New NDIS Bill

In early April, Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme of Australia, Bill Shorten, tabled the NDIS Amendment Getting the NDIS Back on Track No.1 Bill 2024. Tabled in parliament, this Bill will enable first legislative reforms for the NDIS Review recommendations. The Bill has been referred to the Community Affairs Legislation Committee for an inquiry and complete report by the end of July.

Below are the key amendments proposed by the Bill:

• Definitions of NDIS Support: Fundamentally, a support, under the new Bill, will only be an NDIS support if it relates to a person’s impairment.
• New Ways to Access the NDIS: New participants will access the NDIS under the disability requirements, the early intervention requirements or both. This will allow specialist early-intervention pathways to be developed.
• New Framework for Setting NDIS Budgets: Enable reasonable and necessary budgets to be developed through a needs assessment, set at the ‘whole of person’ level rather than built line by line. The term NDIS supports will replace reasonable and necessary supports.
• Funding and Acquittals: the NDIS would be prohibited from paying for supports that exceed total funding budgets (or funding periods), however, the rules would identify exceptional circumstances.
• Changes to Management of Plans: The NDIA would be able to make decisions about the most appropriate way for flexible budgets or parts of budgets to be managed, whether that be agency, plan or self-managed, taking into account risks to participants.
• Quality and Safeguarding: The NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commissioner would be able to delegate some of their functions and would stipulate conditions for becoming an approved quality auditor.

Orana is committed to closely monitoring the ongoing discussions related to the proposed legislation. We recognise the potential impact this may have on the NDIS and the broader disability sector. Our priority is to ensure that our clients, families and staff are kept fully informed of any developments in a timely and accurate manner.