National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026

Mr TEHAN (Wannon—Manager of Opposition Business) (20:01): I just want to start by reiterating the coalition's bipartisan support for the National Disability Insurance Scheme. It's had bipartisan support since the moment it was introduced into this parliament. But with that bipartisan support comes responsibility.

There's responsibility for all of us in this chamber, because the scheme, as it's designed, is meant to help those who desperately need that help and that assistance. There are many, many wonderful examples of the NDIS working in my electorate of Wannon. I've met the participants and I've met the families of those participants, and they have nothing but extraordinary things to say about what the NDIS has done for them and how it has changed their lives so much for the better.

But, if we are to keep the NDIS, we must keep the NDIS sustainable. As a former minister who had responsibility for the NDIS, I took that responsibility incredibly seriously. As a matter of fact, as the first minister to really bolster the fraud mechanisms within the NDIS, one of the first things that I wanted to do was to make sure that we wouldn't see the exploitation of the scheme, like we had under other schemes.

In particular, I reference the childcare scheme, where we saw organised crime in particular move into aspects of that and a major clampdown required. From the word go, we've wanted to make sure that we weren't seeing people who shouldn't benefit from the NDIS benefiting from the NDIS. The sad reality is that, more and more, we are starting to see and hear examples of people benefiting from the NDIS who shouldn't be.

We have to put a stop to that, especially when it is people deliberately exploiting the scheme for their own benefit at the expense of participants. The calculations that we're seeing for what is going to happen to expenditure in the NDIS is something that none of us can accept, because that expenditure, ultimately, is going to pile so much pressure on the scheme itself that the majority of Australians will lose faith in the scheme.

None of us want that to occur. That's why it is critically important that we are able to reform the scheme. The minister is here in the chamber with us this evening, and I'm glad he is so he can listen to these wise words.

What we have to do is make sure that the expenditure is brought under control. Just to give you a sense as to what is happening—originally, the scheme was expected to support around 410,000 Australians. It now supports over 760,000 and is continuing to grow.

It was estimated to cost $13.6 billion. The cost this year is around $50 billion and is projected to blow out to $70 billion by the end of the decade. No-one in this place can put their hand on their heart and say that this is sustainable.

That is why we want to be able to work with the Albanese Labor government to bring the scheme's expenditure under control, to bring its growth rate under control and to make sure that the scheme can head back to doing the thing that it was designed to do: caring for the most vulnerable in our community. We attempted various measures to do this when we were in government.

I don't blame the minister, who's here with us tonight, but he was part of an opposition led by other shadows at the time who, every time we sought to do sensible things, basically ran a scare campaign. That's what they did. They ran a scare campaign.

We were mature. We reached across the aisle and said, 'We need to do something.' Every time we tried to do something, a scare campaign was run. We're not going to do that.

We want to work with you to effectively make sure we bring the scheme back under control. That is what we will seek to do. But, in doing that, there comes a real responsibility.

We want the government to work with us so that we know we're going to get the outcomes that we all need, because our worry at the moment is that the way the changes have been designed leaves a lot to be interpreted and a lot to the imagination. No-one likes that type of legislating. There's a lot that is going to be left to the regulations that we can't see before us here tonight as we debate this legislation.

We want to make sure that those regulations will do the right thing by participants, by those who most need it, and make sure we streamline the scheme away from those who are benefiting from the scheme and don't deserve to benefit from it. I say to the minister: this is going to require all of us in this place to work together, because, if we don't do it in a properly bipartisan way that we know is going to address the fundamental problems that are there in the scheme at the moment, then it won't work.

There is a real risk of this. We're already starting to see examples in my electorate. The most vulnerable are the ones who are having plans cut and having decisions made without proper rationale, leaving families desperate and wondering what will come next.

We can't have that. We've got to do this in a way whereby those people are looked after and it's those who are exploiting the scheme that we're able to wean out of the scheme. What does the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 do?

The bill will establish a new framework to assess a person's eligibility for support through the NDIS. Until now, eligibility has been based primarily on a person's diagnosis. This bill will change that, basing it on a person's reduced functional capacity as a result of that diagnosis.

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 to this isn't clear. This bill establishes the legislative mechanism to change the way a person is assessed, but it provides no detail on what the new assessment will look like.

The Albanese government hasn't developed that yet. This goes to the point that I was making before. There's a lot which has been left to the regulations, and those regulations have to be got right.

With the minister here, I say once again to the minister: please make sure you work with the parliament, all of us, to get this right, because if we don't get it right, we're once again going to see the most vulnerable be impacted by these decisions, rather than those we want weaned off the scheme and those who are exploiting the scheme and benefiting from the scheme for all the wrong reasons.

These changes won't roll out until 1 January 2028, so we have time to get it right. Hopefully, we will be able to get it right, because it is going to be critically important. The bill will also restrict a person's ability to ask for an unscheduled reassessment of their plan.

The government and the minister have said around 12,000 unscheduled plan reassessments are taking place each month, with most reassessments resulting in additional funding variations of 20 per cent. Right now, a participant or their support team, including their plan managers, can ask for a plan reassessment if they believe a person's needs have changed. Unfortunately, we are now seeing this power misused by some bad actors who are just out to skim additional funds from participants for services that are never provided.

The changes in the bill will restrict who can ask for a plan reassessment to a person's plan nominee or guardian, and this will only be considered where there has been a significant and ongoing change in a participant's functional capacity. This will ensure a participant or their trusted nominee or guardian remains in control of their needs. This is something that we support.

This is actually a change set out, and set out clearly, which will limit that request for a reassessment. It means the people who are asking for that reassessment have the best interests of the participant in mind, rather than others who might want to use the money for nefarious reasons—for themselves rather than for the participant. That is important.

In regard to impairment and the need for support, the bill clarifies that a person will only receive funding and support for the impairment for which they are accessing the NDIS. The government has advised that, in some cases where a person has sought support for additional medical conditions for which they were not intended to be supported by the NDIS and for which support has not been granted, the Administrative Review Tribunal has overruled these decisions.

This is an important clarification in this legislation. The NDIS was always intended to support people with significant and permanent disability, but other medical conditions should be supported by the health system, as was intended. Once again, this is where we're going to have to make sure we get it right, because there is no doubt the states have cost-shifted onto the NDIS.

There is no doubt that the states have cost-shifted away from their health system and, in some instances—and I know that in Victoria this has been the case—away from their aged-care system and onto the NDIS. We've got to make sure we get this right, because, when we were in government, we saw that the ability of states to cost-shift knew no bounds. When you have a scheme with expenditure like the NDIS, there is a real possibility that states will continue to cost-shift onto the NDIS, and this is not what it was designed to do.

It was designed with the states, and the states were meant to keep their areas of responsibility, not cost-shift away from it. So, once again, this is an area of this piece of legislation where we clearly support the intent of this legislation. There are other things that are also addressed in this: plan renewals, which is incredibly important; plan suspensions; the definition of permanence for disability; the retention of records; fraud registration.

These are all critical components of this piece of legislation, especially the last thing that I just mentioned: fraud. We have to stamp out the fraud. Can I just say this to people who are committing fraud in the NDIS or against the NDIS: seriously, you are robbing the most vulnerable in our community.

Nothing good can be said about that. It's the personification of evil, seriously. This bill, if it does nothing else, needs to clamp down on that above all things.

Once again, we offer our bipartisan support for the NDIS. We offer our bipartisan support for this bill. We raise the fact that there's a lot left in regulation which we want the minister—who's here with us tonight—to make sure he works cooperatively with the parliament to get right, because we have to get it right.

We want the NDIS so that it can be delivered for those who need it most in our community.