NDIS Changes 2026: The Case for Honesty, Balance, & Collaboration

In late April, the Minister for Disability, Mark Butler, gave a major speech at the National Press Club in Canberra about the future of the NDIS. He laid out a package of cuts and changes, now formally known as the NDIS Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026. The response from across the disability sector has been strong – from people on the scheme, their families, support workers, and providers.

For the hundreds of thousands of Australians who rely on the NDIS to live independently, stay connected with their communities, and get the support they need every day, these are not distant policy questions. They are personal.

In his latest LinkedIn opinion piece, Dr. Andrew Young, CEO of My Supports, shares his response to the Securing the NDIS agenda. It isn’t his first time speaking out – last year he wrote about the growing breakdown of trust between the NDIA, providers, and participants, and many of those concerns are still unresolved. This time, he acknowledges that some reform is necessary, but he is direct about his frustrations. “I feel a sense of anger and disappointment,” he writes, “about many of these changes, but also the way in which successive ministers and governments have chosen to communicate the reasons for the changes they want to make.”

Blame Everyone – Except Government

One of Andrew’s clearest criticisms is the pattern of blame he has watched play out over several years – a pattern that he says has shaped the public mood now being used to justify the 2026 NDIS reform package. He points to three examples, each of which has had a real effect on the people the scheme is meant to help.

The first is what he calls the “fraud narrative.” For four or more years, stories about dishonest providers have dominated NDIS media coverage. Andrew believes this has been deliberate: “I think this was inflamed by the former NDIS Minister Bill Shorten, who appeared to implement a PR strategy to blame the provider sector for all NDIS ailments.” The result is that public trust in the scheme has taken a real hit. “I can hardly tell people what I do for a living now without them raising the issue of fraud.” For participants and their families, that matters – a scheme the public has lost faith in is one whose future is always at risk. Andrew’s view is straightforward: if fraud has happened, the blame lies with those who designed and ran the system, not the vast majority of providers and participants who are simply trying to do the right thing.

The second is the language used to justify cuts to community participation funding – the part of a person’s NDIS plan that pays for social activities, community involvement, and building connections with others. In announcing these cuts, Minister Butler described a participant falling from their wheelchair while their support worker scrolled on their phone. Andrew was clear about what he thought of that: “I was disgusted by this communication, which is being parroted by people in the community who don’t know the positive outcomes of the NDIS for the great majority of participants.” For many people with disability, community participation funding is what keeps them connected. Being defined by a single worst-case story is both unfair and damaging.

The third example is the NDIA’s habit of framing unpopular decisions as things participants asked for. When funding periods were introduced last year – splitting a participant’s annual budget into quarterly chunks – the NDIA presented it as a helpful change requested by participants to make budgeting easier. Andrew’s response: “I’ve never met a participant who asked for funding periods, but I’ve met hundreds that hate it.” When the Agency speaks for participants in ways that don’t match their actual experience, it wears away the trust that people need to feel safe in the scheme.

Do the Numbers Add Up?

Andrew also questions whether the scale of these NDIS changes in 2026 actually matches what the government needs to achieve. He is willing to accept that costs need to come down – “I don’t think that Australia can afford the projected cost of $100bn pa for the scheme” – but he has done the sums and they don’t add up.

The government says it wants to limit scheme cost growth to around 2% per year. Andrew works out that to get there, it needs to achieve savings of roughly 4-5% over four years. But when you add up all the cuts announced – including significant reductions to community participation budgets, 160,000 fewer participants over four years, and a 30% cut to Support Coordination and Plan Management funding – the total saving comes to more than $9.5 billion a year. Against a current annual spend of around $50 billion, that’s a cut of about 19%.

“For me, the math isn’t mathing. Even allowing for growth of more than 3% pa in participant plans, I don’t see why the government needs to ‘cut’ so much to achieve its budget goal.”

The numbers on paper become real lives in practice. Cuts to community participation budgets mean fewer hours of support to get out, connect with others, and take part in everyday activities. Removing 160,000 people from the scheme means real Australians losing the support they currently depend on. For many, the NDIS is what stands between living independently and not living independently at all.

Participant Choice at Risk

Some of the proposed changes under the Securing the NDIS for Future Generations bill are not primarily about saving money – and that concerns Andrew too. In particular, the plan to move to government-run panels for both Supported Independent Living and Support Coordination raises serious questions about how much choice participants will have going forward.

Supported Independent Living – often called SIL – is the funding that helps people with disability live in a home with the support they need. Andrew worries that a government-selected panel of SIL providers will push support toward bigger, more institutional organisations, at the expense of smaller, more innovative services that often better fit what participants actually want – termed alternative housing and living options.

On Support Coordination – the service that helps participants understand their plan and connect with the right supports – he is even more direct: “I think participants should be able to choose the Coordinator who plays such a KEY role with them.” Many people have built real relationships with their Support Coordinator over months or years. That person knows their history, understands how they communicate, and often advocates on their behalf. Taking away the ability to choose that person is not a small thing.

A Crisis of Government’s Own Making?

Andrew’s final point is perhaps his most pointed. The government has justified these sweeping NDIS reform 2026 measures partly on the grounds that public trust in the scheme is at risk. But Andrew argues that the government itself has played a big part in creating that distrust, through years of negative messaging about fraud and waste. “I think the government has manufactured the crisis in public opinion, blamed participants and providers for poor scheme design, and is now potentially using that crisis to push through a wide range of changes.”

He is not against change – he has long said the scheme needs to be sustainable for the long term, and that securing the NDIS matters for everyone who relies on it now and in the future. But the way to get there, he believes, is by working with participants and providers rather than blaming them.

“A collaborative, rather than blame-game approach, could have achieved something closer to a win-win for all.”

If you have questions about how the proposed NDIS changes in 2026 might affect your plan or your supports, the team at My Supports is here to help. Get in touch with us at mysupports.com.au/contact-us, or explore our guides to understanding your NDIS plan and what to do if your plan needs to change.