The government’s refusal to release an assessment of the impact of NDIS reforms on women has drawn criticism that their safety and security has been sacrificed to meet Labor’s budget goals.
The passage of reforms to slash the costs of the National Disability Insurance Scheme is a setback for women’s rights, in particular their safety and economic security, according to Sex Discrimination Commissioner Dr Anna Cody.
“There are real achievements that this government can claim some credit for, but this is a retrograde step,” she tells The Saturday Paper.
There are inequities in the NDIS, according to the commissioner, which these changes risk exacerbating. Already, she says, women and girls represent only 38 per cent of participants in the scheme. The proposed reform, she says, “compounds the lack of access that women have experienced”. Moreover, the cuts will push more responsibility back onto carers, and women carry a greater share of this work. “And that then impacts on women’s ability to participate economically,” says Cody. “That’s of deep concern.”
Cody joins other high-profile advocates and members of the cross bench who have criticised the government for its failure to publish a full gender impact assessment on the implications of the bill for women – and to indicate how unintended consequences could be mitigated.
This month the Australian Human Rights Commission also cited the need to publish a gender impact assessment in its call for a “pause” on the reforms.
The Albanese government secured passage of the bill this week in a deal with the Coalition that will see it fast-track amendments to the negative gearing reform announced in the May budget.
In response to questions from The Saturday Paper, a government spokesperson said: “Gender analysis has informed the NDIS reforms, and the Office for Women will work with the NDIA [National Disability Insurance Agency] and the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing to strengthen the focus on safety and gender equality as these reforms are implemented.”
The final report of a 13-week Senate inquiry into the NDIS bill – which runs to 113 pages, with nearly 300 pages of explanatory notes – was published only last Friday. That inquiry was extended following criticism that the government was seeking to force through the reforms without proper community consultation.
The Albanese government brought back gender-responsive budgeting in its first term, to put “gender equality and impacts on women at the centre of budget decision making”. Australia was the first country in the world to take up the practice, pioneered by the Hawke government in the 1980s. Gender impact assessments were included annually in a Women’s Budget Statement – which was dropped by the Abbott government in 2014.
After Labor’s 2022 election victory, Minister for Women Katy Gallagher said gender-responsive budgeting “will provide not just the Australian public with information about the impact of decisions, but it [also] provides information to the decision-makers before the decisions are taken about what those impacts will be”.
When contacted by The Saturday Paper a spokesperson for the government confirmed that a gender analysis for all proposals is undertaken as part of the cabinet and budget process, but as such they are treated as cabinet in confidence. Greens leader Larissa Waters has repeatedly received this response to her requests for the release of the documents in Senate estimates. It aligns with broader concerns that this Labor government is going backwards on transparency. The failure to publish the assessment precludes parliamentarians, civil society and the public from pushing the government to address any shortcomings that might have come to light.
“It would be helpful for the public debate and for education around how decisions – which may on their face appear to be neutral and objective – actually might be disadvantaging a whole half of the community.”
“Labor has talked up its commitment to a full gender impact analysis for key policies and happily discussed its gender assessment of changes around tax transparency, non-compete clauses and the space program. But they have been silent on the gendered impacts of significant policies like the NDIS changes,” Waters tells The Saturday Paper.
“If a full gender analysis was done, we haven’t seen it. How can we hold the government to account without more transparency? What is the value of a secret gender impact analysis that doesn’t prevent an egregious bill that will undermine the government’s own commitments to gender equality, women’s economic security and ending gendered violence?”
Helen Dalley Fisher agrees, as the executive director of the National Foundation for Australian Women, which led a long-running campaign to see gender responsive budgeting restored. “We are encountering, I think, expected blowback from people who’ve never had to think about gender before, but we’re also experiencing a concerning unconscious gender bias emerging whenever it’s not convenient to talk about gender.
“It’s like they’re reverting to old thinking, unless it’s a useful thing for them to be spruiking as a benefit, and that’s a worry,” adds Dalley Fisher.
The reforms in the NDIS Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 are the largest since the NDIS’s inception in 2013. According to Health Minister Mark Butler, they are designed to rein in costs and growth of the $52 billion-a-year scheme and restore integrity following allegations of fraud. The cuts are also the deepest yet, overshadowing all other savings in the latest budget, amounting to $38 billion over four years. Tightened eligibility will see up to 241,000 existing participants exit or be removed from the scheme by mid 2031, with an additional 110,000 people diverted to alternative support systems.
The government spokesperson told The Saturday Paper: “These changes are designed to put the NDIS on a more sustainable path so that it is always here to support people with disability. It is not designed to remove them from the Scheme or make their lives more difficult.
“Participants will continue to have access to the critical supports needed to live well and with dignity.”
Among the most controversial aspects of the bill is the NDIS minister’s unprecedented discretion to reduce funding for whole categories of support “for the purpose of ensuring financial sustainability”. The explanatory notes indicate the minister would first use this new power to cut the funding in individual plans for social and community participation by 50 per cent.
This was of particular concern to Sophie Cusworth, the chief executive of Women With Disabilities Australia, the national alliance for women, girls and gender diverse people with disability. Hers was one of more than 4000 submissions in just over a fortnight to the Senate inquiry.
“The Disability Royal Commission said that isolation increases violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation, so we know that participating in one’s community is not a luxury, it’s a safeguard,” Cusworth tells The Saturday Paper. “It’s the very thing that keeps people safe, it keeps people visible.
“I think if we were to see a gender impact assessment,” she says, “we would see that this bill has not been developed with a safety-by-design lens. There are a whole range of changes in this bill that will increase isolation and decrease safety.”
According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, women with disability are 40 per cent more likely to experience domestic and family violence than non-disabled women. Nearly two in three women with disability in Australia will experience violence at some point in their lifetime.
“One of the key aspects of domestic and family violence is that isolation from family, from friends, from social supports, and that’s one of the strategies that perpetrators, men who use violence, will use,” says Anna Cody.
The Sex Discrimination Commissioner acknowledges the progress made by this Labor government on gender equality. The gender pay gap has fallen to a historic low of 11.3 per cent, from 14.1 per cent when the Albanese government was elected. Domestic and family violence – though not sexual violence – has been decreasing, and Australia has recorded its highest position in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index measuring gender equality by country. Australia is now at 13, having plummeted from 15 to a record low of 50, in 2021, over the course of the previous Coalition federal government.
All this, Cody says, is a “real achievement and that has taken concerted work”.
Cody also recognises there may be instances where public disclosure is not appropriate. But she recommends the Albanese government establish a “preference” or “default” to release the assessments.
“I know that internationally Australia is well regarded for its gender responsive budgeting,” Cody says, “But it would be helpful for the public debate and for education around how decisions – which may on their face appear to be neutral and objective – actually might be disadvantaging a whole half of the community.”
Minister for Women Katy Gallagher declined to respond to The Saturday Paper’s questions about concerns the NDIS bill could disadvantage women, and that gender responsive budgeting lacks transparency. She forwarded the request to the minister for the NDIS, Jenny McAllister.
The Saturday Paper also approached Melissa McIntosh, in her capacity as the shadow minister both for women and for the NDIS. McIntosh was also asked what specific steps the Coalition took to mitigate some of the potential impacts on women in its negotiations with Labor about the bill. She did not respond by deadline.
Written by Kristine Ziwica, this article was originally published by The Saturday Paper on 22 August 2026.
