New NDIS Act: timeline of changes

The new NDIS legislation comes into effect on October 3rd— which is this Thursday!

We all know it’s a massive deal. Yet these changes are a lot to get your head around. There’s a lot of confusion out there, and a lot of you are probably wondering WTF is going on. Which is honestly so fair; it’s a lot to get your head around in a short amount of time. And the legal jargon! Gawd help me.

We’ve spent weeks analysing the ins and outs of the legislation to help you make sense of it. And we thought it might be helpful to create a timeline that shows what’s changing and when. That way, you know what to prioritise and when to start expecting changes.

Changes that come into effect October 3rd 

Definition of an NDIS support 

What’s changing:

• The new Act introduces the concept of an ‘NDIS support’, which will have significant ramifications for access and planning decisions. 
• However, the Act itself doesn’t actually define NDIS support. Instead, it will be defined in legislative Rules that will need to be formed in agreement with the states & territories.
• Since the process of creating these Rules is likely to be long, drawn out and probably quite painful, the government will implement transitional Rules in the meantime. These Rules will contain two lists of support types—supports funded by the NDIS and supports not funded. Yet despite the new legislation coming into effect in two days time, at the time of writing, the transitional Rules have not be released yet.
• In addition to supports that are not funded, there are a number of prohibited supports listed in the legislation. This includes the undefined “sexual services”.

Date: Oct 3rd

Eligibility

What’s changing:

• In order for people to meet the access criteria, they must demonstrate that the support they need is an “NDIS support.”
• This is applicable to both the disability and early intervention streams of the NDIS.

Date: Oct 3^rd

Early intervention or disability requirements

What’s changing:

• When people access the NDIS, the Agency will inform them whether they have met the early intervention or disability requirements, or both.

Date: Oct 3rd

Eligibility reassessment

What’s changing:

• The NDIA can now request information or assessments from a participant, to test whether they are still eligible for the Scheme.
• The NDIA must give the person at least 90 days to provide this information, but they have the option of giving them longer.
• If the information is not provided within the set timeframe, the person might have their access to the Scheme revoked.
• However, the NDIA can’t revoke someone's access if they couldn’t reasonably have complied with the request in that timeframe. The Act lists things the NDIA must consider when deciding if it was reasonable for someone to comply.

Date: Oct 3^rd

Re-summiting an access request

What’s changing:

• A person who has their status as an NDIS participant revoked can request a review of that decision.
• However, they will not be able to submit a new access request until the review has been completed.

Date: 3^rd Oct

Support for impairments that meet the access criteria

What’s changing:

• From October 3^rd, the NDIS will only fund supports arising from the impairment/s the NDIA thinks a person meets the access criteria for at the time of planning. The impairment types they will consider are: intellectual impairments, cognitive impairments, neurological impairments, sensory impairments, physical impairments, and impairments attributable to a psychosocial disability.
• The challenge is that participants currently have no insight into what impairments the NDIA has listed next to their name, or how accurate the NDIA’s information is.  
• Eventually, the NDIA will send all participants an impairment notice, informing them what categories of impairments they have—according to the NDIA, of course! But, the NDIA hasn’t worked out the timeframe for sending existing participants impairment notices (we discuss this in more detail below). Therefore, there will be a period of time when a person’s impairments are meant to inform their funding, but the NDIA hasn’t notified them of the impairments they are meant to have. Classic NDIS logic. 

Date: Oct 3^rd

Contents of a plan

What’s changing:

• When a participant has a plan reassessment after October 3^rd, their plan will now include a: total funding amount, funding component amount and funding period.
• Total funding amount: a person’s total NDIS funding for the whole length of the plan.
• Funding component amount: the amount of funding a person has in each section of their plan.
• Funding period: how often funding will be released. Under the changes, people will only be able to access a proportion of their funding at a time. This is meant to allow for budgeting in multi-year plans, to ensure people don’t use all their funding in the first year and run out. From October 3^rd, all plans will have 12-month funding periods. From 2025, some participants might have shorter funding periods.
• The legislation calls these ‘old framework plans’ (read more on new framework plans below).

Date: For plans developed after Oct 3^rd

Substitution to access a support from the “out” list

What’s changing:

• As mentioned above, the transitional Rules will list supports that the NDIS will not fund. However, a person can apply to the NDIA for permission to get one of these supports substituted.
• The Act lists the criteria the NDIA must use to decide whether a person can access one of these supports. Even if a support meets the criteria, the NDIA can still decide not to allow it. The criteria include that it must replace an NDIS support, deliver the same or better outcomes,  be of equal or lower cost to the replacement supports, and meet the criteria in rules we haven’t seen yet.
• The NDIA’s refusal to substitute a support is not a reviewable decision.

Date: Oct 3^rd- However, we do not yet know the process for applying for a substitution and when it will begin.  

Compliance measures

What’s changing:

• The NDIA has new compliance powers if they believe someone is not spending their funding in accordance with their plan or on NDIS supports.
• They will be able to change a person’s plan management types or funding periods, and raise a debt.
• Changes to a person’s plan management types and funding periods will be reviewable decisions that can be appealed. People can also apply to the NDIA to waive a debt. The decision not to waive a debt will be a reviewable decision.

Date: Oct 3^rd

Claims

What’s changing:

• Providers must now make claims within 2-years of the support being provided.

Date: Oct 3^rd- But the NDIA will honour older claims for the first 12 months.

Before October 8th

Timeline for Rules

What’s changing:

• The Minister must publish a timeline for consulting the disability community, states, and territories on the new Rules.

Date: Within 5 days of the Act coming into effect.

January 1^st onwards 

Impairment notices

What’s changing:

• The NDIA will start notifying participants which categories of impairment(s) they met the access criteria for: intellectual, cognitive, neurological, sensory, physical or psychosocial.
• These impairment notices will also say whether the person has met the early intervention or disability requirements, or both.
• Participants can apply to have these notices varied.

Date: The NDIA will start issuing impairment notices to new participants from January 1^st. But for existing participants, the NDIA website says they will receive their notices at ‘a date to be confirmed.’ However, it will be before they transition to new framework plans (more on that below).

Over the next 5 years

New framework plans

What’s changing:

• Over the next 5 years, all participants will transition to what the Act calls ‘new framework plans.’
• New framework plans will be developed based on the results of a needs assessment. These assessments will be organised by the NDIA and use set assessment tools to determine what support a person needs.
• We don’t have a precise timeline for the rollout of needs assessments or new framework plans. The NDIA website just says, ‘implementation timing to be confirmed.’
• But in a recent townhall with Independent MP Zoe Steggal, NDIS Minister Bill Shorten said that new framework plans would take 12-18 months to get started. He also said that there are likely to be 20-25 assessment tools to cater for different participants. And, of course, as we’ve heard many times—that the process will be co-designed.

Date: The Act allows 5 years for the rollout of new framework plans.

Replacement needs assessment

What’s changing:

• Under some circumstances, participants will be able to receive a replacement needs assessment.
• The Rules will outline the NDIA’s criteria for deciding whether to order a replacement needs assessment. But since the Rules haven’t been written yet, we don’t know what the criteria will be.

Date: When participant transitions to new framework plan.

Plan contents under new framework plans

What’s changing:

• New framework plans will include a flexible and stated budget. Flexible budgets can be spent- as the name suggests- flexibly. But stated supports must be spent on the support listed in the plan.
• New framework plans will also include total funding amounts and funding periods (see definition above).

Date: When participant transitions to new framework plan.

Compliance measures under new framework plans

What’s changing:

• In addition to being able to raise a debt, change a person’s plan management type or change a person’s funding periods, under new framework plans the NDIA will now be able to vary the amount of a plan that can be spent flexibly if they believe someone isn’t spending their funding in accordance with their plan or on NDIS supports.  

Date: When the participant transitions to a new framework plan.

Change of circumstances

What’s changing:

• Under new framework plans, there will be criteria for when participants can get additional funding before the end of a plan.
• The criteria includes if there is an emergency, a threat to the participant's life or if they have been a victim of fraud.

Date: When the participant transitions to a new framework plan.

Independent review of Act

What’s changing:

• The Minister must initiate an independent review of the changes to the Act.

Date: End of 5 years

What else is happening

Not all the change afoot in disability policy or the NDIS is reflected in the new Act. Here’s some other key dates

NDIS Review:

• All governments will release a joint response to the NDIS Review in December 2024. This commitment was also made in the Disability Reform Ministerial Council meeting communique, though their language was ‘no later than early December.’

Disability Royal Commission (DRC):

• Implementation of the DRC’s recommendation began after the government responded to the report in July 2024. Though, of course, they are currently only implementing the 13 recommendations accepted in full.
• Progress updates will be released in December 2024, June 2025, and December 2025.

 Foundational supports:

• All governments are working on a Foundational Supports Strategy.
• The Strategy will include a more detailed timeframe for implementing foundational supports. But phrased implementation is expected to begin from mid-2025.

 Australia’s Disability Strategy (ADS):

• A targeted review of the ADS began in September 2024.
• A full evaluation of the ADS will begin in July 2025, with the report handed down in 2026.

 Registration:

• In October, the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission will begin consulting on changes to the Rules that will mandate compulsory registration of Support Coordinators, platform providers and Supported Independent Living (SIL) providers.
• It is unclear what the transition timeline will be for these providers to register.
• The government has also said it will soon begin consultations on the Registration Taskforce’s definitions of an ‘NDIS provider’ and ‘self-directed supports.’

Learn more

If you’re partial to a bit of stress reading, make sure you check out the Getting the NDIS Back on Track Bill. The legal jargon is a lot to get your head around, but you get used to it (kind of!).
The NDIS website also has a summary of legislative changes and a FAQs page.  Department of Social Services (DSS) also has a page on changes to the NDIS Act.

DSS recently released a Disability Reform Roadmap for 2024 and 2025. Warning: It’s quite an eyesore. But it does give us some key (if vague) dates.

On September 16^th, NDIS Bill Shorten published a media release outline the government’s initial plans for compulsory registration for some providers- ‘Stronger registration to begin for NDIS sector.’

And if you’re a provider who wants to understand how navigate this new landscape, make sure you check out our 2-hour workshop The New NDIS Law: What Providers Need to Know.