National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the Ndis for Future Generations) Bill 2026

Dai Le

by leave—I move amendments (1) to (3) circulated in my name together:

(1) Schedule 1, item 4, page 4 (line 23), after "circumstances", insert "(other than the person's linguistic environment)".

(2) Schedule 1, item 92, page 35 (line 30), at the end of subsection 25A(1), add:

; and (d) is linguistically and culturally accessible at the person's geographical location.

(3) Schedule 1, item 92, page 35 (line 31) to page 36 (line 4), omit subsection 25A(2).

In my second reading contribution, I raised serious concerns about how the 'appropriate treatment' provisions in the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 would play out for families in communities like mine. My three amendments today go directly to those concerns. They are not an attempt to delay or derail reform. They are an attempt to make it work for the people who will be hurt most if we get this wrong. I have moved these amendments not to stop reform but to make sure reform is fair, inclusive, practical and safe for people living with disability from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and people from low socioeconomic backgrounds—people who already face additional barriers when trying to navigate a government system that is highly complicated, even for those who are well-resourced and speak English as their first language.

As I said in my second reading amendment, I support and welcome the stronger integrity measures for NDIS service providers and plan managers outlined in schedule 2 of the bill. The NDIS must be protected from fraud, rorting and misuse. Australians living with disability deserve a scheme that is trusted, well managed and sustainable. But sustainability and financial viability cannot come at the cost of fairness, and they certainly should not be achieved by pushing the most vulnerable participants into greater uncertainty or into a system of bureaucracy that is harder to understand, harder to access and even further removed from the real lives of NDIS participants in communities like Fowler.

Australia prides itself on being a nation of many languages, cultures and beliefs. As elected representatives, we have a duty and responsibility to make laws and policies that reflect that reality. That is why my first amendment makes it clear that, when we talk about a person's 'environmental circumstances', we cannot exclude their linguistic environment. The language a person speaks at home is one of the most important factors in how they express their needs, understand their rights and advocate for themselves or their loved ones. Language forms the bridge between all of us socially, culturally and emotionally. If the system ignores that, the result is very likely to be inaccurate assessments of a person's function, capacity, their needs and their access to support. The linguistic environment is not incidental; it goes to the very core of whether a person is able to equitably participate in the NDIS.

Much like the rural and regional communities who have long called out the gap between policy made in Canberra and the reality on the ground, outer suburban multicultural communities like Fowler face their own version of being left behind. Distance is not always measured in kilometres. Sometimes it is measured in language, in cultural unfamiliarity and in the absence of services that actually reflect the community they are supposed to serve.

My second amendment embeds a requirement that appropriate treatment must be linguistically and culturally accessible at the person's geographical location. This is not a minor add on. It is about whether a family in an electorate like Fowler has access to support services close to where they live and, just as importantly, whether those supports are culturally and linguistically safe.

In multicultural and multifaith communities like mine, many refugees and migrants still carry deep distrust of government systems. Service providers have told me they face the additional challenge of helping families navigate cultural taboos around trauma, neurodivergence, disability and care needs. If support is not culturally or linguistically appropriate, then, for many families, it is not truly accessible.

The current rule, which says treatment may be appropriate regardless of whether a person's individual circumstances restrict them from accessing it, is deeply concerning. It allows the scheme to describe a service as appropriate even if it is physically out of reach, linguistically inaccessible or culturally out of step with the community. For a diverse, low-income electorate like Fowler, that is a recipe for exclusion.

My third amendment removes the provision that allows the scheme to rely too heavily on generic, one-size-fits-all criteria without enough weight given to the specific needs of individuals and communities. The system must be able to respond to the lived experience of people on the ground, not just assumptions built into centrally designed guidelines.

Taken together, these amendments rest on one principle: the NDIS must be as diverse as the people it serves. Its rules and processes must be readable, reachable and relevant for all Australians, whether they speak English as their first language or their second. For many families in communities like Fowler, those challenges are even more compounded.

These amendments do not undermine the intent of reform; they strengthen it. They make sure that, in the pursuit of a more sustainable scheme, we do not create a less fair one. I urge the House to support these amendments so that reform actually achieves a better scheme, not just a better bottom line.

Mark Butler

While the government has a lot of sympathy with the spirit in which the member has moved these amendments, we will not be supporting them in the House. Let me say a few words about why.

The future of the NDIS is going to rest on two new approaches to eligibility, and a plan setting and plan management. The bill seeks to do what we have been advised to do now for some time, including through the NDIS review, and that is to put in place an objective system of functional capacity assessment to determine eligibility—to move from a diagnosis based system to an objective assessment of someone's functional capacity. That will be an objective test.

Once eligible, a person under new framework planning will be subjected to a support needs assessment. That support needs assessment will look at the person's functional needs and also their environmental circumstances. Their living circumstances, issues of language and cultural factors—the things that the member for Fowler has raised in her amendment—will certainly be factors that are very important in the support needs assessment of individual participants under the new framework planning.

But the functional capacity assessment is an objective assessment that looks at a person's functional capacity, and that will be developed over the coming months with the support of the technical advisory group. Those matters that the member for Fowler has raised will be accommodated in the system of support needs assessment.

For those reasons—and also in terms of the question of permanence and the question of appropriate treatment, where we will be supporting some other crossbench amendments—we're not supporting the amendments from the member for Fowler.

Andrew Gee

I wish to support the amendments moved by the member for Fowler. They are important amendments not only for the member for Fowler's electorate but for all electorates across this country. I think all members here want the NDIS to be as effective as possible and to actually ensure that participants have effective access to the services, and that's why these amendments are so important. They speak to the NDIS being linguistically and culturally accessible, and that is something that all of us should be supporting.

But they also speak to a person's geographical location, and I commend the member for Fowler for raising that issue in this House. In country electorates, we face the tyranny of distance in so many different ways, and that includes delivery of services like the NDIS. There just aren't as many providers in country areas, and participants and providers often have to travel long distances in order to meet and get those services delivered—and to help country Australians on the ground.

So I will be supporting these amendments. I think they are very important for the modern Australia that we live in. They encompass situations that affect all of our electorates, including the member for Fowler's, and they also have an element that recognises the barriers to accessing NDIS services that country people face. They are serious barriers, I will be supporting the amendment for those reasons, and I commend it to the House.

I would ask all members to support this because they cover not only city electorates like the member for Fowler's but also country electorates too. We should be doing anything that we can be doing to bridge that tyranny of distance—that Great Dividing Range that we call the sandstone curtain divides us in so many different ways. It divides us in health outcomes. It divides us in education outcomes. It divides us in wages and how much people earn. It also divides us in the delivery of services such as the NDIS. The member for Fowler has my backing 100 per cent on this, and I would urge all members to support these important amendments.

Mike Freelander

The question is that the amendments moved by the member for Fowler be agreed to.