National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
Senator COX (Western Australia) (11:49): 'Disability can affect any of us, and, therefore, it affects all of us.' Those were the words of prime minister Julia Gillard that captured the fundamental idea behind the NDIS. It's that disability support is not a matter of charity. It is a responsibility of a nation.
The NDIS began with a simple promise: Australians with significant disability should not have to rely on luck, charity or the exhaustion of people who love them to live a life of dignity. Before the NDIS, support depended too often on where you lived, what services happened to be available and how long your family could keep carrying the load. People with disabilities and their families and carers fought for that change, and Labor listened.
It was a Labor government that designed and legislated the NDIS. We believe that people with disabilities deserve more than a patchwork of crisis services. They deserve dignity, choice, control and the chance to participate fully in our country.
That remains Labor's commitment today. The NDIS has changed hundreds and thousands of lives. It can mean support to enter the community, greater independence or parents knowing their child will be supported into adulthood.
These are the simple foundations of a life lived with dignity. Because Labor created the NDIS, we bear the responsibility for its future. We will not let rising costs, poor services or fraud weaken public confidence.
We know reform can sound threatening when your life depends on the NDIS. For families, uncertainty can mean laying awake worrying about someone they love. I understand the fear that comes with changes like that, and I want to acknowledge that here today.
We heard this through the inquiry and directly from people with disability and their families, advocates and providers. This bill has changed in response, and safeguards have been strengthened, and provisions have been clarified, but protecting the promise of the NDIS requires us to be honest about the pressures that also threaten it. Growth in this scheme is not in itself a failure.
More Australians receiving the support they need is part of what the NDIS was created to achieve. But, when costs grow because providers inflate prices, services outside the scheme disappear or dishonest operators take money for the support they never delivered, participants do not benefit. Under the former government, the annual NDIS spending growth reached 22 per cent.
Labor has brought that down to around 10 per cent. National Cabinet has agreed to work towards a sustainable growth of five to six per cent or lower. This is, in fact, not about spending less because Labor believes it should be done for people with a disability; it is about ensuring that growing investment delivers better support not inflated prices, poor services or profits for people exploiting that scheme.
When the scheme is allowed to become unsustainable, it does not become safer. It becomes vulnerable to the cuts, neglect and political opportunism that Labor created the NDIS to actually overcome. The Albanese Labor government will not allow that to happen, nor will we allow dishonest operators to treat participants' plans as easy money.
Imagine discovering money had been taken from your plan for a service that you never ever received. That is theft from a person with disability. Over nine months, more than 4,000 claims worth $19 million were rejected because services had not been delivered.
Some plan managers approved invoices from businesses they had financial interests in—in fact, marking their own homework. This bill establishes a commission panel of plan managers. It strengthens the NDIA's ability to require evidence and to act against fraud and extend registration to more high-risk providers.
Stopping fraud protects participants' plans. The bill makes eligibility clearer and more consistent, focusing on how permanent disability affects daily life rather than on diagnosis alone. The NDIS cannot be the only doorway to support, and the $200 million in the Inclusive Communities Fund will create more opportunities for that participation.
Through Thriving Kids, governments will invest $4 billion to support children where they live, where they learn and where they play. Services begin in October, but the NDIS access will not change before 2028, and children with high support needs remain eligible. For Western Australians, sustainability must mean a scheme that works across our vast state, and the Albanese and Cook governments are rolling out the Joint Work Program across the south-west, the Gascoyne, the Great Southern, the Wheatbelt and Goldfields-Esperance, where more than 11,000 NDIS participants live.
This is building on the $7.6 million Katanning pilot that will identify local gaps and improve access particularly for First Nations participants. The $5 million assistive technology rental and refurbishment pilot has also expanded to WA, through Ability WA. It allows people to rent, test or exchange equipment as their needs change and is open to all people with disabilities under 65, not only NDIS participants.
And Ellie Moir now represents WA on Australia's Disability Strategy Advisory Council, ensuring that grassroots Western Australian voices help shape our national policy. The community affairs committee heard the concerns, examined the bill and recommended that it be passed. Former prime minister Gillard said: The NDIS will stand alongside the minimum wage, the age pension, Medicare and universal superannuation as one of the great Labor pillars of social justice and opportunity for all Australians.
Labor created the NDIS, Labor believes in the NDIS and Labor is taking responsibility for ensuring it remains strong. For the people who depend on it today, for the families planning for it tomorrow and for every Australian who may one day need it, I commend this bill to the Senate.