Transcript:

Hi everyone! It’s been a really big week once again.

The Disability Dialogue’s First Nations community engagement officers were out and about last week. Nancy Bates was in Port Augusta to reach community there. She engaged broadly with schools, community services, media and had cups of tea with elders, parents and families. And Bernard Namok headed to Thursday Island for some in-person community engagements last week as well.

And also, the Disability Dialogue’s secured some radio advertising, which will air regularly via the National Indigenous Radio Service, so listen out for those as well. It’s fantastic that the team is getting the word out and collecting important stories along the way. 

Last week, we issued a joint statement with other disability representative organisations, or DROs, to stress that meaningful consultation on the new NDIS planning rules requires the government to release all key reform materials. And this includes draft legislative rules or propose legislative changes, evidence used to check assessment methods, information on how funding decisions are calculated, details about people’s rights to review decisions. These details will support the disability community to provide informed feedback. Without access to this information, the consultation process is not fully transparent and risks undermining confidence in the reforms for people with disability. You can read the full statement on our website.

We also made a submission on the new framework planning, following consultation with our members. It highlighted that the new framework carries foreseeable structural and transition risks that must be actively mitigated. Emerging evidence from advocates is showing that impairment notices already appear to contain errors. These include incorrect end dates, missing impairments, inconsistent records and categories that are too simple and do not reflect when people have multiple or intersecting impairments. If these errors are not corrected, they flow directly into assessments and funding decisions, risking avoidable harm and increasing disputes.

The government must put strong transitional safeguards in place, and they should include clear information about how impairments recorded, a defined period to check and correct records, simple and accessible ways to fix mistakes, and systems that help detect errors early. Without these safeguards, avoidable system failures could put participants at risk. Correction mechanisms under the new framework are not yet proportionate or accessible, which creates a real risk of harm and system overload. The move to a single reviewable decision, which is the plan, approval means many earlier steps in the process, such as how impairments are categorised or how assessments are interpreted, may not be easy to challenge through the usual review pathways.

This means that participants may struggle to correct mistakes in their plans if the only options are going through a high threshold, replacement assessment process or starting a formal review which already places a heavy burden on the participant. We recommend introducing administrative ways to correct mistakes, dashboards that monitor funding outcomes overseen by the Disability Reform Ministerial Council, and safeguards to detect abnormal outcomes and strengthen transparency in planning meetings so participants can understand where errors may arise. Without these safeguards, planning errors will likely end up being taken to the Administrative Review Tribunal, which could create unfair outcomes for participants and place unnecessary pressure on the system. We will continue our work advocating on this issue for people’s rights to be protected and for the system to be fair and clear.

You can also contribute to the new framework by joining the NDIA’s New Framework Planning Pool, which is a pool that opened in October 2025 and will run until the end of the year. More information about that can be found on the NDIS website. And finally, you might be interested in coming to work with us because we’re looking for a policy and advocacy manager to join our team.

If you think that might be you, we’d really love to hear from you. You can find the ad on the Ethical Jobs website and as always, disabled leaders are strongly encouraged to apply and we’re committed to ensuring that people’s access requirements are met, during the recruitment process. So please let us know what you need in terms of accessibility when you apply.

So that’s all for this week. Thank you for listening and watching. And I look forward to speaking to you again next week.