Australian Human Rights Commission warns Labor’s bill risks compromising rights of disabled people
Australia’s peak human rights body has said it has serious concerns about Labour’s new laws to govern the National Disability Insurance Scheme, warning that they risk compromising the rights of disabled people and must be slowed down.
The Australian Human Rights Commission’s submission to the Senate inquiry, signed by Disability Discrimination Commissioner Rosemary Kayess, raised alarm with several elements of the package.
They range from fears about disability reform going backwards after decades of progress and people being excluded under new eligibility criteria, to the lack of accountability brought about by sweeping ministerial powers and automated decision-making.
Labor laws will remove 240,000 people from the program from January 2028, according to department modelling, as the government seeks to halt growth in the $56 billion program and limit access to the most severely disabled people.
The government is seeking the Coalition’s support to pass the legislation by the end of June to implement plans to cut $38 billion in spending over four years in a major budget-saving measure. Latest data shows The growth rate of the program is acceleratingIt increases Labour’s urgency.
But Kayess said the bill should not become law until it has been considered by parliament’s human rights committee and the disability community has been consulted more closely.
It comes after the government’s own advisory committee on disability reform specifically briefed state and federal ministers last month to warn the laws would harm thousands of disabled Australians if the process is not slowed down.
“A two-week consultation period is completely inadequate for reforms of this scale, which have significant impacts on people’s rights, lives and livelihoods,” the presentation said.
“Moving forward without appropriate review creates a clear risk of adverse and unintended human rights impacts.”
The Commission warned that the bill could set Australia backwards in realizing the rights of people with disabilities to independent living, personal autonomy and participation in society; this would be contrary to the country’s obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
Disability advocacy groups also argue the laws risk breaching the recommendations of the disability royal commission because they give the minister broad powers to reduce funding or therapy hours across all parts of the program, regardless of individuals’ needs.
Kayess said both the bill and Health Minister Mark Butler’s comment on the changes put more emphasis on financial considerations rather than human rights.
“This reinforces the barrier-free framing of disabled people as a cost pressure that needs to be managed, rather than as people with rights and the right to equality and participation,” he said.
While Kayess acknowledged the legislation was built on consultation with the disability community through the 2023 NDIS review and other investigations, he said there was little evidence of targeted consultation on the bill’s specific measures.
It was stated that the bill deviates from a genuine co-design approach because the next round of consultation will take place after the policy settings in the legislation have been determined.
Problems regarding the comprehensive new ministerial powers to be introduced within the scope of the laws were also brought to the agenda. Butler said he would use this power primarily to reduce people’s social and community engagement budgets to 2023 levels and cut therapy from 72 hours a year to 68 hours a year.
The commission said there was limited clarity on how such decisions were made and few options to review or challenge them, creating a lack of public accountability and jeopardizing people’s ability to access justice.
“The breadth of the power means that funding settings may be adjusted over time in response to changing policies, governments or budget priorities. This creates some uncertainty for participants about the level of support they can expect,” he said in the presentation.
The laws will also restrict who can participate in the NDIS based on a much narrower definition of “functional capacity”; This would require people to exhaust all other treatment options before being considered permanently disabled and eligible to participate in the program.
This responds to the programme’s ballooning participation numbers, which have risen to 775,000 with an unpredictable number of children and people with autism taking part, compared to initial estimates of around 410,000 participants.
But Kayess said the new definition would move the NDIS “away from the human rights disability model towards a narrower, disability-focused medical model”, which risked undermining decades of disability reform.
Other measures in the bill to standardize service delivery — in part in response to thousands of private providers filling the program with little scrutiny — would also limit choice and control, Kayess said.
At worst this would “encourage or perpetuate discrimination and institutionalization rather than promoting inclusion in society”.
The NDIS bill will be subject to two days of hearings next week before being reported to the Senate on June 16.
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Natassia Chrysanthos is a Federal Political Correspondent. He has previously reported on immigration, health, social issues and the NDIS from Parliament House in Canberra.Connect with: X or email.
