Additional comments - Australian Greens

1.1The Australian Greens thank the organisations and individuals who made submissions to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee during this inquiry. We also thank the secretariat for their hard work during this inquiry.

Overview

1.2The Australian Greens want to see the elimination of all forms of violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation perpetrated against and experienced by disabled people. The stated intent of this bill is to increase the safeguarding of National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) participants, which is an intention we support.

1.3Schedule 1 contains changes to the powers and function of the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission (the Commission), including updating the penalty framework, expanding banning and anti-promotion powers, and expanding powers to request information from providers.

1.4The Commission should have powers available to them that enable them to prevent, investigate, and remedy violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation of NDIS participants. For the amendments in Schedule 1 to achieve this, there must be regular monitoring and evaluation to ensure that the right balance has been struck.

1.5However, there is more that needs to be done outside this bill to increase the ability of the Commission to safeguard NDIS participants. The Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) found that the Commission had significant gaps and a lack of sufficient rigour in its regulatory processes, including that the Commission did not have risk responsive and proportionate monitoring, compliance and enforcement activities.[1] This validated what many NDIS participants already knew, which was that the Commission was often not responding to complaints in a way that adequately addressed participant safeguarding concerns. In FY 2024–25, only 47 per cent of complaints were resolved within 90 days, significantly fewer than the Commission’s target of 70 per cent.

1.6Cultural and policy change is needed within the Commission to increase participant safeguarding, not just legislative change.

Upstream safeguarding

1.7A crucial part of the picture, when it comes to NDIS participant safeguarding, is the harmful impacts of the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Getting the NDIS Back on Track No. 1) Bill 2024 (2024 bill), and the harms to participants that result from NDIA policies and actions.

1.8Removing 'reasonable and necessary' criteria as the basis for funding supports and moving instead to the strict 'in and out' NDIS Supports lists has meant that many people are now unable to access disability supports that they relied on for years and are essential to their daily needs.

1.9Moving to 3-month funding periods as a default has resulted in some people running out of funding early because they no longer have the flexibility to increase and decrease their spend over a 12-month period as their needs fluctuate. In this example, they may request emergency funding, resulting in higher National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) spend than if participants were able to flexibly use their own budgets over a longer period.

1.10When price cuts for therapy services were introduced in the 2025–26 Pricing Arrangements and Price Limits, therapy providers warned that they would struggle to afford the investment in training and supervision needed to safely provide supports to participants.

1.11These are all examples of where upstream safeguarding is needed to prevent harm to participants. This needs to include amending the NDIS Act, as well as internal NDIA policy, to make participant safety and wellbeing the centre of all decision-making. In particular, this should include a return to 'reasonable and necessary' as the basis for funding supports.

1.12As Ms Sally Davison, Co-Director of Occupational Therapy Society for Hidden and Invisible Disability, said in the hearing to this inquiry:

Preventing harm, rather than responding when harm has already occurred, must be a primary objective.[2]

Whistleblower protections

1.13The Human Rights Law Centre raised in their submission a critical safeguarding gap in the current NDIS Act. Whistleblowers who speak out against wrongdoing in the NDIS are not sufficiently protected by the provisions in the NDIS Act, which is lagging behind comparable legislation such as the Aged Care Act 2024 and the Corporations Act 2001 when it comes to whistleblowers protections.

1.14The Human Rights Law Centre said:

Whistleblowers under the NDIS regime are often staying silent because they are not sufficiently covered by whistleblower protections in the NDIS Act, feel they will suffer retaliation from their employer if they report to the Commission and are fearful of the risk to their employment in the industry if they are identified as a whistleblower. Often, whistleblowers in the sector are unaware that there are protections in the NDIS Act for speaking up about wrongdoing and are sometimes discouraged from reporting within their organisation.[3]

1.15In their submission, the Human Rights Law Centre made several recommendations for amendments that would strengthen whistleblower protections in the NDIS Act, including:

Expanding whistleblower protections to include former workers, participants no longer receiving services, and others no longer connected to the NDIS provider that is the subject of the whistleblowing.

Allowing for anonymous whistleblowing disclosures and require recipients of the disclosure to protect the identity of the whistleblower.

Allowing whistleblowers to talk to relevant people about their disclosure, including lawyers, psychologists, and advocates.

Requiring all registered NDIS providers to have a whistleblower policy.

Allowing whistleblowers to legally alert politicians or the media of their disclosure if they have already made a disclosure to the provider, the NDIA or the NDIS Commission and no action has been taken.

1.16The Australian Greens would like to see these changes implemented to ensure that people are legally protected if they choose to speak up if they see or experience violence, neglect, abuse or exploitation of disabled people at the hands of NDIS providers or others.

Information requests relating to claims

1.17This bill introduces a new power allowing the NDIA to request information from a participant or provider submitting a claim to be paid. If the information requested is not provided within 14 days (or a longer timeframe if the CEO chooses to extend it), the claim will not be paid. This bill places no limits around what information can be requested. It fails to take participant privacy into account and does not consider how the volume or nature of information requested may impact ability to respond in the allotted time period. Additionally, there is no formal pathway for the claimant to inform the NDIA that the information requested cannot be provided.

1.18In practice, the rigidity of this amendment could mean that if a claimant is unable to provide the information requested, their claim will not be paid, regardless of whether the information request was reasonable or possible to fulfil. While the claimant can resubmit the claim, delays or non-payment of claims can result in ongoing supports to the participant being paused or even ceased.

1.19This concern was raised by Disability Advocacy Network Australia in their submission:

We are concerned about the impact this could have on support continuity, as some information requests may take some time to be satisfied. It is important to note that these obligations can fall on users who submit invoices, many of whom will not have the support of a plan manager to lodge invoices. We expect that this could have significant impacts for self-managing participants, who often have a more direct relationship with smaller providers and rely on the prompt payment of invoices in order to continue receiving supports.[4]

1.20Every Australian Counts also spoke about the risks of misapplication of this information gathering power in their submission:

Community experience demonstrates that unclear or open-ended information requests can lead to prolonged non-payment, service disruption, and provider financial stress, even where claims are otherwise valid.[5]

1.21There needs to be flexibility and dialogue between the claimant and the NDIA built into this power as well as restrictions on what can be requested, to ensure that participants are not denied essential supports as a result of its application.

Plan variations

1.22This inquiry has heard community concerns about the changes to Section 47A plan variations. These changes have been described by the NDIA as a clarification that a change to the total funding amount in a plan could be an increase or a decrease in funding.

1.23The Department of Health, Disability and Ageing stated in the hearing to this inquiry that:

… the amendment does not in any way change the circumstances in which a variation can be made to a participant's reasonable and necessary funding. Nor does it make any changes to the review rights that a participant has in relation to plan variations. It is, essentially, a technical amendment.[6]

1.24Given the description of this change as a technical amendment, there have been questions from the community why it is needed at all. There have also been concerns about it being misused.

1.25Disability Advocacy Network Australia said in their submission:

In the absence of clearer limits, there is concern that the explicit reference to funding reductions may be interpreted more broadly in practice, allowing for substantive changes to funding to occur outside the safeguards and processes of a full plan review.[7]

1.26Given the concerns raised in the inquiry, the NDIA should clarify the purpose of this amendment and how it is intended to function. In the absence of this clarification, it is difficult to ascertain why this amendment is necessary.

Conclusion

1.27The Australian Greens support the intent of this bill, which is to increase safeguarding of participants by expanding the Commission’s compliance and enforcement powers. We hold some concerns about the information gathering powers related to claims and the plan variation powers, and also see an opportunity to strengthen whistleblowing powers.

1.28The important underlying context of this bill is the harm being done to NDIS participants following the passing of the 2024 bill. While participants are still being removed from the Scheme at unprecedented rates and having essential supports stripped from their plan, there is still a long way to go in terms of participant safeguarding.

Senator Jordon Steele-John

Australian Greens Senator for Western Australia

Footnotes

[1]The Commission has since addressed some of the issues identified in the ANAO audit.

[2]Ms Sally Davison, Co-director, Occupational Therapy Society for Hidden and Invisible Disability, Committee Hansard, 24 February 2026, p. 5.

[3]Human Rights Law Centre, Submission 31.

[4]Disability Advocacy Network Australia, Submission 20.

[5]Every Australian Counts, Submission 17.

[6]Ms Sarah Hawke, Assistant Secretary, NDIS Policy, Legislation and Engagement Branch, Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, Committee Hansard, 24 February 2026, p. 32.

[7]Disability Advocacy Network Australia, Submission 20.