April 2026
PWDA welcomed the opportunity to contribute to the Joint Standing Committee on the Inquiry into the Integrity of the NDIS.
This submission responds to terms of reference (c) and (d), focusing on the effectiveness and adequacy of successive government policies to improve Scheme integrity and safeguard participants, and on legislative or other reforms required to strengthen NDIS integrity.
While PWDA supports strong integrity measures and robust safeguards, we are concerned that recent policy responses - including the NDIS Amendment (Integrity and Safeguarding) Bill 2025, passed by Parliament earlier this month - have focused heavily on compliance and enforcement without giving equal weight to participant rights, dignity, and supported decision‑making.
Integrity reform cannot be achieved through legislation alone.
There is significant work still required outside the scope of the Amendment Bill to address public narratives, implementation practices and systemic settings that risk undermining choice, control and safety for people with disability.
PWDA supports strong, effective integrity measures and decisive action against fraud, abuse and exploitation within the NDIS. However, integrity cannot be achieved by focusing on enforcement alone or by positioning people with disability as the source of risk.
There is still significant work to be done outside the NDIS Amendment (Integrity and Safeguarding) Bill 2025 to embed dignity, supported decision‑making, trust and participant rights at the centre of the Scheme.
This Inquiry must strengthen - not undermine - confidence in the NDIS. It must challenge harmful narratives, centre lived experience and ensure that integrity reform delivers a safer, fairer and more inclusive Scheme for people with disability.
It is critical that the Inquiry reframe integrity policy and communications to clearly distinguish between participants' support needs and provider misconduct.
PWDA welcomes continued engagement with the Committee and urges that people with disability remain at the heart of all integrity reforms.
Recommendations
- Recommendation 1 – Acknowledge that further integrity, safeguarding and trust‑building work is required beyond the NDIS Amendment (Integrity and Safeguarding) Bill 2025 to ensure that participants feel safe exercising autonomy, making complaints or taking reasonable risks.
- Recommendation 2 – Embed dignity of risk and supported decision-making as explicit legal duties within the NDIS Act and its implementation.
- Recommendation 3 – Ensure integrity measures focus on unethical and unsafe provider practices, rather than framing people with disability as the source of risk.
- Recommendation 4 – Address the damaging public narratives that conflate NDIS integrity with participant wrongdoing and safeguard participants from public vilification and harmful scrutiny of everyday, reasonable use of supports.
- Recommendation 5 – Ensure compliance and integrity initiatives do not increase administrative burden in ways that reduce participant access to services and supports.
- Recommendation 6 – Maintain strong safeguards against violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation, while ensuring expanded enforcement powers do not erode participant choice and control.
- Recommendation 7 – Require that the Inquiry itself is co‑designed with people with disability and structured around lived experience.
- Recommendation 8 – Ensure the Inquiry strengthens, rather than undermines, trust in the NDIS and does not exacerbate fear or confusion arising from rapid and poorly communicated reforms.
