After legislating controversial reforms to the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) last week, the government’s plan to cut 160,000 NDIS participants and save A$37.8 billion over four years is underway.

The legislation tightens access to the NDIS by:

altering the way a person’s needs are assessed

introducing stricter rules to show a disability is permanent

allowing automated tools to assess eligibility and plan supports.

But we still don’t know exactly what the new process will look like. Much of the detail has been left to rules, instruments, assessment tools and implementation processes that are still in development.

A new technical advisory group has been set up to advise government. It is expected to complete much of its work by late 2026 and report to government by March 2027. The eligibility changes take effect from January 2028.

People who are already accessing the NDIS will also begin to be reassessed based on the new criteria from 2028. This will happen progressively over three years.

Assessing how your disability impacts daily life

These reforms are designed to move away from assessing NDIS eligibility based on a person’s diagnosis.

Instead, the aim is to have a more consistent and robust approach that assesses a person’s “functional capacity”. This means how much their disability affects their daily life.

A person seeking access to the NDIS needs to demonstrate they have substantially reduced functional capacity and that it’s permanent.

The new assessment........

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