As new legislation looms, here’s the latest on the future of the NDIS

It’s been three months since a major review of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) called for a total rethink of disability support in Australia. 

Updates since then have been few and far between, leaving many in the disability community worried about a scheme that has transformed hundreds of thousands of lives and enabled them to live better and more independently. 

Now the Albanese government has unveiled draft legislation setting out proposed changes, giving us our first major sign of what could be to come.  

Nothing is final — but here’s what we know so far. 

What’s in the legislation? 

In terms of content, quite a bit. In terms of immediate change, not much. 

That’s because the legislation is aiming to create a mechanism that allows future changes to take place. 

Essentially, the recommendations from the review can’t take effect until legislative instruments are updated, so that’s what this bill is aiming to do.

Among other things, the bill aims to enable changes including:

  • The move towards a needs-based assessment to enter the scheme, rather than one focusing on diagnosis. The ABC understands this could remove the necessity to collect medical reports to repeatedly prove a person’s disability. 
  • Participants to be given longer plans of up to five years and the ability to spend more flexibly across their budgets, instead of having finite, allocated amounts that can only be spent on certain categories of support. 
  • The creation of a definition of what constitutes an “NDIS support”. The NDIS Act does not currently have one and the ABC understands a concrete definition could help prevent people from spending their plan budgets on things they aren’t supposed to. 
  • The agency that runs the NDIS to have greater ability to take control of someone’s account if there’s evidence of “financial risk factors”, such as fraud. Those risk factors would be co-designed. 
  • The powers of the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission to be expanded. 

NDIS Minister Bill Shorten said the legislation’s introduction to parliament marked “the next part of our journey towards an improved [scheme]”. 

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