Mark Butler’s reform bill does not abolish the NDIS; it redraws it - something far more consequential.

The plans have been tabled, now the architecture is being built. The NDIS (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill explains:

Functional capacity becomes the single core basis for NDIS eligibility.

A Technical Advisory Group or TAG (not Tactical Assault Group - despite some similarity in terms of both being ‘shock troops’) will help decide what’s in and what’s out.

Tighter test for “permanent” disability, including a requirement that people have “undertaken all appropriate treatment”. It allows the NDIA to consider whether another government system should provide support instead.

This matters because it demonstrates the government’s target is not simply eliminating fraud. It is slowing growth.

Funding will be pulled from whole classes of support; including social and community participation. The scheme’s financial sustainability will play a critical role in determining what’s “reasonable and necessary”.

This Bill makes it much harder to seek a plan reassessment without a genuine, ongoing change in need. It requires plans to end. Unused funds won’t just roll over.

Compliance language is tougher too. Claims must be lodged within 90 days. Participants, nominees and providers must retain records. The NDIA gets stronger enforcement powers. The Minister will set prices. Plan management will be by approved panels. Automated decision-making is enabled. The system will be more centralised, regulated, and less forgiving.

This legislation is not a footnote to the Budget. It is the legal spine of the government’s redesign of the Scheme.

Butler says the NDIS must be secured for future generations. This Bill shows how: by tightening the gate, narrowing discretion and giving government new powers to hold the Scheme down.

The critical timeline

Butler says a Senate inquiry will report back in just one month (by June 16). He also thanked shadow minister Melissa McIntosh for “working together on a sensible process”.

This means the bill is highly likely to become law by the start of the new financial year (July 1).

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The politics has been visible for weeks. The Budget made it unmistakable. The Bill now makes it real. There will be no negotiation: these changes will become the new bedrock on which the NDIS is built. They will not change.

Mark Butler’s April Press Club speech argued the NDIS must be returned to its “original intent”: support for people with permanent and significant disability, not a wider disability support system for everyone who has fallen through the gaps left by health, education or community services. This bill - Securing the NDIS for Future Generations - is the first major legislative step towards delivering that change.

This is not just a fraud crackdown, though the government is eager to present it that way. Fraud matters. Rorts matter. Compliance matters. But the deeper purpose is structural.

It is about rationing.

The Bill starts with entry. Future access to the NDIS will be built around an assessment of substantially reduced functional capacity. A Technical Advisory Group will later help define what level of functional limitation is enough to qualify. That is the central decision yet to come. The Bill does not simply tidy the rules. It establishes a new gate and leaves the key measurement for later.

It also tightens the treatment test. To establish that a disability is permanent, people may have to show they have undertaken all appropriate treatment and that no further intervention is likely to materially improve their impairment. The political appeal is obvious: the NDIS should not fund what health systems can treat. The practical danger is equally obvious: people may be pushed into arguments about whether more treatment remains theoretically possible, even where their support needs are already acute and enduring.

The Bill does not wait until 2028 to matter.

Some changes will begin soon after Royal Assent. Plan reassessments will be harder to trigger. They must be based on a genuine and ongoing change in support needs, and providers will not be able to request them. That will be welcomed by government officials convinced the system has been too easily gamed. It will be much less reassuring to participants whose lives deteriorate in ways that are obvious to them but slow to satisfy a bureaucratic test.

Plans will also be required to end. Unspent funds will not simply roll forward. New plans will be renewed around reassessed allocations, stripped of one-off items and adjusted for indexation. Again, the administrative logic is tidy. The human effect may be messier. Underspending is not always excess. Sometimes it means delay, thin markets, cancelled supports, hospitalisation or a participant who could not actually use what was notionally funded.

The most naked power in the Bill may be the power to cut categories of support. The government has already said it intends to reset funding for social and community participation and capacity building daily activities. In official material released with the broader reform package, the government foreshadowed a 50 per cent reduction in social and community participation budgets and a 10 per cent cut to capacity building daily activities as plans are reassessed or renewed from October 2026.

This is where the language of “sustainability” becomes tangible. Not in an abstract savings target. In fewer hours. Fewer outings. Fewer supports. Less room for participation.

The government says community inclusion should not depend so heavily on individualised NDIS packages. That may be true. But the alternative infrastructure is still being designed. The reduction is clearer than the replacement.

It redraws one of the most important phrases in the NDIS Act: reasonable and necessary.

The new test will require decision-makers to consider what it is reasonable to expect the NDIS to fund, taking account of consistency with other schemes, the sustainability of the NDIS and family contributions.

This is the critical change. It sounds technical. It is not. It changes the culture of decision-making.

The NDIS has always involved boundaries. Families, health systems, schools and mainstream services were never meant to disappear. But this formulation pushes the Agency more firmly towards saying: not us. Support may be necessary. It may even be reasonable. But not, perhaps, for the NDIS.

That is the core movement in this Bill. Responsibility is being narrowed.

The rest of the legislation travels in the same direction.

Providers will be subject to new definitions and registration settings. Claims must be made within 90 days. Participants, nominees and providers will have to retain records, with civil penalties for failure.

The Bill allows automated decision-making. The NDIA gets stronger compliance and enforcement power. Plan management will shift towards an approved panel model, with the possibility of barring plan managers from delivering other NDIS services. The Minister will be able to set prices.

It prohibits some participants or nominees from managing funds where they have been convicted of specified offences. This is overdue because the NDIS market has been too porous. The fraud stories are real. The Agency has often been left trying to recover money after the horse has bolted.

But integrity reform reallocates power. Away from participants; away from smaller providers. But towards government, approved panels and central rules.

The government’s public case is simple. The NDIS cannot continue on its current trajectory. It must be protected for people with permanent and significant disability and for future generations. That is Butler’s line. It is not unserious. The Scheme’s growth is real. The Budget pressures are real.

The Bill represents a major redistribution of power inside the NDIS. It creates a tighter access test. A stricter treatment of permanence. A more limited view of what supports belong in the Scheme. A mechanism for group-level funding cuts. A harder line on reassessments. A more centralised market. A more compliance-heavy participant experience.

Crucially, much of the detail will come later: as rules, instruments, panels and technical advice are embedded.

That means Parliament is being asked to approve the direction before the community can see the destination.

The government calls it securing the NDIS. Participants might hear something colder.

The gate is narrowing - the lock redesigned. The argument is over who will hold a key.