Independent Federal MPs Dr Helen Haines and Dr Monique Ryan have urged the Albanese Government to adopt a suite of amendments to its proposed National Disability Insurance Scheme reforms, warning the legislation lacks adequate safeguards for participants.
Dr Haines and Dr Ryan said they support the need for a financially sustainable NDIS. However, they cautioned that, as drafted, the reforms risk undermining the scheme’s core purpose of providing necessary supports to people with disability.
The MPs raised serious concerns that the legislation grants the Minister sweeping new powers to reshape eligibility and reduce funding without sufficient transparency, consultation, or parliamentary scrutiny.
They said their amendments are designed to ensure the NDIS remains fair, accountable and grounded in individual need, while preserving its long-term sustainability.
Dr Helen Haines will move amendments to protect funding that is already approved for “activities of daily living” from blanket funding reductions; strengthen transparency of decision making for participants by requiring written reasons when requested supports are not approved; and clarify the definition of “appropriate treatment” so that real-world barriers like regional access and affordability of treatments are accounted for.
Dr Haines will also move amendments to improve transparency over Ministerial pricing decisions by requiring the tabling of a summary of NDIA pricing advice to the Minister and strengthen NDIS whistleblower protections for disclosures made when seeking medical or legal professional help.
Dr Ryan also has amendments on consultation timeframes, and will move further amendments on support determinations, reporting on establishment of foundational supports, a statutory review of the bill, the definition of ‘appropriate treatment’, and independent pricing.
Dr Haines and Dr Ryan also urged the Government to urgently invest in growing the workforce required to deliver the Thriving Kids initiative, including by expanding the Commonwealth Prac Payment Scheme to cover allied health students such as occupational therapists, physiotherapists and speech pathologists – a measure costed at $290 million over the forward estimates.
Comments attributable to Dr Helen Haines, Independent Federal Member for Indi:
“The NDIS is too important to get reforms wrong. Reform must be considered, transparent, and centred on the people it’s meant to support.
I support a sustainable NDIS, but not at the expense of fairness or dignity for participants. These amendments are about helping get that balance right.
I’m not convinced enough consultation has been done on how these changes will affect people with disability, especially in regional and rural communities where access is already limited.
In its current form, this legislation risks entrenching those barriers – from workforce shortages to the cost and distance of care – rather than addressing them.
We can strengthen the NDIS for the long term, but only if we do it properly, with transparency, accountability and respect for the people who rely on it every day.”
Comments attributable to Dr Monique Ryan, Independent Federal Member for Kooyong:
“Australians with a disability are not asking for special treatment. They’re asking that we honour the central principle of the NDIS, “Nothing about us, without us. That principle has been completely disregarded in the opaque drafting and rushed presentation of this legislation.
This Bill asks people living with disability to pay the price of design and regulatory failures in the scheme. Those failures were never theirs to own. My amendments are about restoring the transparency, accountability, and rights protections that the disability community deserves, and that the Bill currently strips away.”
ENDS