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If you've felt your stomach drop reading headlines about the new NDIS Bill, you are not alone.
The National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 has just been introduced to Parliament, and it is a big one. It changes how access works, how plans get renewed, what the NDIA can fund, how a change of circumstances request gets handled, and (most importantly for families like ours) what the rules say about parents and carers of disabled kids.
It is a lot.
So this is the plain English version, written for actual parents who do not have time to read 300+ pages of legislation while making lunchboxes and chasing therapy invoices.
Before we dive in, two important caveats.
First, this is a Bill. It is not law yet. It has been introduced to Parliament for the politicians to start throwing sand at each other in the sand pit. So this means that what is included here can and probably will change. It is factual as of the date published and after this, please make sure you fact check EVERYTHING.
Second, even when it passes, most of these changes do not start straight away. They roll out across late 2026, 2027 and 2028.
In this article I will cover:
- What the Bill actually is and when each bit kicks in
- How a change of circumstances request is going to work under the proposed new rules
- What is changing for kids on the NDIS specifically
- Plan resets
- Access and permanence, the tighter front door
- What plan managers like Kindship are seeing already
This one is a long one so grab a cuppa, or something stronger and lets dive in.
What is the Securing the NDIS for Future Generations Bill?
In plain English, it is the Government's next big round of NDIS reform. The previous round was Getting the NDIS Back on Track (passed in 2024), which gave us the support rules (naughty and nice list), funding periods and the new framework/needs assessment concepts.
This new Bill builds on that.
The Bill sits across five areas:
- Access and planning measures, including who gets onto the NDIS, how plans get renewed, and what "reasonable and necessary" actually means
- Fraud and compliance measures, including a 90 day claim window and a separate registration regime just for plan managers
- Governance arrangements, including how the Minister sets NDIS prices and how the NDIA can use automation and computer systems to make decisions
- New framework planning refinements, tidying up the 2024 reform
- Transitional rules
Different parts start on different dates. Here is the timeline that matters for families:
- 7 days after Royal Assent, the new functional capacity definition, tighter unscheduled plan reassessments, the stronger impairment link, and new compliance powers
- 1 October 2026, the Minister's new power to reduce funding for groups of supports (aka, the reduction in social and community participation funding).
- 1 December 2026, the 90 day claim window (down from 2 years)
- 1 February 2027, plan reset under a new system, plus the changes to definitions of reasonable and necessary supports
- 1 January 2028, the new permanence test (must have undertaken all evidence based treatment) and eligibility based on access to other services
If your brain is already full just from reading those dates, that is fair. Let's get into what each of these actually means in real life.
Change of Circumstances Request
This is one of the most important changes in the Bill, because every family I know has had to request a change of circumstances at some point. A new diagnosis. A regression. A support breakdown. The kind of "the wheels have come off" moments where you need the NDIA to look at your child's plan again before the next scheduled review.
Right now under section 48 of the NDIS Act, you can ask the NDIA to reassess your child's plan at any time. The CEO has 21 days to either agree to do the reassessment or not.
Under the new Bill, that all changes.
The new look change of circumstances
First, your child's support needs have to have changed in a big way. Not a small shift. A real change to what they need help with day to day. And those needs still have to come from the disability or impairment that got them onto the NDIS in the first place.
Second, the change has to come from one of two things:
1: Your child's functional capacity has changed. Functional capacity means their ability to do things like communicate, get around, look after themselves, learn, or manage day to day life. To qualify, three things need to be true:
- The change is significant and ongoing (not a bad week or a temporary dip)
- It is either because their existing disability has changed, OR because they have a new or acquired condition that would meet NDIS access on its own
- Your child can do noticeably less day to day than they used to
2: Something big has changed in their life or environment. To qualify, the change has to be unexpected, significant and ongoing, AND it has to affect one of these four things:
- Where they live
- Their education
- Their work
- The informal support around them (family, friends, community)
What this means in real life.
If your reason for asking does not tick all the boxes in one of these two options, the NDIA does not have to consider your request.
The new timeframe.
The NDIA’s response window goes from 21 days to 90 days. This might not feel like a big change but to anyone who has had to wait for an answer for 3 months and then wait for the actual plan reassessment to occur on top of this, we are realistically going to see participants waiting for up to 4 - 6 months for a new plan build (this is in the situations where the Agency agrees to reassess).
Take aways
For families, this means change of circumstances requests will need to be more thoroughly evidenced, more tightly framed, and you will need to be patient for longer while the Agency makes their decision on whether or not they will reassess your child’s plan.
The honest take is that this will hit families with kids whose needs are episodic or fluctuating the hardest. Disability does not always escalate in clean, evidence ready steps. Sometimes you only realise something has changed when you stop and look back.
The Sneaky Budget Reductions for Social and Community Participation and Improved Daily Living
From October 2026, the Minister gets a new power to reduce how much families can spend in certain budget categories. Two specific changes have been proposed.
Social and community participation budgets,% cut. If your child's plan includes funding for social and community participation, the amount you can actually spend on those supports is being reduced. The plan might still say "$X" on paper, but the rules will say you can only use % of it.
Capacity Building, Improved Daily Living, 10% cut. Same idea. If your plan has Improved Daily Living funding (this is the budget mostly used for paying for therapies and/or nursing), you will be only able to spend 90% of it.
Important bit. This only applies to plans approved on or after October 2026.
If your child's current plan was approved before October, you keep spending your existing budget as it stands. The cut does not retrospectively apply to plans already in place. But the next time you get a new plan (either through a reassessment, a plan review, or moving to the new framework planning system), the reduction will apply to that new plan.
What this means in real life.
If you receive a new plan after October 2026, the NDIA can still approve the same "reasonable and necessary" funding amount on paper. The Minister's instrument just reduces what you are allowed to actually spend of it.
We are going to need to wait for more clarity around this as things evolve.
Parental Responsibility will have a legal definition
For the first time, the Act will include statutory presumptions about what parents are expected to do for their kids. These have always been around in other legal documents however if the Bill is accepted in its current format, it will now be in the actual Act.
Here is what it says.
Under the tightened reasonable and necessary criteria where the participant is a child, the NDIA must take into account the presumption that parents are responsible for providing substantial care and support for their children. Substantial care and support is defined to include:
- Supervision
- Personal care
- Transport
- Emotional support
- Behavioural support
- Other assistance with activities of daily living that, regardless of the child's disability, would reasonably be expected of a parent of a child of a similar age
And then (and this is the bit that gets me), the NDIA must not decide a support meets the reasonable and necessary test if the primary or substantial purpose of the support is to:
(a) reduce burdens on parental time below what is reasonably expected of a parent; or
(b) improve household efficiency; or
(c) give effect to a parent's preference for supports otherwise than by parental care
What this looks like in real life.
If the primary purpose of the support is to give you a break, improve your family's functioning, or substitute for parental care (which has always not been allowed), the NDIA cannot consider whatever you are asking for as a reasonable and necessary support.
I am going to be honest. I find this part of the Bill genuinely concerning. Parenting a child with significant disability is not the same as parenting a typically developing child of the same age. Anyone who has lived it knows that. The mental load, the physical load, the emotional load, the cost, the hours, none of that scales with the kid's chronological age. It scales with their functional needs.
There is some comfort as further down, it says the NDIA must consider whether relying on informal support would expose the participant or another person to "a material risk of harm, abuse or neglect that cannot be mitigated". And there is a consideration about whether informal supports are "unsustainable". So in theory, when a parent's mental health is on the floor, or the family is at risk of breaking down, the threshold can still be met.
But "material risk of harm that cannot be mitigated" is a high bar. It is not "I am exhausted". It is not "the marriage is struggling". It is real risk, real harm, real evidence.
The new evidence hierarchy.
The Bill also changes how the NDIA weighs up evidence about whether a support will actually work. Until now, your child's therapist saying "this is helping" carried real weight. Under the new rules, that kind of evidence drops down the pecking order. Here is the new ranking the NDIA has to apply
- Research and evidence that is published, peer reviewed and generalisable
- Evidence about effectiveness having regard to the participant's circumstances
- Evidence about outcomes for the participant from their previous plan
- Other matters the NDIA considers appropriate
And the NDIA can refuse a support if there is no peer reviewed generalisable research, even if there is strong participant specific evidence that the support is working. Or refuse it if there is no participant specific evidence, even if there is published research.
In real life, this will probably affect families whose kids respond well to therapies that are common, well used, but under researched (ie intensive therapy blocks).
When does this start? 1 February 2027. So you have about 9 months to think about your current plan, the supports in it, and how the new test might apply to your next planning conversation.
Plan Resets
Under the current system, your child's plan has a "reassessment date". As that date approaches, you go through a plan review process. Sometimes this works fine. Often it does not. And lets face it, the entire process is filled with anxiety, overwhem and the constant fear that you are going to mess it up and your babe be left with no funding. .
The Bill proposes that (commencing 1 February 2027), plans will have an "end date" instead of a reassessment date. On the end date, your child's plan will be automatically reset as a new plan for another 12 months. The new plan will be identical to the old one, with two differences:
- Any one off funding from the old plan is stripped out
- The Minister can make rules adjusting the renewal (for example, removing time limited funding that has already been used)
There is no new statement of participant supports. No new planning meeting. No need to provide evidence. The plan just resets.
The pros
For most families, this means more stability. No more six month waits for a new plan. No more anxiety about the upcoming plan review process. Your funding resets for another 12 months and you go on and live your life.
The cons
The renewal is just a reset, not a chance to ask for more funding. If your child's needs change during the plan period, the automatic reset does not help. You still have to either ask the NDIA for a reassessment (under the new tighter rules we just covered) or wait for the NDIA to move you onto a new framework plan in their own time.
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Access and Permanent Impairment, the Tighter Front Door
Two changes here that matter for any family considering an NDIS application or any family who are facing re-eligibility assessment.
Functional capacity gets a statutory definition.
The Bill introduces a new section 9B which defines functional capacity as the ability to do an activity without assistance from other people, assistive technology or modifications, and in a context that excludes (as far as possible) the impact of the person's environmental and personal circumstances.
This is the unsupported capacity test. The question is not "what can my child do day to day", it is "what can my child do if you strip away the parent, the AAC device, the visual schedule, the modified environment, and any other support". For most kids with disabilities, this test will be easier to meet than the current one, because the new framing emphasises what they cannot do without help, but here we are again, focusing on what humans with disabilities cannot do.
Proving permanent impairment gets harder
The bill proposes that an impairment will not be considered permanent (and therefore will not meet access requirements) unless the person has undertaken “all appropriate treatment.” Appropriate treatment is defined as treatment that is evidence based, can reliably be expected to improve or reverse the impact of the impairment, and is regularly undertaken in Australia.
And here is the bit that gets me (another one). The Bill explicitly says treatment can be considered "appropriate" even if the person's individual circumstances restrict the person from accessing the treatment. So that means that if your financial circumstances and/or geographic location mean you cannot access a certain treatment, it's essentially “too bad mate” situation.
In real life, this means a family in rural Queensland with limited specialist access could be told their child has not exhausted "appropriate treatment" options and therefore the impairment is not permanent enough to meet NDIS access. The fact that they cannot afford the treatment, or there is none within 400 kilometres, is legally irrelevant.
There is an exemption for "medical reasons" preventing treatment, and the NDIS rules can carve out specified circumstances. But the default position is "no exemption for access barriers".
When does this start? 1 January 2028.
What Plan Managers Are Already Seeing
I am going to put on my plan management CEO hat here for a minute. As a plan management provider, Kindship sees a lot of what is changing through the lens of how it affects invoice processing and family cash flow.
A few things to flag:
The 90 day claim window.
From 1 December 2026, providers will have 90 days to claim for a support, down from 2 year limit that was introduced in October 2024. This is a massive operational change and something I am personally a fan of as it means no surprises when you are planning out spending your funding.
What this means for families is simple. Tell your providers to invoice promptly. If you are self managed, claim quickly. If you switch plan managers, make sure invoices follow you. Also, have the conversation with providers on who is financially responsible to pay for services if they fail to invoice in time. Hint hint… push for a clause in the service agreement that you are not financially responsible if the invoice is not submitted within 60 days. This will give you enough time to deal with any processing issues etc.
Price caps that bind providers.
The Bill allows the Minister to set maximum amounts that apply to plan managed and Agency managed supports (not self managed). NDIS providers will be legally prohibited from charging more than the maximum rate in the Pricing Arrangements and Price Limits (PAPL). As a plan manager, we will have to refuse any invoice that exceeds the cap, regardless if the participant is happy to pay the difference.
Automation.
The Bill gives the NDIA the power to use computer programs to make decisions about plan content, payments, claims, and price caps. The NDIA have to publish a "standard operating procedure" instrument and disclose in the annual report when automated decisions were wrong. But your child's claim could be auto rejected by a system that is then "treated for all purposes as a decision of the CEO". You are allowed to request a review however the volume of automated rejections will go up.
The new plan manager registration regime.
This is the bit that matters most for Kindship as a business, less so for families directly, but worth mentioning. Plan managers will need to enter a deed of arrangement with the NDIA (not the Quality and Safeguards Commission who are responsible for the registration and oversight of providers. This deed of arrangement will cover integrity, governance, ICT, conflicts of interest and claims handling. There is a 6 month transition period for existing plan managers who don't make the cut and you will be able to find another provider.
The Bill also mandates separation between plan management and other NDIS service delivery. Your plan manager cannot also be your support coordinator, your therapy provider, or anything else. If your current plan manager wears multiple hats, that is going to have to change. For families currently bundled into one provider for everything, its time to start to think about what this looks like. Shameless plug, Kinship Plan Management only offers plan management services, just saying 😉
What to do right now
- Remember, this is not yet law. Everything in this article could technically change. A Bill is basically the Government’s wishlist of how they want to reform the scheme. This needs to get through the House of Representatives and the Senate first. If you have been around Australian politics for long enough, you will know that they aren’t always great and playing well in the sandpit together and there will be some definite hair pulling and arguments.
- Get your evidence in order. If your child is approaching a plan review or you think you may need a change of circumstances request in the next 12 months, start gathering evidence now. Reports, school documentation, therapy progress notes, the lot. Under the new rules, more weight will be given to peer reviewed evidence and to documented "substantial reduction in ability to perform daily activities". Document the reality of your child's support needs.
- Tell your providers to invoice promptly. From 1 December 2026, claims will need to be made within 90 days. Old habits of "I'll catch up on invoices when I have time" will start costing providers money. Make sure you protect yourself and ask for changes to your service agreements.
- Pay attention to what your plan manager is doing. A good plan manager will be working through this Bill, briefing their team, updating their systems, and proactively communicating to you about what is changing. If your plan manager has not mentioned any of this to you, we would love to have a chat with you about how Kindship Plan Management could be the right fit for you.
The NDIS being the NDIS, none of this will land cleanly. There will be confusion, inconsistency between delegates, community partners and call centre staff. It will be frustrating however you will not be alone in this.
And remember… this is not happening tomorrow.
NDIS changes are coming thick and fast right now. If you'd rather hear about them from someone who's already read the fine print, we've got you.
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