Introduction by Croakey: The Federal Government claims that legislative reforms passed this week have secured the future of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), and will make the scheme safer, clearer and more sustainable for participants.
However, many organisations, as outlined below, are alarmed about the expected impact of the changes, warning they will cause significant harm to people already doing it tough.
In a statement, Minister Mark Butler said current NDIS access and planning arrangements will remain in place until changes are introduced gradually over the next few years. There will be no changes to access until 1 January 2028.
In a series of media interviews today, Butler said the reforms were “returning the scheme to its original purpose, which was to support people with significant and permanent disability”.
“Getting the NDIS back on track” was a phrase that recurred in many interviews.
Butler also said “these are hard reforms and they are causing some anxiety in parts of the community, but I’m absolutely convinced, and most disability advocates back me on this, that these are essential reforms if we’re going to secure this amazing scheme for the long term”.
“It was always intended that the NDIS would be there for people with significant, permanent disability and that there would be a second tier of supports for people with more low to moderate needs, whether they were children or adults for that matter. And that never happened,” he said.
“Really what we’re doing is fixing that gap in the scheme that was always intended to be filled. We’ll work with states and territories on that. They’ve committed to doing that, signing a deal with the Prime Minister earlier this year. We’ll cost share at 50/50. And people can be confident that when the new rules kick in 2028, so the year after next, those systems of support will be in place there for people.”
However, many alarm bells are raised in statements below by the First Peoples Disability Network (FPDN), People with Disability Australia (PWDA), the National Mental Health Consumer Alliance, ACOSS, The National Network of Incarcerated & Formerly Incarcerated Women & Girls, Carers Australia, Dietitians Australia, Specialist Disability Accommodation Alliance, and Children and Young People with Disability Australia.
The FPDN said: “First Nations people with disability are already the most underserved participants in the Scheme. They have the most to lose from what happens next.”
People with Disability Australia said: “We are devastated. We are frightened. We are angry. Today, our community is grieving. We are grieving the lives we have had, the opportunities we will lose and the impossible choices we will now need to make.
“People with disability in their thousands provided evidence of what these changes would mean for our lives. We warned about the harm, the injuries, the lost opportunities and lives. Parliament chose to proceed anyway.”
The National Mental Health Consumer Alliance said: “This legislation ignores the original rights-based framework the Scheme was built on and reduces it to a cost-containment mechanism, where human rights are subordinated to economic efficiency.”
ACOSS said it condemned the passage of NDIS legislation. “Our thoughts are with the hundreds of thousands of people with disability, their families and carers, who are scared that they will lose the support upon which they rely,” said ACOSS CEO Dr Cassandra Goldie.
“The tragedy is that for years, the disability community, their representative organisations and advocates were eager to co-design reforms with the Parliament to strengthen the NDIS. Instead, the Government has rushed deep and lasting changes without proper collaboration, and without listening to the people most affected.”
The National Network of Incarcerated & Formerly Incarcerated Women & Girls said: “We are deeply concerned by reforms designed around moving large numbers of people away from the NDIS while governments themselves acknowledge that substantial work remains to build the foundational supports supposedly waiting for them.
“You cannot remove the bridge before building somewhere safe for people to land. And we know which communities will be hit hardest when formal supports disappear: people experiencing poverty, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, people in regional and remote communities, people without family wealth, people experiencing homelessness, people with psychosocial disability, and people already entangled with child protection, policing, courts and prisons.”
Carers Australia said: “The Government has refused to guarantee NDIS supports won’t be removed until other services are available, leaving carers to face some really tough decisions. Working carers may need to reduce their hours, and full-time carers are working through how they will cope without supports that help the person they care for maintain some independence.”
Detailed statements follow below.
32 last-minute amendments, and not one for mob
First Peoples Disability Network
The NDIS Bill that passed the Senate on Tuesday night was amended 32 times in its final hours, and more than 60 times across its entire passage. Not one of those amendments was written for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with disability.
First Peoples Disability Network says the omission runs through the entire law, and it will measure every government against three public tests as the changes reach 63,000 First Nations people on the Scheme.
FPDN stands with people with disability across the country, and with its fellow Disability Representative Organisations, on what many have described as a day of grief and fear.
First Nations people with disability are already the most underserved participants in the Scheme. They have the most to lose from what happens next.
The Bill passed the Senate late on Tuesday night, the final 32 amendments were tabled only hours before the vote and passed with little debate. People with disability and their representative organisations had no opportunity to scrutinise the final text of the law before it was voted on by the Senate. The Bill is expected to complete its passage through the Parliament within days.
The legislation is designed to slow Scheme growth by $37.8 billion over four years. The Government’s own modelling anticipates around 240,000 current participants leaving the NDIS by 2031, with a further 110,000 people diverted to services that do not yet exist in many communities. More than 4,500 submissions were made to the Senate inquiry. Most opposed the Bill. The Senate passed it anyway.
In May, FPDN called for safeguards to be conditions of the Bill’s passage. None was written into the law. FPDN will now measure every government against them as the reforms are implemented:
- Cultural validation before reassessment. No First Nations participant is reassessed under the new assessment tool until it has been independently culturally validated by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander led research and community.
- No exit without alternative. No First Nations person leaves the NDIS before a culturally safe, locally available replacement service is operational in their community.
- The First Nations Disability Forum, now. Immediate establishment and funding of the Forum, with a permanent secretariat and formal links to Disability Reform and Ministers. The Disability Royal Commission recommended it almost three years ago.
FPDN Interim CEO Tennille Lamb said the vote had settled the legislation, but not the question of who bears its consequences.
“The vote is over, and the responsibility now begins. Our mob were the last to be reached when the NDIS was built. They must not be the first moved off as these changes take effect. We will measure every government on what it does, not what it announces,” Ms Lamb said.
First Nations people experience disability at nearly twice the rate of other Australians, and severe or profound disability at two and a half times the rate. Less than one per cent of NDIS providers are First Nations organisations, despite First Nations people making up eight per cent of participants. In remote communities, more than one in three participants are not accessing the supports in their plans. FPDN said the gap already exists inside the Scheme, before a single change takes effect, and reform that ignores this will widen it.
FPDN also raised serious concerns about provisions that allow a participant’s plan to be suspended, and their place in the Scheme revoked after 90 days, if the Agency cannot contact them. Amendments exclude contact attempts made while a person is in hospital, in an institution or experiencing homelessness. There is no equivalent protection for Sorry Business, cultural obligations, travel between communities, or the unreliable phone and mail services of remote Australia. FPDN said that omission shows why First Nations scrutiny of this law mattered, and it will seek urgent guarantees on how the provision is administered.
“Think about what this looks like on the ground. A person who cannot be reached while they are away for Sorry Business can have their plan suspended, and 90 days after that they can be removed from the Scheme altogether. Nobody wrote a protection for that,” Ms Lamb said.
“Our communities have watched too many promises fade before they reach the ground. When we say no exit without alternative, we mean a real service, run by people our mob trust, in the place where they live. Not a phone number and a waiting list. No one should be left with nothing,” Ms Lamb said.
The stakes reach beyond the NDIS. The Productivity Commission’s July report shows only three of nineteen Closing the Gap targets on track, with four going backwards, including early childhood development and adult imprisonment. One in nine First Nations children aged fourteen and under lives with profound or severe limitation. These are the children affected by the Thriving Kids program, which begins in six weeks on 1 October. The Minister concedes there is still “substantial” work to do on the foundational supports meant to catch children leaving the Scheme, and Queensland is yet to sign its agreement with the Commonwealth. FPDN called on all governments to finalise arrangements before a single child is moved.
“There is a version of this reform that works for our people. It means governments investing in Aboriginal community-controlled organisations to deliver supports on Country, and nobody leaving the Scheme before something culturally safe is standing in its place. We are ready to build that with every government, starting today. But if our people start falling through the gaps, we will say so publicly, every time,” Ms Lamb said.
FPDN will release a full analysis of the final legislation and what it means for First Nations people with disability in the coming days.
A devastating day
People with Disability Australia (PWDA)
People with disability Australia (PWDA) has condemned the passage of the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026, condemning Parliament for proceeding despite the overwhelming evidence of the unacceptable and foreseeable harm these changes will cause people with disability, our families and carers, and the Australian economy.
PWDA Acting CEO Megan Spindler-Smith said today was a devastating day for the disability community.
“We are devastated. We are frightened. We are angry. Today, our community is grieving. We are grieving the lives we have had, the opportunities we will lose and the impossible choices we will now need to make.
“People with disability in their thousands provided evidence of what these changes would mean for our lives. We warned about the harm, the injuries, the lost opportunities and lives. Parliament chose to proceed anyway.
“The NDIS was created because people with disability deserved more than simply surviving. It was supposed to give us the supports we need to participate, to work, to learn, to build relationships and to live the ordinary lives that were out of reach for too many of us, for far too long.
“The amendments made to this Bill matter. People with disability and our organisations fought incredibly hard to stop some of its worst harms, and those protections will make a real difference for some people.
“But they do not change what sits at the heart of this Bill. Hundreds of thousands of people with disability still face being denied access to the NDIS or losing supports they need.
“The Government says it is working with states and territories to build supports for people who cannot access the NDIS. But those supports do not exist today and will take time to build, and states and territories have categorically said they will not be like-for-like supports. We need to know what will actually be there, when they’ll be up and running and how they will replace the 94 million hours of paid care that are being taken away.
“This does not end with the passage of the Bill. Much of what these changes will mean in practice is still to be determined through rules, regulations and the processes that come next. People with disability must genuinely lead that work.
“This Bill may have passed, but the accountability does not end here.
“We will document the harm. We will document the supports lost, the jobs lost and the lives made smaller. We will put it on the public record. And we will hold the Government and every parliamentarian who voted for these changes accountable for what happens next.
“We will fight for the harm to be reversed and for the NDIS to return to what it was always meant to be. We are in this for the long haul.
“And to every person with disability who is hurting today, who is frightened about what this means for their future, we see you. We hear you. We are with you.
“We will be alongside our community through what comes next, advocating at every step to minimise the harm and ensure people with disability genuinely lead the decisions still to be made, so we do not lose the choice and control over our lives the NDIS was always intended to deliver.”
Strip away our right to live with dignity, autonomy and equal participation
National Mental Health Consumer Alliance
The National Mental Health Consumer Alliance (the Alliance), the national peak body for mental health consumers including people with psychosocial disability, says the passing of the NDIS Reform Bill is a step backwards.
“That is not reform. It’s a fundamental retreat from the promise of the NDIS: that people with disability are entitled to the supports they need to live with dignity, autonomy and equal participation,” said Mx Brice – CEO of the Alliance.
“This legislation ignores the original rights-based framework the Scheme was built on and reduces it to a cost-containment mechanism, where human rights are subordinated to economic efficiency,” continued Mx Brice – CEO of the Alliance.
Savings that cause harm are not acceptable:
Sustainability cannot be achieved by weakening rights, reducing access, or shifting responsibility onto people with disability, their families and already overstretched service systems.
“These amendments will have a devastating, generational impact on all people living in Australia with psychosocial disability – both those diagnosed and those who will likely never be considered,” added Ms Darwin, Interim Chairperson of the Alliance.
Cuts to social and community participation supports do nothing to improve the sustainability of the NDIS and instead harm people who rely on these services to stay connected with their communities.
The government’s push for these reductions is driven by short-term budget savings which will affect vulnerable people. As outlined in the independent report by the Grattan Institute, these cuts may help meet short-term fiscal targets, yet they fail to address the real challenges facing the NDIS in the long-term.
Greater risk of social isolation, worsening mental health, crisis episodes, hospitalisation and suicidality:
People with psychosocial disabilities represent one of the largest groups receiving Social, Community and Civic Participation (SCCP) supports, and these reductions will significantly impact them and their families.
Social and community participation supports are essential to recovery and daily functioning for people with psychosocial disability, enabling them to attend appointments, maintain relationships, engage with their communities, and participate in education, employment and volunteering.
“Reducing SCCP supports will shift costs to more expensive crisis and health systems in the absence of adequate alternative psychosocial supports and put more people at risk,” adds Mx Brice.
The Alliance was disappointed to hear over the past weekend that the NDIS Minister – Senator The Hon Jenny McAllister – would not commit to delaying the removal of participants from the scheme even if foundational supports are not ready, yet at the same time insisted that the government would not leave people without supports.
Individuals may be forced to undergo harmful treatments to get access to supports:
This Bill introduces stricter permanence requirements, requiring participants and prospective participants to have undertaken all “appropriate treatment” before a disability can be considered permanent.
While an amendment has been secured to ensure treatment cannot be a restrictive practice, such as forced medication, this does not resolve concerns for mental health consumers. “Under these reforms, a person could still be locked out of the NDIS simply for refusing to undergo electroconvulsive therapy. How is that ‘reasonable and necessary’ in 2026?” commented Mx Brice.
Impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people:
The Indigenous Australian Lived Experience Centre (IALEC) stated that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people will be disproportionately affected by the passing of this bill.
“The passing of this Bill will have long-reaching impacts on those individuals currently receiving NDIS supports, as well as their families and communities. It does not reflect a commitment to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s right to the highest attainable standard of health. Our deep networks of care and connection will carry the burden of this decision,” said IALEC Policy & Reform Officer, Mx Hanrahan-Lawrence.
* The Mental Health Consumer Alliance is the national peak body for mental health consumers, led entirely by mental health consumers. It operates through a federation of state and territory consumer peaks and their 8000 members – ensuring its voice is shaped from the ground up rather than imposed from the top down. The Alliance is led by an independent Chairperson and guided by two independent First Nations board members. Its position is grounded in lived experience and shaped through a layered, participatory structure designed to ensure diversity, inclusion, and accountability.
Leaves people with disability at risk of serious harm
ACOSS
The passage of the NDIS (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill puts people with disability at risk of serious harm and jeopardises the support they need to live full, dignified lives, warns ACOSS.
“ACOSS condemns the passage of NDIS legislation. Our thoughts are with the hundreds of thousands of people with disability, their families and carers, who are scared that they will lose the support upon which they rely,” said ACOSS CEO Dr Cassandra Goldie.
“The tragedy is that for years, the disability community, their representative organisations and advocates were eager to co-design reforms with the parliament to strengthen the NDIS. Instead, the Government has rushed deep and lasting changes without proper collaboration, and without listening to the people most affected.
“The late amendments provide welcome additional protection for some people. But the Bill still gives the Minister interventionist powers to reduce funding in participants’ plans, cap available supports, set pricing, and expand the use of automated decision-making.”
“Amongst numerous problems, ACOSS also holds serious concerns about how the Bill enables automated decision-making across the scheme, including decisions that require discretion and evaluative judgment.
“The Robodebt disaster looms large over these changes. Seeking to make large scale budget savings in a short time frame, by relying on automated decision-making to deliver services to people who rely on them for life sustaining support, is a recipe for a potential disaster.
“We saw and named the early warning signs with Robodebt. ACOSS firmly believes that across government, decisions that require discretion or an evaluative judgment should not be automated.
“The disability representative organisations and their communities demonstrated outstanding leadership in their advocacy around the Bill. We recognise and honour all those who have spoken up, sharing their personal circumstances and advocating on behalf of others.
“With the passage of the NDIS Bill, ACOSS will continue to work with the disability representative organisations and their communities to prevent serious harm inadvertently occurring due to these changes.
“We strongly urge the Federal Government and the Parliament to do the same.”
People are not a budget problem
The National Network of Incarcerated & Formerly Incarcerated Women & Girls
The National Network of Incarcerated & Formerly Incarcerated Women & Girls stands in solidarity with disabled people, their families, carers, advocates and communities following the passage of sweeping changes to the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
‘We share the anger, fear and collective grief being expressed across the disability community,’ said Debbie Kilroy.
The Federal Government, with the support of the Coalition, has passed changes expected to strip tens of billions of dollars from projected NDIS spending while pursuing a dramatic reduction in the number of people accessing the scheme.
Behind the language of “sustainability”, “social licence” and getting the NDIS “back on track” are real people wondering whether they will still have access to the supports that allow them to live, communicate, work, participate in community, leave their homes and exercise control over their own lives.
‘This is not an abstract budget exercise. These decisions reach directly into people’s homes, bodies and futures,’ said Debbie Kilroy.
We know what scapegoating looks like
We are particularly disturbed by the language being used to justify these reforms. Health Minister Mark Butler described the NDIS as having become a “soft target for shonks, for fraudsters and for sharp practice”.
‘We reject the use of criminalisation as political cover for austerity,’ said Tabitha Lean.
‘Criminalised communities know this strategy intimately. When governments want to expand surveillance, restrict rights, withdraw resources or increase coercive powers, they construct a dangerous or undeserving population and tell the public that extraordinary measures are necessary because of them,’ said Tabitha Lean.
The “fraudster”. The “criminal”. The “rorter”. The “undeserving” welfare recipient. The “high-risk” person.
Different labels. The same political work.
Fraud by providers or corporations should be investigated and addressed, but governments must not weaponise the spectre of fraud to create public consent for stripping rights, tightening eligibility, expanding surveillance or removing essential supports from an entire community.
‘Disabled people should not have to continually prove that they are sufficiently disabled, sufficiently vulnerable or sufficiently deserving to receive the support they need to live,’ said Tabitha Lean.
We reject the deserving and undeserving binary
‘Criminalised people also know what happens when governments divide communities into those deemed worthy of care and those deemed suspicious, risky, fraudulent or undeserving. We refuse that division,’ said Debbie Kilroy.
‘We reject any suggestion that protecting public money requires treating people who rely on public systems as potential criminals. We reject the idea that disabled people must accept increased scrutiny, assessment and surveillance because somewhere, somebody might exploit a system. And we reject the implication that there is something inherently virtuous about making fewer people eligible for support,’ said Debbie Kilroy.
‘A society should not measure the success of a disability support system by how many people it can remove from it,’ said Debbie Kilroy.
There is nothing sustainable about abandoning people
The Government says these changes are necessary to make the NDIS “sustainable”. But sustainability cannot simply mean making the spreadsheet smaller.
What happens to people who lose access to the NDIS matters.
Where will they receive support? Who will provide it? What happens when those promised alternatives do not exist, are inaccessible, are underfunded or cannot meet people’s needs?
‘We are deeply concerned by reforms designed around moving large numbers of people away from the NDIS while governments themselves acknowledge that substantial work remains to build the foundational supports supposedly waiting for them,’ said Debbie Kilroy.
‘You cannot remove the bridge before building somewhere safe for people to land. And we know which communities will be hit hardest when formal supports disappear: people experiencing poverty, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, people in regional and remote communities, people without family wealth, people experiencing homelessness, people with psychosocial disability, and people already entangled with child protection, policing, courts and prisons,’ said Debbie Kilroy.
‘For criminalised disabled people, these systems are not separate. Withdrawal of disability support can quickly become increased contact with hospitals, police, courts, prisons and other coercive institutions,’ said Debbie Kilroy.
Disability support is not charity
‘The NDIS was never supposed to be an act of government generosity. Disabled people fought for recognition of their right to exercise choice and control over their own lives and to receive the supports necessary to participate fully in community. That history matters,’ said Tabitha Lean.
‘We are alarmed by political language that increasingly treats the NDIS primarily as a financial liability that must be contained rather than as part of Australia’s obligation to disabled people,’ said Tabitha Lean.
When governments boast about billions of dollars in projected “savings”, we need to ask where those savings come from.
A saving to government can be an unpaid caring responsibility transferred to a woman.
It can be a person unable to leave their home.
It can be a family pushed beyond breaking point.
It can be somebody entering crisis.
It can be increased contact with police.
It can be institutionalisation.
It can be imprisonment.
The cost does not disappear simply because it has been removed from an NDIS balance sheet. It is transferred onto disabled people, families and communities.
Our struggles are connected
As incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women, we stand with the disability community not only in solidarity, but as part of it. Many criminalised people are disabled people. Many live with physical, intellectual, cognitive and psychosocial disabilities, acquired brain injuries and other support needs. These identities and experiences do not sit neatly in separate boxes.
For many of us, disability and criminalisation are deeply intertwined. Disabled people are routinely pushed into contact with police, courts and prisons because governments have failed to provide accessible housing, healthcare, disability support, income, community-based care and other resources people need to live safely and with dignity. Behaviour arising from distress, disability or unmet support needs can be surveilled, punished and criminalised rather than met with care.
We therefore recognise the architecture of containment running through these systems. We recognise risk assessments and bureaucracies deciding who is credible. We recognise being required to repeatedly disclose the most intimate and traumatic details of our lives to prove that we are deserving of support. We recognise surveillance being presented as protection, and the language of “fraud”, “risk” and “safety” being used to justify greater state control.
We also recognise what happens when governments describe care as an unaffordable expense while continuing to find extraordinary resources for policing, prisons, surveillance and other systems of containment. When disability and community supports are withdrawn, people do not simply disappear from government budgets. Too often, they are pushed further into crisis and into contact with other arms of the state.
Our solidarity is therefore not symbolic. Our communities overlap. Our experiences overlap. And our struggles against abandonment, surveillance, institutionalisation and criminalisation are connected.
‘We grieve with disabled people who are frightened, furious and exhausted by what these reforms may mean for their lives. We stand beside those who have spent years fighting for an NDIS grounded in dignity, autonomy, choice and control. And we reject attempts to manufacture suspicion towards marginalised communities to make cuts politically palatable,’ said Tabitha Lean.
‘Disabled people are not a budget problem. Criminalised people are not political scapegoats,’ said Tabitha Lean.
We refuse a politics that divides us into separate categories of deserving and undeserving people or asks communities already fighting for dignity to compete with one another for the resources we need to live.
Our liberation cannot be separated. Disability justice must include criminalised people and struggles against criminalisation must include disability justice.
We stand with the disability community. We share your grief. We share your anger. And we will not allow governments to use criminalised people, “fraudsters” or any other manufactured category of undeserving people as the justification for dismantling hard-won rights.
Relying on unpaid carers filling the gap
Carers Australia
Australia’s unpaid carers will be dismayed today following the passage of the Bill to reform the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), which will shift cost and responsibilities onto them, says Carers Australia CEO Joanna Cave.
Ms Cave says the NDIS Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 relies heavily on Australia’s unpaid carers filling the gap by taking on additional care responsibilities as supports are stripped away.
“The Government has refused to guarantee NDIS supports won’t be removed until other services are available, leaving carers to face some really tough decisions. Working carers may need to reduce their hours, and full-time carers are working through how they will cope without supports that help the person they care for maintain some independence.
“Carers tell us they are already at the end of their tether. Knowing the important supports the people they care for rely on will be reduced will only add to the strain, and risk accelerating carer burnout.
“While Carers Australia supports moves to ensure the sustainability of the NDIS, there are other levers the Government could use to achieve their financial aims that are not to the detriment of the people who rely on the scheme.
“There are changes that could make the NDIS market work better, slow cost growth, deliver better value for taxpayers and have less impact on people with disability and their carers. Provider overcharging is one example and a concern for many Australians. Evidence shows some NDIS providers set prices at or near price caps, contributing to cost blowouts,” she said.
Ms Cave said Carers Australia will continue to push for an impact assessment of the changes on people with disability and their carers.
“It is important that the impact of the changes on carers and those they care for are not lost as this legislation moves forward,” Ms Cave said.
Supports for eating and drinking safely at risk
Dietitians Australia
People with disability who rely on dietitians to eat and drink safely are at risk of losing that support under the NDIS Amendment Bill passed by the Senate this week, Dietitians Australia has warned.
Dietitians Australia President Dr Fiona Willer said the changes put participant safety, choice and control at risk.
“For a lot of the people we work with, eating and drinking safely is not a lifestyle question. It is the difference between staying at home or ending up in hospital,” Dr Willer said.
“Difficulty with swallowing, tube feeding and severe food aversion take time, training and careful risk management to handle safely. When that support is reduced, the consequences are choking, malnutrition, dehydration and avoidable hospital admissions.”
“Adequate nutrition and hydration underpin everything else in a participant’s plan. Someone who is malnourished or dehydrated does not have the energy or the concentration to take part in the other therapies their plan funds.”
Dysphagia, or difficulty swallowing, affects roughly 8 per cent of the population, and far more within vulnerable groups: 60 per cent of children with developmental disability, 50 per cent of stroke survivors and 84 per cent of people with dementia.
Dietitians Australia Chief Executive Officer Magriet Raxworthy said participants were already losing choice about who supports them.
“Members are telling us that dietetic hours were being cut from people’s plans before this Bill was even decided, and that some dietitians have closed or scaled back their disability practices,” Ms Raxworthy said.
“When a provider leaves, a participant does not simply move to another dietitian. In much of the country there is no other dietitian with the right skills to move to,” Ms Raxworthy said. “You cannot choose a provider who is not there.”
Ms Raxworthy said the underlying problem was that there was too little dietetic support in the scheme to begin with.
“Dietetic providers make up around 3 per cent of the therapy providers delivering NDIS supports, and around one in twenty participants receiving therapy support sees a dietitian,” Ms Raxworthy said. “Set that against how common swallowing and feeding difficulties are among people with disability, and it is clear the scheme is not funding the dietetic care participants need.”
Scheme data for the six months to December 2025 shows the average participant who saw a dietitian received under five hours of dietetic support across the half year. Other therapies averaged between nine and eleven hours over the same period.
“Under five hours in six months is an assessment, a plan and very little else,” Ms Raxworthy said. “It is not enough to support a family how to feed someone safely, or to come back and monitor a person’s progress.
“Dietitians are not leaving because the work is not needed. They are leaving because the scheme does not fund enough dietetic support to sustain a safe practice. Every dietitian who leaves takes away a participant’s option to be supported safely.”
Dietetic prices under the scheme have been reduced in each of the last two years, following a period of six years of price freezes.
The NDIS Supports Rules, which will determine what is funded in practice, are still to be drafted. Dietitians Australia will keep pressing for those rules to protect the feeding, nutrition and hydration support a person with disability requires to live with dignity.
“The Senate vote is not the end of this,” Ms Raxworthy said. “The rules that decide whether a person with disability can get help to eat and drink safely are still to be written, and we will be at the table for every one of those decisions.”
Urgent clarity is needed on what comes next
Specialist Disability Accommodation Alliance
The NDIS Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 provides important safeguards for people in need of specialist disability accommodation (SDA).
The Bill, which just passed the Senate, allows the Minister to reduce funding for certain types of supports in NDIS plans – undertaken by an instrument called support determination. However, these changes will not impact budgets for critical in-home care, home and vehicle modifications, personal mobility equipment and transport, specified disability-related consumables or SDA.
A new plan-variation pathway will also be available for participants requiring ongoing 24-hour disability-related care.
Specialist Disability Accommodation Alliance (SDA) CEO, Jeramy Hope, says these protections are crucial for people with disability in need of SDA.
“Protecting SDA funding from support determinations provides important certainty for participants with the highest housing needs and for the long-term confidence of the housing market,” Hope says.
The important next step is implementation, and Hope emphasises the importance of embedding the voices of people with disability into the nationwide implementation of these reforms.
“The next phase of home and living reforms, including Supported Independent Living commissioning, must begin with the person, their chosen home and the life they want to lead. Housing and support must work together while remaining sufficiently separate to protect tenancy rights, provider choice and freedom from conflicts of interest.”
The SDA Alliance is calling on government to provide a clear and accessible implementation roadmap which outlines how the reforms will be rolled out.
“Given the significant changes we need to ensure people do not fall through the gaps.”
More than 240,000 people may leave the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) over four years, according to government modelling. The figures estimate a further 110,000 people who are not yet participants would be diverted from accessing the scheme by 2031.
“We urge the Australian government to provide information about what other supports will be available to these individuals and when such supports will begin.”
• The Specialist Disability Accommodation (SDA) Alliance is a national peak body representing the best-practice SDA sector. Our members include SDA providers, institutional investors, developers, builders, financial institutions, allied health professionals and industry consultants. Our members make a significant impact on the lives of people with disability – by providing housing that is modern, innovative and designed to serve the needs of SDA residents.
“Reckless”
Children and Young People with Disability Australia (17 August, issued before the bill was passed)
Children and Young People with Disability Australia (CYDA) has slammed the Government’s push to pass its NDIS overhaul after Minister Jenny McAllister failed to guarantee alternative supports would be ready for people losing access.
Asked by ABC Insiders host David Speers whether participants would be kicked off the Scheme if state supports were not yet running, Minister McAllister said she was “not contemplating delay”.
The comment comes as the Senate begins debating the NDIS Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 following the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee’s recommendation that it be passed.
“The Minister was asked a very simple question: will participants lose their NDIS support before an appropriate alternative is available? She could not give families a clear answer,” said CYDA CEO Skye Kakoschke-Moore.
“It is reckless for the government to gamble with children’s lives by pushing ahead without that guarantee, and in the face of clear evidence from the community that these reforms will cause substantial harm.
“Families deserve to know the support their child needs will be there when they need it.
The Government’s own modelling indicates that about a third of the 241,000 existing NDIS participants expected to leave the Scheme by 2031 will be aged 18 or under, while 145,000 will have autism or developmental delay as their primary disability.
Its proposed Thriving Kids program, scheduled to roll out from 1 October, is meant to fill the gap for children with developmental delay or “mild or moderate autism” under nine.
But significant questions remain about what will replace the NDIS.
States and territories continue to raise concerns about the readiness of foundational supports, and the Government has yet to clearly outline what supports will be available for those who fall outside the Thriving Kids program.
This includes people with disability other than autism or developmental delay, and those who are nine and older.
“Before these changes proceed, the Government must demonstrate that appropriate, accessible, and effective alternatives are actually available for everyone,” Ms Kakoschke-Moore said.
“Children and young people with disability cannot be the test case for whether the Government’s timeline works.”
Community concerns ignored
The Senate inquiry into the Bill received more than 4500 submissions and heard evidence across six days of public hearings from people with disability, families, advocates, and others.
Despite most saying the Bill should not be passed in its current form, the inquiry’s final report, tabled last Friday, recommended its passage while failing to address significant outstanding concerns.
This includes suggestions from the Labor-led Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights that the Bill raised significant human rights risks.
It said that measures intended to improve the NDIS’ sustainability and integrity may not be proportionate or sufficiently safeguarded and could result in reduced access and harm.
“The community has been extraordinarily vocal about what is at stake,” Ms Kakoschke-Moore said.
“Of course, we all want a sustainable NDIS that will work for generations present and future, but sustainability cannot come at the cost of people’s rights, safety or access to essential support.”
Families cannot be expected to fill the gaps
In its own submission to the inquiry, CYDA highlighted that the Bill would place further pressure on parents to provide informal supports.
This risks placing additional unpaid caring responsibilities on families already under significant pressure, including where children have complex behavioural, communication, or support needs.
“The Government needs to be transparent about what these changes will mean for children and young people with disability and their families or caregivers,” Ms Kakoschke-Moore said.
“Parents will not stop caring for their children if NDIS supports are removed; they will simply have to do more themselves.
“That will mean parents giving up work and facing greater financial pressure, children becoming more isolated, and families being pushed into serious crisis.”
CYDA also remains concerned about proposed reductions to social and community participation supports and changes to access and functional capacity requirements.
“Social and community participation is how children make friends, build confidence, develop independence and participate in their communities,” Ms Kakoschke-Moore said.
“Reducing these supports risks leaving children more isolated in their most critical developmental years.”
Further reading
The Conversation, on who bears the cost of making the NDIS sustainable
See Croakey’s archive of articles on the NDIS
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