PWDA joins Australia's other Disability Representative Organisations to acknowledge the need to tackle NDIS fraud and ensure long-term scheme sustainability, and we are ready to work constructively with the Government on these reforms.
A wide range of significant changes were announced today by The Hon. Mark Butler MP, Minister for Disability and the National Disability Insurance Scheme. One of the changes the Minister announced is around how people will enter the NDIS.
We understand that from 1 January 2028 significant changes related to scheme eligibility will occur, with current participants reassessed over a transition period. Any decisions that determine who gets support and who doesn't must be built with the people most affected. Co-design and genuine engagement with the disability community – people with disability, their families, carers and advocates – is not a formality, it is the only way this can work.
People with disability are the experts in their own lives and must lead the design of solutions. We are also concerned about the eligibility threshold. How that bar is set will define the scheme for a generation. The disability community must be at the table when that decision is made. Access to community and social inclusion are key to a good life.
We look forward to hearing more information about the Inclusive Communities Fund the Minister has announced. We are firm that the Government must honour its commitment to ensure people who will be diverted away from the NDIS, and impacted by changes to social and community participation, are genuinely supported elsewhere. We want to work with Government to ensure effective systems are in place before people are moved off the scheme, not after.
With a large number of participants projected to leave the scheme, we are calling on the Government to release draft legislation as soon as possible so people with disability and their representative organisations can scrutinise what is being proposed.
The Disability Royal Commission's findings are definitive. Australians with disability must be safe from abuse and neglect. Any reform of the NDIS is fundamentally incomplete – and will fail – without a parallel, ironclad commitment to ensuring the safety of every Australian living with a disability.
These reforms must also proceed alongside the full implementation of recommendations from the Disability Royal Commission and the Independent NDIS Review. The disability community deserves a holistic suite of reform that upholds the rights and dignity of all people with disability.
We are calling on the Government to work with us, and with the broader disability community, every step of the way.
About our organisations
THIS STATEMENT HAS BEEN ENDORSED BY:
- People with Disability Australia (PWDA)
- Disability Advocacy Network Australia (DANA)
- Australian Autism Alliance (AAA)
- Australian Federation of Disability Organisations (AFDO)
- Children and Young People with Disability Australia (CYDA)
- Community Mental Health Australia (CMHA)
- Down Syndrome Australia (DSA)
- First Peoples Disability Network Australia (FPDN)
- Inclusion Australia (IA)
- National Ethnic Disability Alliance (NEDA)
- Physical Disability Australia (PDA)
- Women With Disabilities Australia (WWDA)
