About the consultation
The Department of Health, Disability and Ageing (DHDA) is seeking feedback on four new NDIS rules for New Framework Planning. These rules are about:
- how a participant’s disability support needs will be assessed
- how reasonable and necessary budgets will be developed
- how a participant can use their plan
- how a new framework plan can be changed
This consultation also seeks feedback on updates to the NDIS Supports Transitional Rule.
PWDA Position
PWDA recognises that the new Framework Planning Rules and NDIS Supports Transitional Rules will bring major changes to how NDIS funding and supports are provided.
We welcome greater transparency, longer plan durations and more flexible funding. However, there is still a serious lack of confidence across the disability community.
In a PWDA member survey, 89% of respondents said the new Framework Planning Rules and NDIS Rules would make the NDIS experience somewhat or significantly worse for participants.
Our members and the wider disability community are concerned that standardised assessments and rigid budgets may fail to reflect people’s individual circumstances, changing support needs and the different barriers they face.
These changes must be about more than making the system easier to administer. They must protect the rights of people with disability, in line with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).
The NDIA must ensure that making plans and budgets more consistent does not come at the cost of individual choice and control. Participants must have access to proper human oversight, clear ways to correct mistakes, exceptions for items that may not usually be funded, and the right to challenge decisions.
PWDA urges the Government and the NDIA to thoroughly test the entire assessment and budgeting process before finalising the new rules. People with disability must be actively involved in designing and testing the system to ensure it meets their needs.
Summary of PWDA’s recommendations
PWDA is calling on the Government and the NDIA to make sure the new NDIS planning rules protect participants’ rights and reflect their individual support needs.
PWDA provided 27 recommendations to the government. Our key recommendations are:
1. Test the new system before it is finalised
The Government and NDIA should test the full assessment and budgeting process with people with a wide range of disabilities, support needs and living circumstances before finalising the rules. The results should be made public, and people with disability must be involved in designing and testing the system.
2. Make sure assessments reflect people’s individual needs
Assessments must be accessible and allow people to communicate their needs accurately. The NDIA must consider existing medical and professional evidence, explain how assessment results affect funding, and allow participants to check their assessments before they are finalised.
3. Make funding decisions transparent
Participants should receive clear explanations of how their budgets are calculated, including the evidence and assumptions used. The NDIA should regularly publish information about funding outcomes and how the new rules affect people with different disabilities and support needs.
4. Protect participants’ rights when plans change
Participants must be able to request a reassessment if their circumstances cannot be properly addressed through a plan variation. The NDIA should explain its decisions, set clear timeframes for urgent changes, and ensure participants have a fair opportunity to provide evidence and challenge decisions.
5. Keep support categories flexible
Support categories must allow for individual circumstances, overlapping needs and less common support requirements. They should not become rigid spending limits or prevent participants from accessing appropriate supports. People with disability must be involved in designing these categories, and the NDIA should monitor their impact.
6. Protect choice and control over supports
The rules should clearly limit when the NDIA can require stated supports, which restrict how participants can use their funding. Participants must have a say in these decisions and be able to seek greater flexibility.
The rules must also allow for disability-related exceptions for everyday items and consider individual circumstances when deciding which supports to exclude. Before removing replacement supports, the Government must explain what people will lose access to and how other beneficial supports will be considered.
PWDA’s position is clear: NDIS planning changes must do more than make the system easier to administer. They must protect participants’ rights, support individual choice and control, and ensure people receive the supports they need to live their lives.
Recommendations in full
- Recommendation 1 – The rules should not be finalised until the assessment, and budget pathway has been tested across a demonstrably diverse range of disability, communication, support and geographic circumstances, with results made transparent enough for the community to evaluate.
- Recommendation 2 – Exposure-draft consultation should allow the community to examine the rules as an interacting system, including the complete assessment-to-budget pathway, rather than requiring feedback on key components before the operative detail is available.
- Recommendation 3 – Assessment processes must be accessible by design. Reasonable adjustments must protect the accuracy of the assessment, not merely the participant’s ability to attend it. The rules must guarantee reasonable adjustments to the assessment process and make clear that a participant must not receive a lower assessment outcome because the assessment method itself prevented them from communicating their needs.
- Recommendation 4 – Develop a public explanation of the I-CAN 6 scoring-to-funding logic, so participants can understand how their assessment leads to specific budget decisions.
- Recommendation 5 – Provide validation evidence to demonstrate that the combined core assessment, PECQ and targeted assessment pathway is reliable across different disability types, communication methods and fluctuating or complex support needs.
- Recommendation 6 – Relevant existing medical, allied health and other professional evidence must be genuinely considered, with a clear process for resolving conflicts between that evidence and the standardised assessment.
- Recommendation 7 – People must be able to review the draft of the support needs assessment before it is finalised and submitted and have access to supported decision making and/or individual advocacy. This ensures there is the opportunity to correct any misunderstandings that could result in delayed access to critical supports.
- Recommendation 8 – The budget method rules should require the NDIA to provide participants with a plain language budget explanation statement outlining how each component of their funding was calculated, including assumptions, adjustments, and supporting evidence and options to challenge an error.
- Recommendation 9 – The NDIA should publish regular, accessible public reporting on budget method outcomes, including funding trends, review outcomes, participant satisfaction measures, and impacts across different disability cohorts.
- Recommendation 10 – Participants should have an explicit right to request a plan reassessment where they believe a variation would not adequately address their circumstances.
- Recommendation 11 – The NDIA should be required to provide written reasons explaining why a variation, rather than a reassessment, has been undertaken.
- Recommendation 12 – Plan variation decisions should include transparent information about how the budget methodology was applied and how funding amounts were calculated.
- Recommendation 13 – Plan variations should not be used to reduce participant funding or significantly alter support categories unless the participant has been afforded procedural fairness and an opportunity to provide additional evidence.
- Recommendation 14 – In instances where the NDIA refuses a request for a variation or reassessment, that decision should remain fully reviewable.
- Recommendation 15 – The NDIA should develop and publish clear definitions of the “significant changes” to support needs that will justify a reassessment.
- Recommendation 16 – Clarify what decision timeframes will apply to urgent plan variations and reassessments, and what funding or support continues while a decision is pending.
- Recommendation 17 – Maintain flexibility for supports that span multiple categories.
- Recommendation 18 – Ensure broader support categories adopt rules for overlapping and atypical needs and should not become de facto caps or barriers to otherwise appropriate supports.
- Recommendation 19 – Adopt a person-centred approach to support determinations.
- Recommendation 20 – Monitor and publicly report on the impact of category reforms.
- Recommendation 21 – Co-design category boundaries with people with disability.
- Recommendation 22 – Strengthen transparency, participation, and review rights in decisions to apply stated supports.
- Recommendation 23 – The NDIS Rules should establish clear criteria limiting the use of stated supports and require regular review mechanisms that enable participants to seek greater funding flexibility without unnecessary administrative burden.
- Recommendation 24 – Retain a disability-related exception for otherwise ordinary items.
- Recommendation 25 – Introduce individualised assessment criteria for proposed excluded supports.
- Recommendation 26 – Provide evidence identifying which of those supports would remain available under the proposed rules and explain the pathway for beneficial disability-related supports that are not anticipated on a prescribed list.
- Recommendation 27- The removal of replacement supports should not proceed without a transparent account of which currently available supports would cease to be available and how beneficial unlisted alternatives will be considered.
