where is the consideration of safety, continuity and longer term costs when support is removed?'

I've also heard from Lisa Hughes, Founder and CEO of Occupational Therapy Helping Children in Frenchs Forest. Lisa has supported children, young people and families for more than 30 years. She's worried this bill may reduce access to early intervention, weaken family choice, increase pressure on parents and destabilise experienced local providers. Lisa knows what existed before the NDIS. In the 1990s, she ran the paediatric occupational therapy service at Mona Vale Hospital. At that time, there were only 19 hours of paediatric occupational therapy available each week for the whole of the Pittwater and Warringah council areas.

The NDIS has allowed many children to access regular, local and consistent support. It has helped families avoid long waitlists. It has helped children build skills early at a time when support can make the biggest difference. Lisa's concern is that children may lose access before alternative local supports are funded, staffed and tested. Lisa also raised concerns about the new assessment process. Children do not function the same way in every setting. Their needs change with fatigue, sensory load, school demands, emotional regulation, family stress and the environment around them. A child may manage in one controlled setting and struggle in a busy classroom, on public transport or in crowded community spaces. Assessment must look at how a child lives, learns and plays. It must not reduce complex children to rigid categories or an automated result.

One of the main concerns is that families need a fair and responsive pathway for review when a plan no longer fits. They need human review, transparency and clinical judgement. They need the ability to correct errors easily. I've also heard from Evelyn and Alexander. They are Northern Beaches parents of a 22-year-old son with severe autism and intellectual disability. Their son has limited speech and no effective means of self-care. He relies on others for daily care, transport and basic needs. With the NDIS, his life changed for the better. He has been able to take part in meaningful activities and contribute in ways that were not possible before. This gives him purpose, achievement and connection.

Alexander and Evelyn are worried that the definition of 'functional capacity' may be shaped later by rules made outside of this parliament. They're worried about changes to the permanence test and what those changes may mean in practice. Key terms such as these in the act should not be left to uncertain future rules. They're also worried about plan reassessments. Their own request for a plan review was not acted on for more than a year. They had no clear way to track the progress and they found contact processes unreliable, inaccessible and unfair, yet the bill proposes consequences when participants do not respond to contact.

Evelyn and Alexander are also concerned about broad powers to reduce plan funding. They point to the proposed section 34A and the risk of a large percentage reduction that may not be reviewable. They're also concerned about the move away from reasonable and necessary supports, which are part of the promise of the NDIS. Sustainability should mean providing supports that are reasonable, necessary, evidence based and cost-effective. It should not mean giving executive power to reduce supports below what has been assessed as needed. I absolutely recognise the need to ensure that scheme growth is sustainable. However, the potential for significant cuts and changes to people's plans that this bill enables and the level of direct ministerial control that will be made possible have the potential for disastrous outcomes for some of our most vulnerable citizens.

Pragmatic system improvements, such as fraud minimisation; provider enrolment; payment changes to improve capacity for the National Disability Insurance Agency to monitor and ensure compliance; and, if implemented correctly and safely, new framework planning, provide the necessary foundations for prudent management of scheme finances while also retaining a focus on participant rights and outcomes. Providers and participants must be part of the solution and participants must not be moved off the NDIS until alternative support is real, funded, staffed and ready. These are reasonable requests.

Minister Butler identified in his speech to the National Press Club last month that the NDIS Reform Advisory Committee said recently more time is needed to deal with the legislative uncertainty and remove the risk of other unintended consequences. The same advice must apply to this bill. While the NDIS desperately needs reform, let's take the time to address this now and get it right.

Andrew Willcox (Dawson, Liberal National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Manufacturing and Sovereign Capability) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on a matter that cuts straight to the core of our national conscience, the National Disability Insurance Scheme. A civilised society is judged by how it cares for its most vulnerable citizens, which is why we must get the NDIS right. In the coalition, our foundational wish is for every single Australian to live an absolute best life. It is a human baseline that every person in this chamber would want. To understand the true value of the NDIS, you must look at the immense emotional, physical and financial strain borne daily by individuals and families living with disability just to survive and thrive. For these families, the NDIS is a lifeline. It is the absolute difference between surviving in isolation and thriving in a vibrant community. It is the support worker who provides a parent with a few hours of much-needed respite. It is the home modification that allows a young person to move freely around their own domestic sanctuary. It is the specialised equipment that grants a child the ability to communicate with the world.

Because of the sheer human importance of this scheme, we in the coalition affirm our strong, unshakeable, bipartisan support for the NDIS. We believe in its core mission, and we want it to succeed for generations to come. But, because we want it to succeed, we are deeply concerned that this government's heavy handed cuts are on track to hurt the wrong people. We know that the vast majority of participants are honest, true-blue Australians who simply need a helping hand. They're not rorting the system. They are just trying to survive the challenges of everyday life. Those with real, profound, structural needs should be getting every single bit of help that they require without having to fight their own government for the privilege.

However, we must also confront a cold, hard financial truth that ensuring the long-term sustainability of this scheme is absolutely vital. If we do not secure its foundations, the entire structure will collapse under its own weight, and the people who will suffer the most are the very participants who rely on the NDIS just to live. Let us look plainly at the staggering numbers. The rapid expansion of this scheme has completely outpaced the original forecast. When first established, it was expected to support around 410,000 Australians at a total cost of $13.6 billion. Today, the scheme supports over 760,000 participants, and it continues to expand daily. The cost for this financial year alone is sitting at a massive $50 billion, and on its current trajectory it is projected to blow right out to $70 billion by the end of the decade. This is simply not sustainable. No economy can bankroll a runaway trajectory like that. Something has to give way.

Let us examine the specific mechanisms of this bill, the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026, starting with eligibility and access. This legislation seeks to establish an entirely new legal framework for determining who gets into the NDIS. Until now, eligibility has been based primarily on the person's medical diagnosis. You had a condition, and that condition opened the door to support. This bill shifts the foundational goalposts. Eligibility will now be based on a person's substantially reduced functional capacity—and that is certainly a mouthful—introducing a strict centralised definition. The government tells us this will create a consistent, objective and evidence-based assessment process. But in regional communities like mine it is currently creating fear. Parents are staying up at night, wondering if their autistic child will suddenly be deemed too functional for support. Individuals who have spent years building a life are terrified that their independence is about to be stripped away.

While this bill establishes the legislative mechanism to create the assessments, it provides zero detail on what these new assessments will actually look like. This lack of transparency has caused a massive wave of anxiety throughout the community, where respectful consultation has been completely lacking. From 1 January 2028, all existing NDIS participants will progressively be reassessed over a three-year period, stretching to 31 December 2030. With over 760,000 participants currently on the books, that represents an absolute mountain of bureaucracy, and it begs a massive unanswered question: if these people are forced out, where do they go?

Our state and territory health systems are already bursting at the seams. In regional areas, our emergency departments are overwhelmed and our hospital services are having to turn people away daily. Finding a GP appointment can take weeks, and despite this Prime Minister claiming that all you will need is your Medicare card, everyday Australians are still paying massive out-of-pocket expenses just for the privilege of seeing a doctor. The waiting lists for specialists are months, and sometimes years, long. We are deeply hopeful that people with significant and permanent disabilities are not about to be put through the wringer, forced to provide a multitude of new, highly expensive medical reports just to continuously re-prove a lifelong disability.

This bill also takes direct aim at unscheduled plan reassessments, which currently average 12,000 every single month. Each mid-plan adjustment results in an average funding variation of around 20 per cent, costing taxpayers a projected $6.4 billion over the forward estimates. This mechanism has been aggressively exploited by bad actors, who treat a participant's plan like an unregulated ATM, triggering unnecessary reassessments purely to skim additional funds for services that they've either grossly inflated or never actually provided.

I recently met with a registered NDIS providers group in Townsville, and their frontline audit of this decay is confronting. They've encountered numerous examples of unregistered, completely unaccountable operators actively raiding the piggy banks of vulnerable participants, blowing an entire year's budget in a matter of months. Once the cash is completely drained, honest registered providers are directed to step in and deliver life-saving care for free, because, without them, these people would die. These local businesses are forced to absorb crushing overheads, carrying immense operational risk and fighting a hostile bureaucracy that routinely denies payment for critical care. It is fundamentally unfair, and we're going to lose our very best providers if we do not stop these crooks from stealing from our most vulnerable.

To top off this disgrace, these dedicated teams are trapped in a vicious catch-22: if they attempt to take an unfunded, high-risk patient to the hospital, the agency flags them and penalises them with disgusting accusations of neglect. They are forced to shoulder the entire burden of care for zero funding and are then weaponised against if they seek emergency medical help. No wonder this entire system is completely broken. This failure is supercharged by a system that also grants complex financial control to self-managed participants who, due to profound mental challenges, simply do not have the capacity or the budget. It is a cruel administrative failure that leaves vulnerable people entirely penniless for months on end—a glaring policy blind spot that demands immediate and total reform.

The coalition will always support measures that improve the integrity of the NDIS. We want genuine safeguards in place to protect participants and to stop the rampant fraud and rorting that is currently undermining the scheme. Right now, a staggering 94 per cent of providers are completely unregistered. With $50 billion in taxpayer funds going out the door, our fraud protection mechanisms are simply too weak. The Albanese government has more than 10,000 people working within the NDIS scheme alone, yet they are completely failing to use these massive resources to get on top of the issue and, more importantly, act. To date, neither the government nor the agency have been able to clearly quantify the scale of the theft. The data we have is deeply concerning. The Australian National Audit Office reported that six to 10 per cent of all claims could be noncompliant, fraudulent or simply incorrect.

Let us look at the true cost of this inertia. In the 2025 calendar year, $48.83 billion was spent on paid supports. If 10 per cent of that is leaking out, we're looking at a total loss of up to $4.8 billion a year. On the current trajectory, this leakage could hit a massive $8 billion annually by the end of the decade. This represents a sophisticated wave of organised crime, deliberate overservicing and false invoicing. Law enforcement agencies have warned that criminal groups are directly targeting these weak entry controls. We must remember the human cost of this failure. Every single dollar lost to a fraudster is a dollar directly ripped away from an Australian living with a disability, and they rely on the NDIS for support.

We are constantly receiving deeply concerning reports in our electorate offices across Dawson about participants seeking basic help around the home, like cleaning or gardening. The second they mention they have a NDIS plan, the quote for the exact same service instantly quadruples in price. This is completely unacceptable. These predatory operators are taking cruel advantage of vulnerable participants and treating the Australian taxpayer like an infinite gravy train.

Earlier this week this chamber offered its profound condolences following the passing of an absolute hero, AFL legend and motor neurone disease campaigner Neale Daniher. For 13 years Neale fought a courageous, deeply inspiring battle against the beast that is MND, touching millions of lives and raising over $100 million for vital medical research through FightMND. He showed our entire nation what true selfless determination looks like. Rest in peace, Neale.

A great shame is unfolding right now within our regional communities. In my electorate of Dawson, we're seeing multiple incidents of everyday people diagnosed with similarly degenerative neurological conditions. For these individuals, the path only goes downhill. There is no recovery. Yet, despite being increasingly incapable of looking after themselves and despite rapidly declining, their applications for support have been consistently rejected by the NDIA. If the NDIS is already so broken that people in such genuine, desperate need cannot even gain access to the scheme, then we have a profound moral crisis on our hands.

We absolutely must ensure that these proposed cuts do not place an even higher barrier in front of vulnerable Australians, completely blocking them from receiving the frontline care they require to live their lives with dignity. We need a system that is robust, transparent and completely secure. The message from our communities is clear: stop treating taxpayer funds like an open chequebook, clean out the rorters and protect the vulnerable Australians who rely on this care.

Debate adjourned.