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

Senator WHITEAKER (Western Australia) (11:20): The NDIS is one of the greatest acts of collective decency our parliament has ever delivered. It transformed disability support from a fragmented system too often determined by a postcode, personal wealth or sheer luck into a national promise—a promise that Australians with permanent and significant disability have the right to live with dignity, to exercise choice and control over the care they receive, to participate in their communities and to pursue the life that they choose.

Labor created the NDIS as that promise of dignity, security and participation. The National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 protects that promise by making the scheme sustainable, improving the quality of supports that people with disability receive and ensuring that its funding reaches the people who need it the most.

A promise like this is not kept simply by repeating it. It is kept by making sure that the institution that gives effect to it is strong enough to endure. As chair of the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee, I've spent recent weeks listening to the concerns of participants, families, carers, advocates, providers, experts and government agencies sharing their views on this bill.

I have heard the genuine anxiety surrounding these reforms. We heard from people worried about whether the support that enables them to work, to study, to leave home, to maintain relationships and to remain safe would still be there. We heard important common ground—broad agreement that fraud, overcharging, conflicts of interest and poor-quality services have no place in the NDIS.

There was broad agreement that public money shouldn't disappear into a market that cannot demonstrate what is being delivered and that, in many cases, does people harm. There was broad agreement that the NDIS must endure for generations to come and that there are challenges in the growth, in the integrity and in the quality that we must address. The disagreement is not about whether the NDIS matters.

It is about how we best protect it and how we protect the people who rely upon it. The responsible course is not to wave reform through without scrutiny or to retreat from difficult decisions. Our focus through our work on the committee and, indeed, the focus of the government, Minister Butler and Minister McAllister has been to listen, to strengthen the legislation, to explain honestly what we seek to do and to continue the work beyond this week should this bill pass the parliament—and I hope it does—and to continue to work with the disability community on how these reforms come to fruition.

The NDIS operates at an enormous scale. More than $50 billion is paid through the scheme, and that is projected to grow significantly. The NDIA processes around 660,000 claims a day.

When Labor came to government, annual growth in the NDIS was around 22 per cent. That was simply not sustainable. Since coming to government, we've brought that down.

It was around 10.5 per cent in 25-26. We've worked with state and territory colleagues through National Cabinet, and that group has now agreed to work towards sustainable annual growth of five to six per cent or lower. The NDIS, under these changes, will continue to grow each year, but this bill seeks to slow that growth to bring the scheme to a more sustainable level.

This is crucial to making sure the scheme continue, but it doesn't come without tough decisions. One of the most important considerations of our work on the NDIS has been the challenges that have come from fraud and managing integrity in the scheme because every dollar lost to fraud or rorting is a dollar that is not going to people with disability who need support.

The problem has been fraudsters and organised criminals who have treated the NDIS as easy money, aided by a market with inadequate safeguards. Since coming to government, we have invested $1.3 billion in antifraud measures and established the Fraud Fusion Taskforce. That's real progress, but the agency needs stronger powers, and this bill provides them.

It allows the NDIA to investigate suspicious claims, inspect records, issue compliance and infringement notices, and pursue civil penalties. Providers will have to keep proper records to prove that they have provided the services they say, and claims will need to be made within 90 days of a support being delivered. The principle is straightforward: if someone is claiming public money, they must be able to show how it was delivered and that it was delivered.

These powers target the wrongdoing that has existed in the scheme. It protects participants' funding. This is an important reform.

Our bill also lifts standards across the provider market. Since 1 July, supported independent living and NDIS digital platform providers have been required to register with the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission. This bill broadens the definition of an NDIS provider, giving regulators clearer reach across the market and better oversight of who is being paid through the NDIS.

It also reforms plan management, who administer around 60 per cent of NDIS funding. Many do this job with great integrity, providing an important and trusted service, but there have been problems across the market: conflicts of interest, raising of false invoices, related-party transactions and payments made without services actually being delivered. That's why we seek to establish a panel of plan managers, required to meet proper quality, governance and integrity standards.

We want participants to retain choice in who manages their plan but to be able to choose from genuine, accountable providers who are subject to strong oversight so that plan managers protect a participants plan, not profit from it. This bill also establishes a clearer pricing system. For agency managed and plan managed supports, the minister will be able to set enforceable maximum prices based on advice from the NDIA.

We heard through the Senate inquiry that not everyone agrees that this is the right approach, but I do believe that it is an appropriate mechanism for setting pricing. The minister is accountable, ultimately, to the parliament and to the Australian people. Importantly, the minister must provide that advice to the parliament within five sitting days.

If a provider charges above the maximum price, the difference can be recovered from the provider. An NDIS plan must not be treated as a blank cheque by providers, and public funding should provide safe, effective and high-quality support for participants. This bill makes access to the NDIS fairer and more consistent.

The independent NDIS review found that the current approach is too dependent on diagnosis and access lists, which favour some but make it more challenging for people with more complex diagnoses to access support. The system shouldn't favour someone who can obtain the right support or manage a difficult pathway. We heard evidence during the Senate inquiry about varying assessment outcomes, including a particularly stark case where twins with the same diagnosis and the same support needs received very different plans through assessment.

It's really important that access to the scheme is consistent. This bill moves towards a more consistent, evidence based assessment of functional capacity. A technical advisory group will advise on the thresholds and assessment methods, and this will be informed by consultation with people with disability and the states and territories.

This work is really important, and it is ongoing. Those details are not being rushed, and access changes will not begin before 1 January 2028, giving us time to work through these important technical details. We know how important it is that we get this right for the disability community, for their families and carers and for providers.

There's important work with the states and territories to build Thriving Kids and other foundational supports before changes take effect, and this remains a priority. This bill also introduces more sensible rules for plan reassessments. One in five plans is currently subject to an unscheduled reassessment each year.

Some of those requests have been initiated without the participant's knowledge or with very little notice. Under this reform, only a participant or someone legally authorised to act on their behalf will be able to request an unscheduled assessment. Reassessment will remain available where there has been a significant and ongoing change in functional capacity.

Emergencies and short-term crises can still be addressed through a plan variation. This protects a participant's right to seek more support when their circumstances change, while preventing providers from pursuing larger plans without participant authority. These plan renewals will also replace the current rollover process.

One of the most difficult parts of this reform concerns our changes to social and community participation. I heard the concerns about these changes from people with disability, their families and their carers through our Senate inquiry. We know that participation is not a luxury.

It can mean attending an appointment, seeing friends, getting to work or simply enjoying life out in the community. This is really important. Spending in this category has risen from approximately $4 billion to more than $12 billion in five years.

Without reform, it was projected to reach around $20 billion by the end of the decade. That's simply not sustainable. The government will reset social and community participation budgets as plans are renewed or reassessed.

It will not abolish participation support, and it will not reduce funding in a participant's current plan partway through that plan. Supports essential to a participant's health or safety and support for those who require 24-hour care are not the target of this measure. We will also invest $200 million through the Inclusive Communities Fund to rebuild the ability of local and community organisations to offer genuine opportunities for participation.

Following the first round of Senate inquiries into the first draft of this bill, the government, the Greens and the crossbench members put forward amendments in response to feedback. All of those amendments were broadly supported in the evidence given to our inquiry. The bill now confines the minister's power to make a support determination to two categories and ensures employment and disability related health supports are carved out.

A determination, as I said, cannot reduce funding partway through a plan. The minister must consider participant safety, and the determination will be subject to parliamentary scrutiny. The other amendment that we made was to clarify contact where the agency has not been able to make contact with a participant.

It requires that the agency must make at least five attempts to contact a participant, their nominee or another authorised person, that they must occur over a period of three to four months and that, where a participant is in hospital or another institution or experiencing homelessness, the attempts do not count. Importantly, we've also clarified the test for appropriate treatment.

There's a lot of fear about this particular measure, but it's important to know that a person will not be required to pay for expensive treatment. The treatment must be regularly undertaken in Australia and publicly funded. Restrictive practices are expressly excluded, and choice will remain at the centre.

No-one will be forced to undergo treatment if they do not wish to. Importantly, these reforms will be subject to an independent statutory review in 2029 that will consider the impact on access, participant outcomes, quality of support, review rights, provider viability, thin markets and foundational supports. Our government will continue working with people with disability as these reforms are implemented.

We have two important obligations in this regard: protecting the dignity, independence and safety of people who rely on the NDIS today and preserving that same promise for every Australian who will need the scheme in the decades ahead. That's not to say this change isn't hard or scary for the people who will be impacted, but doing nothing is not the compassionate choice.

Labor created the NDIS, and we will always protect it. This bill goes to doing just that and to making sure the scheme is sustainable for generations to come so that people with disability, their families and their carers can always rely on it.