Sixty-three amendments, one very long Tuesday night, and a set of changes that reach directly into behaviour support practice.
The National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 passed the Senate at around 8pm on Tuesday 18 August 2026, by 28 votes to 12.
It did not pass in the form it arrived in. The House of Representatives had already agreed to a set of amendments on 1 July 2026. Then, following further feedback from people with disability, families, advocates and organisations, the Government moved a further tranche of amendments in the Senate, reported at 63 changes, in the hours before the vote. The Bill returned to the House of Representatives on 19 August for those amendments to be agreed.
The reaction split along familiar lines. Minister for Disability Mark Butler said the scheme “had become a soft target for shonks and fraudsters” and that the plan “puts the scheme back on track”. People with Disability Australia’s Acting CEO Megan Spindler-Smith pointed to the volume of community input, noting that “people with disability in their thousands provided evidence of what these changes would mean for our lives”.
Both things can be true at once. A large number of the Senate amendments exist precisely because that evidence was given, and several of them soften or clarify provisions that the sector had raised alarm about. It is worth reading them on their own terms.
The Government has grouped the final amendments into two families: fraud and integrity, and technical and enabling. We will take them in that order.
The fraud and integrity amendments.
Kickbacks and inducements are banned
Providers can no longer offer or give an inducement or kickback where it would be likely to encourage someone to start, keep or increase their use of that provider’s services. An inducement is a reward, benefit or offer intended to influence a person’s decision. A kickback is a payment, gift or benefit given in exchange for favourable treatment or a business referral. Penalties run to a fine, up to two years’ imprisonment, or both. Genuine pricing practices are fine, and so is low-value merchandise such as hats or tote bags. Alcohol, tobacco, cash and cash-like products and electronic devices are banned in all cases.
Providers cannot claim immunity from producing documents
The amendment makes clear that providers and their employees cannot refuse to give information to a court, tribunal or other authority. Immunity applies only to officers of the NDIA and the NDIS Commission, and even then with exceptions where disclosure is needed under the NDIS Act, the Royal Commissions Act, the National Anti-Corruption Commission Act or the Australian Crime Commission Act. In practice this opens the door for bodies such as the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission to pursue organised crime inside the scheme.
New offences sit directly in the NDIS Act
Providing false or misleading information to the NDIA or the Commission carries up to 12 months’ imprisonment or 120 penalty units for an individual, rising to five years or 1,000 penalty units for a serious provider breach. Obtaining NDIS funds by deception carries the same tiering, with impersonation attracting up to five years for an individual and up to 10 years or 2,000 penalty units for a serious provider breach. Deliberately destroying records to defraud the scheme or disrupt an audit, review or investigation attracts up to two years or 240 penalty units. A nominee who misuses their position for personal gain or to harm a participant faces 120 penalty units. Civil penalties may run in parallel, and money owed can still be recovered.
Whistleblower protections are lifted to Corporations Act standards
Disclosures made while seeking legal, medical, psychological, professional or workplace support are now protected. The burden on the individual drops to showing a “reasonable possibility” that they qualify, and in civil penalty proceedings the burden of proof reverses where someone has been harmed for making a protected disclosure. “Detriment” is defined to include job loss, injury, changed duties, discrimination, harassment, psychological harm and damage to property, reputation or finances. State and territory whistleblowing regimes are unaffected.
Regulatory powers are delegated further down
Experienced NDIS Commission employees at Executive Level 2 can now make, vary or revoke banning orders and anti-promotion orders. Banning orders stop unsafe providers or workers from delivering supports. Anti-promotion orders stop misleading, predatory or unethical marketing. The intent is faster action.
The standard of proof is corrected
An unintended consequence of the Integrity and Safeguarding Act 2026 applied the criminal standard, beyond reasonable doubt, to serious civil penalty breaches. That reverts to the civil standard, the balance of probabilities.
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The technical and enabling amendments.
These are the ones that touch plans, access and everyday practice.
Unscheduled reassessments
The Bill limits unscheduled plan reassessments to situations where there has been a significant and ongoing change in functional capacity and support needs, or in living, education, work or informal support arrangements. Two amendments matter here. First, if the NDIA does not decide within 90 days, the request is treated as refused, which triggers review rights so participants are not left reapplying into silence. Second, a change no longer has to be “unanticipated”. A foreseeable change still counts, provided it is significant and ongoing. That is a direct acknowledgement of how fluctuating and predictable-yet-unavoidable many disability-related changes are.
Parental responsibility
The amendment spells out what a parent is expected to provide for a child with disability when the NDIA weighs whether a support is reasonable and necessary: supervision, personal care, transport, emotional support and behavioural support. Critically, it does not include the additional support a child needs because of their disability, measured against children of a similar age without disability. The NDIA must also consider the risk of harm to informal supports, family relationships and informal networks if a support is not funded.
Functional capacity
From 1 January 2028, access will rest on a standardised functional capacity assessment. The amendment confirms that using ordinary assistance does not change how capacity is assessed. Glasses, walking sticks and hearing aids are in. Children can receive age-appropriate assistance from others.
Grandparenting for compensation
From 1 January 2028, a person is not eligible for the NDIS where their impairment came from a motor vehicle accident or work injury and another service system provides compensation or benefits. The amendment confines this to people applying from that date onwards. Existing participants, including those in Specialist Disability Accommodation, keep their supports. A new rule-making power, requiring agreement of all states and territories, will clarify when another system is taken to provide compensation, so people are not left unsupported while a claim is being decided.
Plan management and compensation in new framework plans
Plan management funding will be added separately from the assessment of disability-related support needs for participants who request it and are eligible. The NDIA CEO gains a narrow discretion to reduce funding where a participant has received compensation after their budget was developed.
Indexation
The Minister can now apply indexation to new framework plans at the same time as making or varying a pricing determination, so purchasing power holds when prices rise. New framework planning begins from 1 April 2027.
Debt recovery safeguards.
The NDIA must notify a participant or provider that a debt exists and why. Participants have 28 days to respond, providers 14. The NDIA must then give notice of whether it intends to recover, with reasons. The low-value waiver threshold rises from $200 to $500. Where records were not kept in the required format, alternative evidence of services received can be provided. Record retention itself remains three years for participants and plan managers, and seven years for providers.
Support determinations
The Minister can reduce funding for certain support types through a support determination, an instrument subject to parliamentary scrutiny, aimed at resetting community participation and capacity building funding. Critical care, home and vehicle modifications, personal mobility equipment and transport, continence and menstrual consumables and Specialist Disability Accommodation were already carved out. The Senate amendments add more, and this is where behaviour support enters the picture.
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What this means for PBS.
Four things stand out.
Complex behaviour supports are excluded from support determinations
The amendments exclude high intensity supports, complex behaviour supports, and customised and wearable technology and hearing supports from the reach of a support determination. Behaviour support funding that was previously sitting inside capacity building, and therefore exposed to a ministerial reduction, has been named and carved out. For participants with a behaviour support plan in place, and for the practitioners writing them, that removes a serious source of uncertainty from the next two years of planning.
There is now a pathway for participants needing 24-hour care
High support needs participants requiring continuous 24-hour care can apply for a plan variation within 90 days of a support determination applying to them, and the NDIA can vary the plan to maintain that care. Many of the people this covers are people we support. It is worth diarising the 90-day window rather than discovering it late.
Behavioural support is now named in the parental responsibility test, in both directions
Parents are expected to provide behavioural support in the ordinary parenting sense. They are not expected to provide the additional support a child needs because of disability. That distinction will do real work in access and planning decisions for children, and it puts weight on assessment quality. A functional behaviour assessment that clearly evidences what a child needs beyond ordinary parenting, and why, is the document that carries this argument. Vague reports will struggle.
Restrictive practices still do not count as treatment
The July amendments confirmed that “appropriate treatment”, the threshold a person must meet before an impairment is considered permanent, does not include restrictive practices, and that nobody is compelled to undertake treatment. This is a rights position holding firm inside an integrity-focused Bill, and it aligns with everything the Behaviour Support Rules already require.
For providers, the integrity changes are not background noise. The inducement and kickback ban reaches into referral relationships and marketing practice. Banning and anti-promotion orders can now be made faster. Record retention is seven years, and record destruction is an offence. Whistleblower protections now cover practitioners who report unsafe practice, including unauthorised restrictive practice, and cover them while they seek legal or psychological support. If your organisation’s referral, marketing, records and disclosure policies were written before this week, they are due for a read.
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Final words.
Legislation like this is easy to experience as weather. It arrives, people react, and practice carries on. But some of what passed this week will show up in the next plan you write or read: what is funded, what a parent is assumed to provide, how quickly a reassessment can be pursued, and what happens if funding is reset around a participant with 24-hour care needs.
The most useful response is not alarm. It is the same one this series keeps returning to. Assessments that evidence what they claim, plans that trace strategy to finding, and records that can withstand scrutiny. Those things were good practice on Monday. From this week, they are also the ground you stand on when a decision is questioned.
If you support someone whose plan may be affected by any of this, that is a conversation we are always willing to have.
From the Insight PBS team to yours 🙂