19/08/2026
🚨 **OK PEOPLE. WE HAVE ANOTHER JOB TO DO.**
The Bill has passed Parliament, but it has not finished the process yet. The next step is Royal Assent, and we are not just going to quietly sit back and watch that happen without making sure the harm this Bill could cause is put directly in front of the person who gives it.
I’ve attached a letter to the Governor-General. Section 58 of the Constitution gives the Governor-General functions when legislation is presented for Royal Assent, including assenting, withholding assent, reserving it or returning it to Parliament with recommended amendments. We know Royal Assent is ordinarily given on ministerial advice. We also know this is an extraordinary Bill with extraordinary consequences for disabled Australians, and every avenue available to us is worth using.
**Please do not just copy, paste and send the letter exactly as it is.** There is a section in there specifically for YOUR story. Use it. Tell her who you are, what the NDIS means in your life, what has already happened to you or your family, what supports you rely on and what will actually happen if those supports are reduced or disappear. Participants, parents, carers, nominees, support workers, allied health professionals and advocates can all write. We want individual Australians telling their own stories in their own words, not thousands of identical form letters.
We have spent months telling Parliament what this Bill could do. Disabled people turned up. Families turned up. Experts turned up. We wrote submissions, gave evidence, begged, argued, explained and warned them about foreseeable harm.
**They passed it anyway.**
So now we take those warnings to the next part of the process. We put our stories on the record before Royal Assent and make damn sure nobody can ever say they didn’t know.
**Personalise it. Send it. Share it. Get other people to send theirs.**
We are not done.
THIS LETTER MUST BE PERSONALISED BEFORE SENDING
BY EMAIL AND REGISTERED POST
[DATE]
Her Excellency the Honourable Ms Sam Mostyn AC
Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia
Government House
Dunrossil Drive
Yarralumla ACT 2600
Dear Governor-General
URGENT INDIVIDUAL CONSTITUTIONAL REPRESENTATION UNDER SECTION 58 OF THE AUSTRALIAN CONSTITUTION
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026
My name is [FULL NAME]. I live in [SUBURB, STATE] and write in my individual capacity as:
[Choose and personalise: an NDIS participant / parent / family member / unpaid carer / nominee / disability-support worker / allied-health practitioner / advocate / concerned Australian].
This is not a form letter. It is my individual constitutional representation based upon my own lived or professional experience.
[INSERT AT LEAST ONE PERSONAL PARAGRAPH HERE. Explain:
who you or your family member is;
the nature of the disability or professional experience;
what NDIS supports are required;
what has already happened under the NDIS;
what you fear this Bill may cause; and
why any loss, delay or reduction of support would cause harm.]
[EXAMPLE ONLY REWRITE IN YOUR OWN WORDS:
I am the parent of a child with permanent disability who cannot independently communicate, manage personal care or remain safe without assistance. Our family has already experienced repeated reassessments, delayed decisions and pressure to continually prove conditions that will never disappear. If essential supports are reduced before real alternatives exist, the responsibility and risk will be transferred directly to my family.]
I ask that my personal evidence be read as evidence of the foreseeable consequences of legislation not dismissed as an abstract disagreement with government policy.
I acknowledge that the Governor-General does not ordinarily determine government policy or substitute a personal view for the judgment of Parliament.
I also acknowledge the constitutional conventions surrounding ministerial advice.
However, section 58 of the Australian Constitution expressly provides functions concerning Royal Assent, withholding assent, reserving a proposed law and returning a proposed law to Parliament with recommended amendments.
This correspondence does not ask Your Excellency to decide whether the Bill is politically popular.
It asks that, if and when the Bill is presented for Royal Assent, every constitutional and procedural safeguard be properly discharged before provisions capable of causing profound and irreversible harm become law.
Before Royal Assent is given, I respectfully request that Your Excellency:
confirm that both Houses of Parliament passed precisely identical text, including every amendment;
ensure that the legal advice accompanying the Bill addresses the constitutional and administrative-law concerns raised by its provisions;
ensure that advice addresses the consequences of:
a. automated administrative action;
b. administrative outcomes occurring without an ordinary reviewable decision;
c. automatic plan processes that may avoid or limit review;
d. restrictions affecting plan reassessment requests;
e. expanded plan-suspension and participant-revocation powers;
f. broad ministerial, CEO and executive discretions;
g. support determinations affecting categories of participants;
h. substantive matters being transferred into delegated legislation or rules; and
i. transition occurring before alternative services are operational;
ensure that advice specifically considers:
a. the constitutional minimum of judicial supervision preserved by section 75(v) of the Constitution;
b. the continuing availability of judicial review for jurisdictional error;
c. whether every materially adverse outcome remains attributable to an identifiable and legally accountable decision-maker;
d. whether the legislation preserves meaningful procedural fairness, reasons and effective review; and
e. whether any provision purports, directly or practically, to place executive action beyond effective legal supervision;
if material constitutional or procedural doubt remains unresolved, exercise whichever section 58 power is constitutionally appropriate, including returning the Bill with recommended amendments, reserving it or withholding assent; and
confirm that this individual representation has been received and retained as part of the official record preceding any decision concerning Royal Assent.
The concerns raised by the disability community are not speculative.
The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights identified that measures within the Bill were likely to restrict access to the NDIS and reduce the availability of NDIS supports.
It further identified that the cumulative effect may significantly interfere with the rights of people with disability and children, including rights relating to independence, community participation, health, privacy, social security, equality, non-discrimination and an adequate standard of living.
The Australian Human Rights Commission has also raised serious concerns about:
the adequacy of the Bill’s human-rights assessment;
its potentially regressive cumulative effect;
reduced or avoided review rights;
automated administration;
access and permanence provisions; and
reforms occurring before effective alternatives are available.
I recognise that an international human-rights concern does not automatically establish constitutional invalidity under Australian law.
However, these findings establish that Parliament and the Executive have been given clear warning of potentially serious consequences.
Once a credible risk has been identified repeatedly by participants, families, lawyers, disability organisations, parliamentary committees and the Australian Human Rights Commission, resulting harm cannot honestly be described as unforeseen.
An automated process cannot carry moral responsibility.
A computer system cannot be questioned in Parliament, explain why it rejected treating evidence, understand a participant’s home environment or be held personally accountable for the consequences of an unlawful outcome.
If automation is used, responsibility must remain with an identifiable human decision-maker who is legally obliged to:
consider the individual evidence;
apply the correct statutory test;
provide intelligible reasons;
disclose the material relied upon;
afford procedural fairness; and
remain subject to effective merits and judicial review.
Administrative efficiency cannot lawfully become administrative invisibility.
Government must not avoid scrutiny by designing a system in which a harmful outcome occurs but no identifiable person is said to have made a reviewable decision.
No participant should lose NDIS eligibility or essential support on the basis that another system may assist them in the future.
Any alternative service must be:
funded;
operational;
accessible in the participant’s location;
appropriate for the person’s disability;
capable of meeting the actual level of need; and
personally available before NDIS support is withdrawn.
A policy announcement is not a service.
A future funding commitment is not present-day assistance.
A referral pathway is not protection if there is nowhere functioning to which the person can be referred.
Until appropriate alternatives are operational and individually available, removing NDIS support simply transfers legal, financial, physical and emotional responsibility onto disabled people and unpaid families.
At minimum, the legislation should guarantee that:
no person loses essential support before an appropriate alternative is operational and personally available;
no substantive decision concerning eligibility, funding, plan suspension or participant status is made solely by an automated system;
every materially adverse outcome is attributed to an identifiable human decision-maker;
participants receive understandable reasons and the evidence relied upon;
participants have a genuine opportunity to respond before preventable harm occurs;
automatic plan processes do not extinguish or circumvent review rights;
children and people who cannot self-advocate receive additional procedural safeguards;
treating evidence, functional evidence, lived circumstances and cumulative disability are genuinely considered;
cost control is not used as an undisclosed substitute for the statutory criteria governing support;
substantive participant rights remain in primary legislation; and
Parliament retains effective scrutiny and disallowance powers over instruments capable of reducing participant rights or supports.
A majority vote does not conclusively determine constitutional validity.
A committee recommendation that the Bill be passed is not a judicial ruling that every provision is constitutionally valid, legally coherent or safe.
Nor should disabled Australians be forced to experience harm and then fund complex litigation to discover whether government decision-making remained within lawful limits.
Constitutional and procedural defects should be resolved before assent and commencement not after participants have lost essential supports.
I understand that Government House does not ordinarily intervene in the development of government legislation.
This representation does not ask Government House to redesign the NDIS, determine an individual NDIS plan or provide personal legal advice.
It concerns the constitutional function arising if and when this particular Bill is presented for Royal Assent.
I respectfully request that this letter not be dismissed or redirected as ordinary policy correspondence without first being assessed according to its substance.
This Bill concerns people who may be unable to speak, read a decision, understand their legal rights, request review, instruct a lawyer or protect themselves when support disappears.
For those Australians, legislative safeguards are not administrative details. They are the line between safety and foreseeable harm.
If material constitutional or procedural doubt remains, it must be resolved before Royal Assent. That risk must not be transferred onto people with disability, children and exhausted families and left for them to challenge only after damage has occurred.
The Government and Parliament have been warned.
The risk is known.
The potential harm is foreseeable.
I respectfully ask Your Excellency to ensure that every constitutional safeguard available before Royal Assent is conscientiously considered.
What about this generation the Australians with disability who are here, dependent upon lawful government decision-making and at risk right here, right now?
Yours sincerely
[FULL NAME]
[NDIS participant / parent / carer / nominee / worker / practitioner / advocate]
[SUBURB AND STATE]
[EMAIL]
[TELEPHONE OPTIONAL]
Personal attachments, if available:
[Personal impact statement]
[Relevant NDIS decision or correspondence]
[Professional report or evidence]
[Photographs or other evidence of consequences where appropriate]
Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights report concerning the Bill
Australian Human Rights Commission submission concerning the Bill
