Update
Submissions have now closed.
But you can still take action!
👉 Head over to our email form and ask our Senators to vote against new CEO powers that would allow the NDIA CEO to change your plan at any time without your consent.
Minister for the NDIS Linda Reynolds has released the long-awaited proposed changes to the NDIS Act and Rules – and the draft legislation is now open for feedback.
The NDIS Act and Rules are high-level legal documents that tell everyone what can and can’t happen with the NDIS.
So this your chance to have a say about the proposed changes before they get voted on at Parliament.
So far we have shared your questions, thoughts, ideas and concerns with the government, in our joint submission to the Department of Social Services (DSS).
Now the NDIS Minister Linda Reynolds has asked the Senate Standing Committees on Community Affairs to have a look – and has allowed only 2 weeks for everyone to have their say.
Will you tell us what you think of the proposed changes?
The Government says these are mostly only changes recommended in the Tune Review – which are all pretty good or even great. But it does not include all of the Tune recommendations, and they’re not exactly the same.
So there are some changes that people are worried about. Check out the handy explainer by our friends at PIAC (Part 2 is now here). Or go straight to the source and find the draft changes on the DSS Engage website – with Plain English, Easy Read, and Auslan summaries here.
The good news?
There is no mention of any changes to reasonable and necessary – and there is nothing about introducing independent assessments. (But they have introduced the word ‘reassessment’ to replace ‘plan review’ – and we know the government does still want to introduce a ‘person-centred assessment model’ in the future.)
Have your say
Submissions to DSS closed at midnight on Thursday, October 7. This is a very short consultation time.
But we have kept this form open for longer so people can make a submission to the Community Affairs Committee. Submissions to that one close on November 8.
The Committee will then have until November 28 to hand over their final report. After that the Minister will have one week to try to get the legislation through Parliament, because it closes for the year after that.
We want everyone to have the chance to understand what’s changing, and have a say about it.
Because no one knows more about the NDIS than people with disability and their families.
There are a couple of different ways you can have your say about the changes:
👉 Make a submission to the Committee
Using the Parliament House website
👉 Or tell us what you think
We will collect everyone’s messages, summarise them, and turn them into a big community submission (we will keep your messages private but make the summary public). Then we will send the whole thing off. Just upload a file or fill out the form on this page.
Links
From the Department of Social Services
📌 Rules:
- Participant Service Guarantee Rules
- Becoming a Participant Rules
- Plan Management Rules
- Children Rules
- Nominees Rules
- Specialist Disability Accommodation Rules
From other places around the web
📌 Want to compare the exposure draft to the current version of the NDIS Act? You can find the latest version of the original NDIS Act here.
📌 And remember the Tune Review? That’s the report a lot of these changes are based on. You can find the Tune Review on the DSS engage website here.
📌 Explainer: What are the proposed changes to the NDIS Act?
📌 Explainer part 2: What are the proposed changes to the NDIS Act?
📌 Fact sheet: Making a law in the Australian Parliament
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