The NDIS Bill Has Passed: What it means for providers and participants

On 18 August 2026, the NDIS Bill cleared the Senate 28 votes to 12, following passage through the House of Representatives on 2 July with 30 amendments already built in, and a further 63 amendments tabled in the hours before the final vote. The Bill is now law.

For participants and families, the immediate message is a reassuring one: nothing changes to current access or planning arrangements today. The NDIA has committed to direct communication before any individual is affected, and existing review and appeal pathways continue to apply unchanged.

For providers, SIL providers and support coordinators in particular, the picture is more complex. Passing the Bill didn’t finish the job; it started a two-year build process. Much of what actually happens next depends on instruments still to be made under the Act – a functional capacity threshold, ministerial funding determinations, and state-by-state Foundational Supports agreements – rather than the Act itself. That’s where the real work for the sector now sits.

Let’s review what is changing, when it takes effect, and what SIL providers and support coordinators will be doing between now and the next round of milestones.

Why this is a structural change, not a technical amendment

The scale involved makes clear this is a redesign of who can access the scheme, how plans are funded, and how decisions are reviewed, not a compliance tidy-up:

• Around $38 billion in projected savings to 2029-30
• An estimated 240,000 – 350,000 people projected to be removed from or diverted from the scheme by 2031 (modelling; the range varies by source)
• A 50% cut to Social and Community Participation funding, plus a further reduction to Capacity Building
• More than 4,500 submissions to the Senate inquiry, the vast majority opposed

Any advice or planning built on the old assumptions that eligibility is essentially permanent once granted, that community participation funding is uncapped, or that unspent funds roll forward, is now out of date.

Three key changes

1. Eligibility gets a legal definition and a due date. A new legislated “functional capacity” test becomes the basis for access decisions, and “permanence” is tightened so that access depends on the impairment being confirmed permanent, or likely permanent, after appropriate treatment. Funding is also scoped more tightly to the originating impairment. The actual threshold is still being built by a Technical Advisory Group through late 2026 into 2027 and is not yet public. It commences 1 January 2028 for new applicants; existing participants continue under current rules until their next scheduled review.
2. Funding – ministerial reset powers and harder plan boundaries. The Minister can now determine funding reductions for entire categories of support, already in use for the Social/Community Participation and Capacity Building budgets reset from 1 October 2026. Every plan now carries a legislated end date, and unspent funds do not carry forward. Only the participant, their nominee or guardian may request an unscheduled reassessment. A new appeal right applies to 24/7 care funding decisions but not to the Social/Community Participation cut itself.
3. A wider registration net and sharper enforcement teeth. Mandatory registration has expanded to providers meeting the new SIL definition and to NDIS digital platforms, effective 1 July 2026. The NDIA has new civil penalty powers, including for failure to provide information, alongside expanded monitoring and investigation powers. This sits alongside the Joint Standing Committee’s Integrity and Fraud inquiry, which reported in July 2026 with 12 recommendations for tougher deterrents and more inter agency data sharing. In short, the standard has shifted from “did you intend to do the right thing” to “can you evidence that you did.”

Three clocks that don’t move together

It’s worth being precise about timing, because these changes are easy to mistake for a single “2028 event”:

• 1 October 2026: funding cuts begin (Social/Community Participation and Capacity Building budgets reset), and Thriving Kids starts, state by state, for children aged 8 and under with low-to-moderate needs
• 2026-27: the Technical Advisory Group builds the functional capacity threshold
• 1 January 2028: the new eligibility test commences for new applicants

The gap that matters for providers – funding cuts start well before the eligibility test exists. And outside Thriving Kids, the alternative supports for people displaced by either change, commonly referred to as Foundational Supports, don’t yet exist anywhere in Australia.

A $5 billion Commonwealth/state Foundational Supports commitment exists on paper, but only $2 billion (Thriving Kids) is allocated to a designed program; the remaining roughly $3 billion sits in an unallocated contingency line, not a service model. As at mid-August 2026, Queensland had not signed its Thriving Kids bilateral agreement, citing undefined terms and unclear cost-sharing – a useful indicator of how much design work remains across the sector more broadly.

What this means for SIL providers

SIL is the most immediately regulated of the affected provider types and most of what applies here is already in effect, not still coming.

• Mandatory registration has been required since 1 July 2026 under the new SIL Practice Standards.
• Wherever a participant’s plan involves a regulated restrictive practice, registration must include the Behaviour Support module specifically, a distinct registration group from general SIL delivery.
• SIL and group homes are the NDIS Commission’s highest-risk enforcement cohort, and audit and incident reporting scrutiny is intensifying.
• The Government has flagged a longer term shift toward a commissioned or vetted SIL provider model, with consultation beginning from July 2026.

The immediate priority is straightforward: registration and Practice Standards compliance are non-negotiable right now. Treat current registration as the entry ticket, not the end state. Providers who build strong documentation and evidence practices today will be better positioned if and when a more vetted market arrives.

What this means for support coordinators

Support coordination is the least settled of the affected roles. The Bill itself makes no major structural change to this market; the real action is happening in a parallel Impact Analysis process.

• Mandatory registration for standard support coordination remains paused, not removed.
• The Government’s stated preferred reform option is a commissioned support coordination and connection service, which would move participants from buying support coordination on the open market to using a network of government-commissioned providers instead.
• Minister Butler has flagged a 30% reduction in funding for “intermediary” services.
• A commissioned model is targeted to begin in July 2028, though this timing is considerably softer than the Bill’s own commencement dates, since it depends on a policy decision that hasn’t yet been finalised.

The practical advice: don’t wait for the pause to lift before acting. Providers who build strong compliance foundations, documentation discipline and evidence trails now will be better positioned for panel inclusion under a future commissioned model than those who wait for the criteria to be confirmed.

A 90-day watching brief

Five things worth tracking closely over the coming months:

1. Ministerial determinations on Social/Community Participation and Capacity Building funding – watch for the specific percentage and staging.
2. Your state’s Foundational Supports bilateral agreement – is it signed, funded, and with which service definitions?
3. Technical Advisory Group progress on the functional capacity threshold.
4. NDIA guidance on plan end date and no carryover transition arrangements for plans already in train.
5. Disallowance motions or Senate estimates scrutiny on delegated instruments made under the Act.

For participants and families

If you’re reading this as a participant or family member rather than a provider, the core message is simple: nothing changes to your current access or planning arrangements today, and the NDIA has committed to direct communication before any individual is affected. Keep your plan documentation and evidence of need current, as the evidentiary bar is rising, not falling. Families of children approaching age 8 with lower support needs should start engaging with Thriving Kids information early. Existing review pathways continue to apply unchanged.

Where DEC Housing stands

As a Specialist Disability Accommodation provider, DEC Housing is tracking these reforms closely, particularly the Foundational Supports gap and the registration trajectory for home and living supports, and will continue to share updates as the Technical Advisory Group’s work, state bilateral agreements, and ministerial determinations take shape over the next two years.

If you’re a support coordinator, a SIL provider, or a participant or family working through what any of this means for a housing pathway, DEC’s team is happy to talk it through. This is a two-year process with genuine gaps in it, and the way through those gaps is tracking the detail, not waiting for a headline to clear it up.

This article is general information current as at the date of publication and does not constitute legal or financial advice. Providers and participants should seek independent advice specific to their circumstances.