Submission to Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee on the ‘Getting the NDIS Back on Track’ Bill

The NDIS Amendment (Getting the NDIS Back on Track No. 1) Bill 2024 represents the first step in planned reforms that would be the biggest overhaul of the NDIS in the decade since it was established. PIAC made a submission to the Senate Committee Inquiry into the Bill, recommending vital amendments to ensure the reforms:

• are shaped by people with disability through co-design and consultation as appropriate;
• consider an NDIS participant with multiple disabilities as a whole, to avoid imposing artificial distinctions on which supports the NDIS will and won’t consider;
• ensure ‘needs assessments’ that determine a person’s NDIS funding are conducted with that person, and can be challenged where necessary;
• avoid incorporating selected parts of the Convention on the Rights of People with Disability in a way that distorts the meaning of the Convention;
• adopt an appropriate sequence and transitional mechanisms for the reforms to ensure a smooth transition for participants and avoid creating legal and practical uncertainty and confusion;
• preserve the choice and control of people with disability, including by avoiding arbitrary restrictions on how they spend their plan funding; and
• contain appropriate protections to prevent misuse of powers given to the NDIA by the Bill.

The recommendations from our submission were supported in full in a joint submission signed by several Disability Representative Organisations (download PDF).