Australian Psychosocial Disability Collective
Consultation on the NDIS Supports Rules (Section 10, NDIS Act)
Date: July 27, 2025
Executive Summary
The current approach to the NDIS Support Lists marks a troubling departure from the original intent of the Scheme, which was grounded in flexibility, individualisation, and participant control. Instead, we are faced with rigid inclusions and exclusions that reflect a top-down model designed around administrative efficiency—not the lived realities of people with disability.
For those of us with psychosocial disability, this model is not only unworkable—it is harmful.
It forces us to justify essential supports against rigid, medicalised benchmarks that ignore our context and undermine our agency. The Lists act not as a tool for clarity, but as a barrier to access. While some broad guidance about what may or may not be in scope can be helpful, this information should serve as a supportive reference point—not a rigid rulebook. Any such guidance must function as a set of guardrails that assist participants and planners in making context-sensitive decisions, not as prescriptive lists that limit choice, override lived experience, or undermine the flexibility promised by the NDIS.
A participant-centred, principles-based approach offers a practical and rights-affirming alternative. It draws from established legal criteria—such as what is reasonable and necessary—as well as from a decade of Tribunal rulings and the lived expertise of the disability community. Rather than imposing blanket exclusions, this approach invites thoughtful, transparent decision-making grounded in a person’s unique circumstances and goals. It enables participants to be active partners in shaping their supports, and it allows for diversity, nuance, and evolution over time. This isn’t a radical proposition—it’s already how decisions are being made when challenged. Making it the standard, rather than the exception, would restore trust and ensure that the NDIS remains a vehicle for inclusion, not a system of exclusion.
Who We Are
The Australian Psychosocial Disability Collective is a grassroots lived-experience systemic advocacy group that campaigns for the rights of people with psychosocial disability, particularly in the context of the NDIS. We are NDIS participants who have severe and enduring struggles with disability related to emotional distress and mental illness. Our collective is facilitated by a lived experience advocate-ally, and our work grows from a foundation of community-led organising, mutual support, and shared resistance to systemic exclusion. We formed as an independent collective in 2023, evolving from the VMIAC NDIS Critical Reference Group.
APDC’s Response to the DSS Survey Questions
1. How well do you understand the NDIS Supports Rules?
We understand the intent behind the Support lists as it has been communicated—namely, to define what the NDIS will and will not fund. However, the way these rules are being applied in practice reflects a significant departure from the original principles of the NDIS.
We are deeply concerned that the rules, as operationalised through the NDIS Support Lists, have shifted the Scheme away from flexibility and responsiveness to individual needs. What we see is not clarity but rigidity. What we experience is not improved understanding but fear, confusion, and exclusion. The rules have made the Scheme harder to navigate, particularly for people with psychosocial disability, who often need supports that do not conform to standardised categories.
2. What would help make the rules easier to understand?
The rules would be easier to understand if they reflected the lived realities of people who use the Scheme. That means:
- Making it clear that the Support Lists are not absolute, and that participant context matters.
- Using plain language and co-designed examples that reflect diverse needs and disability experiences.
- Clarifying how planners will interpret the Lists in practice, particularly for people with complex, non-visible, psychosocial disabilities.
- Ensuring that rules and Lists don't override the original intent of Section 34 of the Act, which centres individualised, reasonable and necessary supports.
Ultimately, understanding comes not from tighter definitions, but from a system that listens, adapts, and respects the autonomy of the person receiving support.
3. How have the lists of NDIS Supports helped you to know what the NDIS can and cannot fund?
In truth, they haven't. The Lists have created more uncertainty than clarity. The broad exclusions of items such as somatic therapies, animal-assisted support, or household goods are not clearly explained or justified. Meanwhile, allowed supports are sometimes worded so vaguely that they're open to wide interpretation—often to the detriment of the participant.
Instead of empowering us to understand what is possible, the Lists send a message: “We’ve already decided what matters. Your experience is not the benchmark—we are.”
4. What have you found hard about using or understanding the lists for:
a) Supports that are NDIS supports
The inclusion of essential household tasks, psychological supports, and other daily living services, only “if the person’s disability prevents them”, sets up a high burden of proof that can create a grey area for psychosocial disability, which is frequently misunderstood and poorly assessed.
Supports like cleaning, meal preparation, or support with managing correspondence are fundamental for people living with trauma, cognitive impairments, anxiety, or executive functioning challenges. Yet these are frequently questioned or removed in plan reviews, based on a limited or medicalised view of what psychosocial disability is.
b) Supports that are not NDIS supports
We found the exclusions to be sweeping, poorly explained, and in some cases, harmful. Banning companion animals, white goods, and assistive technologies takes away the context and circumstances in which such supports are reasonable and necessary in a participant’s life. Household goods such as fridges and microwaves can genuinely meet disability needs.
The exclusion of therapeutic supports like art therapy, music therapy, and somatic psychotherapy—despite their strong evidence base for improved functioning—sends a troubling message that what works for us doesn’t count if it doesn’t fit a medical model.
The Lists exclude nuance and flatten our lives into tick boxes. This has made it very hard to use them as a planning or decision-making tool.
5. What are some examples of things in the NDIS Supports lists that aren’t clear?
- Somatic Therapy is banned without clarification. Is this bodywork? Is it psychotherapy? Is it trauma processing? The term is not defined, and the blanket ban risks excluding therapeutic approaches that participants may find beneficial and that assist with their disability related functioning.
- Short-Term Accommodation (STA) is mentioned but not defined.
- Social Participation is referenced but not meaningfully explained.
- Essential household goods like washing machines or microwaves are routinely refused, even though such items can be genuine disability supports for psychosocial participants.
6. Are there any areas of the NDIS Supports rule (or lists) you think need to be changed?
Yes, many.
We recommend:
- Redefining the Lists as guidance, not prescription, and embedding mechanisms for participants to seek principles-based exceptions or make their case based on the context of their individual disability needs.
- Reinstating support that assists the functional lived experience needs of participants with a psychosocial disability.
- Recognising companion animals as legitimate emotional supports.
- Clarifying and expanding the list of household-related supports.
- Explicitly defining terms like STA, Social Participation, and Somatic Therapy.
- Retaining travel and transport supports.
- Harmonising the Lists with the Price Guide.
- Pausing the rollout until meaningful co-design has occurred.
Final Note
The NDIS Support Lists are not neutral documents. They shape how people live, what supports they can access, and who is deemed "worthy" of investment. The current Lists fail to reflect the complex realities of psychosocial disability and risk re-institutionalising the very people the Scheme was meant to liberate.
We believe in an NDIS that is built from the ground up, with participants and their communities at the centre. Until these Lists reflect that, they cannot be considered fair, inclusive, or fit for purpose.
Submission prepared July 2025 by the Australian Psychosocial Disability Collective (APDC)
For more information about the APDC please our website https://www.apdcollective.net/