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Major Overhaul of NDIS Unveiled to Bring Down Costs
The overhaul would cut at least 160,000 participants, reset plan budgets and expand provider registration as Labor seeks to slow NDIS growth.
On Wednesday, Health and Disability Minister Mark Butler announced sweeping cuts to the $50 billion National Disability Insurance Scheme, aiming to remove at least 160,000 participants and slow annual growth to 2 per cent over four years.
The NDIS has ballooned to cost $50 billion annually, serving 760,000 participants with a 10 per cent annual growth rate that Butler labeled a "diagnosis gateway" creating unsustainable reliance on the scheme.
Reforms eliminate automatic access based on diagnosis, replacing it with functional assessments while reducing average plan spending from about $31,000 to about $26,000 and tightening provider registration for high-risk activities.
Children with mild to moderate autism may be diverted to the proposed $4 billion Thriving Kids program, though the scheme remains in gridlock as Queensland refuses to sign citing insufficient funding from The Commonwealth.
A new assessment tool will be designed over the next 18 months with full rollout from January 2028, aiming to shrink NDIS participation to 600,000 by 2030 from the current 760,000.