NDIS overhaul will ‘harm’ Australians with disabilities, government’s own committee warns

In a submission to a parliamentary inquiry, the NDIS reform advisory committee said the government should redraft the bill in ‘genuine partnership with the disability community’. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP

The national disability insurance scheme’s proposed overhaul will cause “material harm” to Australians with disabilities, undermine its original intentions and hand unprecedented power to the health minister, the federal government’s own reform advisory committee warns.

The Australian Human Rights Commission has also urged the government to slam the brakes on the potentially “regressive” changes to the NDIS, saying more consultation time was needed to avoid the “clear risk of adverse and unintended human rights impacts”.

The Albanese government is eager to move ahead with changes that are estimated to remove more than 200,000 people from the $50bn-a-year scheme by 2030 in a bid to secure its financial sustainability.