The Government is slashing the NDIA at the same time as asking staff to deliver swinging cuts to the NDIS. Geelong headquarters will be expected to deliver a massive reform agenda despite losing 669 staff.

The NDIA is being cut. Dramatically. And immediately.

The Budget 669 positions - people - will go from the organisation just as it’s been charged with running the NDIS through its most difficult overhaul in history.

Money tightens too. The NDIA’s operating budget rises slightly to accommodate the cuts (up from $2.86 billion this year to $2.77 billion the next), but plunges to just $1.61 billion the following year. Employee benefits will halve.

The Budget does not explain in plain language what that means for future jobs. But the direction is unmistakable.

Yet the NDIA will still be expected to play a central role implementing the tighter access rules, reassessments, payment integrity measures and the wider plan to pull tens of billions of dollars out of projected NDIS spending. The Government says this is necessary - the Budget says the NDIA will do it with fewer people, paid less money.

The outcome won’t be pretty.

The organisation’s morale will be tested, particularly as recent surveys show staff like working there. Although a third said they did want to leave their current role, that was just for another job inside the agency. This is not a workforce giving up. People there say they like their work.

That matters.

A workforce looking for opportunity is about to face contraction. An agency whose staff say change is not always well managed is being asked to manage change for everyone.

And then there’s Geelong.

The NDIA’s headquarters opening in 2019 was sold as a regional jobs story. The Budget does not say how many of the 669 cuts will fall in Geelong. But with the headquarters there the symbolism is obvious.

Geelong was promised a disability agency that would bring jobs and permanence.
Now the agency is shrinking just as the Scheme enters its hardest phase.

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Although the cut is precise, its consequences are not.

The headline number is clear: 669 fewer NDIA positions in 2026–27. What remains unclear is where those positions will go. Not all will go from Geelong but the scale of the reduction will be felt everywhere.

It would be naïve to treat this as a technical adjustment. It will be the biggest challenge the Albanese government has yet faced.

The NDIA spent years growing. In March ABC reporting noted the agency added 1,925 staff in 2025. That was nearly 70 per cent of all new hires across the public service that year. Now, less than two months later, the Budget is turning sharply in the other direction.

This is the politics of the NDIS made visible inside its own administration.

For years, governments complained the Scheme was growing too fast. Now the Albanese Government has written a huge savings program into the Budget and given the NDIA a central role in delivering it.

Budget Paper No. 2 records more than $36 billion in NDIS savings over four years under the “Securing the NDIS for Future Generations” measure. It also provides $436 million in 2026–27 so the NDIA can continue supporting participants during the transition: and that’s the contradiction.

The Government’s temporarily adding money to help the NDIA carry out change but at the same time cutting the agency itself. One year later, operating budgets tighten dramatically.

Ironically, the 2025 APS census showed strong results - but that was in a growing business. Even then, retention results were more complicated.

At the NDIA, 9 per cent of staff wanted to leave their current position as soon as possible and 21 per cent within 12 months. That combined 30 per cent was only marginally above the APS-wide figure of 29 per cent. It was better than both the Department of Social Services and the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission, where the equivalent figure was higher.

But the NDIA had an unusual pattern underneath. Among those considering leaving their role, 68 per cent were pursuing another position within the NDIA. Across the APS overall, the equivalent figure was much lower.

This suggests something important. Staff were not fleeing the agency: they were trying to move within it.

Cuts change that calculation. Internal ladders narrow. Teams compete for fewer positions. Staff asked to implement distressing policy changes may see less opportunity to shift sideways, recover, or stay attached to the mission in a different role.

The NDIA’s own action plan also shows the pressure points. Only 45 per cent of staff said change was managed well in the agency. Just 54 per cent said staff were consulted about change at work. These results were already a warning before the Budget landed.

Now Geelong’s future has a question hanging over it. This matters because the NDIA was never just another Commonwealth tenant.

The national office was opened in Malop Street in 2019, with the agency saying it would house about 600 staff and centralise national operations. The spin presented the headquarters as a jobs boom for the city and a symbol of investment in regional Victoria.

The Budget does not say Geelong jobs will go. It does not identify the headquarters as a target. But when an agency centred in Geelong loses 669 positions nationally, the city is entitled to ask where the axe will fall.

The NDIA was part of Geelong’s post-manufacturing renewal after the closure of the car industry. It promised stable, skilled, public-sector work. Those workers are now watching a Budget that shrinks the agency while the NDIS reform task grows larger.

The pressure moves inward

The Government’s message is that the NDIS must be brought under control. Its reforms are aimed at eligibility, spending growth, fraud, payment systems and a tighter definition of who the Scheme is for. But someone has to administer that change.

Someone has to answer the calls, process the reassessments, explain new rules, implement new systems, and absorb the anger when people lose certainty and that someone is the NDIA.

The Budget says the Quality and Safeguards Commission will grow from 892 to 1,083 staff in 2026–27. The regulator expansion may offer many jobs for those that lose their position in the NDIA - the agency that directly organises participants’ contracts.

That might make sense in policy terms. It may even be necessary to toughen provider regulation. But politically, inside the Agency, it is combustible.

It becomes an organisation being asked to do more with less. Making the Scheme smaller, tougher and cheaper while its own workforce is being made smaller too.

For Geelong, the question is local. For staff, it is personal. For participants, it could become very practical, very quickly.