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

Dr RYAN (Kooyong) (13:09): I move this amendment because it provides an important safeguard for NDIS participants. This amendment is straightforward. It provides that a support determination under proposed subsection 34A(4) may relate only to supports for social and community participation.

It'll force the government to put its money where its mouth is. The government has represented that section 34A will be used to cut social and community participation supports. But the bill, as drafted and confirmed by the explanatory memorandum, empowers the minister to reduce funding across almost any support category.

That includes daily living, transport, assistive technology, specialist disability accommodation and more. My amendment (6) asks the government to explicitly limit support determination powers in section 34A to social and community supports only. The purpose of this amendment is simple.

It is to stop the broad determination-making power in this bill being turned into a back door used through delegated legislation to quietly strip away essential disability supports while no-one is watching. There is real, raw fear in the disability community right now about how this ministerial power might be wielded—perhaps not by this minister but by subsequent governments, for example, those perhaps administered by One Nation, which has indicated it would abolish the NDIS.

People aren't imagining things. They fear that this legislation could be used to hollow out the everyday living supports that they rely on to get through the day. Let me be blunt.

I disagree with the proposed 50 per cent cut to social and community participation supports. I disagree with most of section 34A of this bill. I believe it's a blunt instrument, and I think that it will land hard on the lives of people with a disability.

But this amendment goes further than that disagreement. It would build a wall around something which is even more important. It would ensure that the support determination power could never be turned against those supports that hold people's daily lives together, that it couldn't be used to whittle away the core supports that let people eat, dress, communicate, move safely, access therapy or just stay healthy and independent.

These aren't luxuries. They're not nice-to-haves sitting at the margins of public policy. They are the floor beneath people's feet.

They are the fundamental supports that make disabled people's participation in society possible at all. This amendment is a measured and proportionate response to that fear. It is supported by the National Legal Aid, which has suggested repeatedly that supports should not have broad or scheme wide application.

I note that the government has struck a deal with the Greens in the Senate which will confine support determinations to the improved daily living skills component of capacity building supports and social, economic and community participation. But that improved daily living skills component of capacity building supports is something that should be protected as well from support determinations.

So in that way, this amendment goes further than the agreement reached in the Senate. This amendment will draw a clear line in the sand and it will say, 'Whatever else this bill does, it cannot be used to cut the supports that people cannot live without.' I commend the amendment to the House, and I move amendment (6) as circulated in my name: (6) Schedule 1, item 34, page 13 (after line 10), after subsection 34A(4), insert: (4A) The determination may relate only to supports for social and community participation.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Chesters ): The question is that the amendment be agreed to.