2026-05-28
How does Labor’s NDIS bill actually address fraud? …It doesn’t.
By Senator Jordon Steele-John
When Labor first announced its plan to make huge cuts to the NDIS, they told us it was about cracking down on fraud. We were told these reforms were necessary to “secure the future” of the Scheme.
Their Securing the NDIS Bill must now pass through parliament unchanged in order for them to actually be able to implement their NDIS cuts.
Now that my team and I have had time to properly analyse the bill, one thing has become undeniably clear: this bill is not primarily about fraud. It’s about changing who gets access to the NDIS, what support they can receive, and how easily that support can be taken away.
And if this bill passes through parliament unchanged, for many disabled people and their families, the consequences could be life-changing in the worst possible way.
One of the most concerning changes this bill proposes is a new definition for what counts as a “permanent” disability.
Right now, a person can generally access the NDIS if they’re likely to need support for life and there are no appropriate treatments available that could remedy their disability. Importantly, those treatments must actually be accessible to the person.
But under the proposed changes, treatments that merely reduce the impacts of disability – even if they don’t “cure” it – could potentially be used as grounds to deny access.
And those treatments may not even need to be realistically accessible. That means a person with a lifelong disability could potentially be denied support because a treatment exists somewhere in theory, even if it is financially out of reach or unavailable where they live.
That’s not strengthening the NDIS. That’s narrowing access to it.
The bill also introduces a formal definition of “functional capacity” and opens the door for standardised assessment tools to determine eligibility.
Disabled people have been raising concerns about this for years.
Because standardised assessments rarely capture the reality of living with disability. They flatten complex lives into narrow metrics. They often fail to account for fluctuating conditions, masking, exhaustion, or the cumulative impact of navigating inaccessible systems every single day.
And according to estimates, these changes, combined with others in the bill, could contribute to approximately 240,000 people being removed from the NDIS. (A new figure that’s a fair bit higher than the 160,000 participants the government initially claimed would lose access.)
Then there’s the expansion of ministerial powers.
Currently, NDIS funding is generally determined based on an individual’s circumstances and support needs. But this bill would allow the Minister to cut funding across entire categories of support.
That means support could potentially be reduced not because a person’s needs changed, but because the government decided a category itself should receive less funding.
Again: that has nothing to do with fraud. The same pattern appears throughout the bill.
Children could lose access to supports if the NDIA decides those supports fall under what is “reasonably expected” of parents.
Even when those parents are disabled themselves.
Even when they are already struggling.
Even when the level of unpaid care required is not sustainable alongside paid work.
Responsibility is simply being shifted away from government systems and onto families, carers, and unpaid labour.
The bill would also make it harder for participants to request unscheduled plan reassessments and allow plans to be suspended if a participant is deemed “not contactable.” Importantly, the bill does not clearly define what “not contactable” means. But if a plan is suspended for long enough, a participant could lose NDIS access entirely.
For many disabled people, especially people experiencing housing insecurity, challenges with their mental health, communication barriers, hospitalisation, or family violence, that uncertainty is terrifying.
And through all of this, the government continues to frame these reforms as a response to fraud. But none of these changes target provider fraud in any meaningful way.
Instead, they target eligibility, support and reassessment processes. And, most importantly, disabled people themselves.
That’s why this moment matters.
Because legislation like this does not exist in isolation. It is shaped by the stories governments tell about who deserves support and who doesn’t.
For months, disabled people have been forced to watch ourselves discussed as economic burdens. We’ve watched the NDIS reframed from a social commitment, to a “budget problem.” And now we’re seeing the consequences of that narrative embedded into legislation.
The government wants these changes to feel inevitable. They are not. Public pressure matters.
Disabled people built the movement that won the NDIS in the first place. And we have every right to fight for its future now. Because the question was never simply whether fraud should be addressed. Of course it should.
The real question is this: why is the government responding to provider fraud by making it harder for disabled people to access support? And what does that tell us about whose interests these reforms are really designed to protect?