News
The Australian Senate has passed the NDIS Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026, triggering deep distress and condemnation from disability advocates and the wider community.
While the government has defended the reforms as crucial for financial sustainability, its anticipated over 240,000 people could leave the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) over the next four years.
Advocates warn the new legislation shifts the NDIS's focus from a rights-based framework, with People with Disability Australia Acting CEO, Megan Spindler-Smith, calling the passing of the Bill a dark day for the community.
We are devastated. We are frightened. We are angry. Today, our community is grieving. We are grieving the lives we have had, the opportunities we will lose and the impossible choices we will now need to make.
PWDA CEO Megan Spindler-Smith
Unpaid carers are expected to bear much of fallout, as Carers Australia CEO, Joanna Cave, explains.
“Working carers may need to reduce their hours, and full-time carers are working through how they will cope," Ms. Cave argues.
The mental health sector also raised serious concerns. The National Mental Health Consumer Alliance condemned the Bill as a "fundamental retreat" from the scheme's promise.
CEO of the National Mental Health Consumer Alliance (NMHCA), Priscilla Brice, warns that reducing Social, Community, and Civic Participation supports will worsen social isolation, mental health, and suicidality for participants with psychosocial disabilities.
“Reducing supports will shift costs to more expensive crisis and health systems in the absence of adequate alternative psychosocial supports and put more people at risk,” the CEO says.
“Reducing supports will shift costs to more expensive crisis and health systems in the absence of adequate alternative psychosocial supports and put more people at risk,” the CEO says.
NMHCA also argues that the move could deny individuals access to the NDIS for refusing invasive treatments.
Under these reforms, a person could still be locked out of the NDIS simply for refusing to undergo electroconvulsive therapy. How is that ‘reasonable and necessary’ in 2026?
Priscilla Brice, CEO of the National Mental Health Consumer Alliance (NMHCA)
However, a slim silver lining has emerged for housing providers.
The SDA Alliance says it welcomes safeguards that protect funding for Specialist Disability Accommodation (SDA).
CEO of the SDA Alliance, Jeramy Hope, says that while the protections are an improvement, he urges the government to release a clear implementation roadmap.
“Given the significant changes we need to ensure people do not fall through the gaps. We urge the Australian government to provide information about what other supports will be available to these individuals and when such supports will begin.”
With the Bill now law, disability organisations are demanding that people with disability lead the implementation phase and the development of the rules and regulations that will determine how these changes operate in practice.
“This Bill may have passed, but the accountability does not end here…We will hold the Government and every parliamentarian who voted for these changes accountable,” PWDA CEO Megan Spindler-Smith says.
Peak bodies say they will fight for the harm to be reversed and for the NDIS to return to what it was always meant to be.
We will be alongside our community through what comes next, advocating at every step to minimise the harm and ensure people with disability genuinely lead the decisions still to be made, so we do not lose the choice and control over our lives the NDIS was always intended to deliver.
PWDA CEO Megan Spindler-Smith