Two in five NDIS banning orders never expire, and most are against people rather than companies
We parsed every one of the 789 banning orders on the Commission’s register. 316 carry no end date at all; of the rest the median runs three years and the longest twenty. And 570 of the 789 have no ABN attached, which makes the scheme’s sharpest instrument overwhelmingly one exercised over individual workers rather than businesses.
28 July 2026
3,671 enforcement actions, three sharp spikes. How the NDIS Commission actually polices providers
We downloaded the Commission’s full enforcement register, every action since 2019, and counted it whole. The three biggest months in its history are not scandal clusters; they are audit deadlines run through the entire provider book in bulk, including 85 registration refusals issued on a single day. If your organisation holds registration, your dates are in that machine.
19 July 2026
The NDIS regulator did not achieve its restrictive practices measure in 2025-26. Among people with disability, carers and advocates, 57% trust it
The NDIS Commission’s 2025-26 annual report scores it on seven measures: two achieved, down from four. 46.2% of participants subject to an unauthorised restrictive practice were subject to one for more than 90 days, and the Commission calls its 4% improvement targets aspirational.
5 November 2026
The NDIS Minister counts 14,500 SIL providers registered or on their way. The release does not say how many are which
Unregistered SIL has been an offence since 1 October, with civil penalties up to $3.64 million for a serious contravention and $91,000 otherwise. The 14,500 equals more than half of all registered providers at 30 June; the register shows no published action against unregistered SIL yet.
28 October 2026
The NDIS modelling tabled in the Senate has the scheme peaking at 817,000 participants in 2027 and shrinking to 598,000 by mid-2031
Without the reforms, 944,000 at 30 June 2031. Of the 346,000 difference, 241,000 who entered before 2028 are assumed exited; the table leaves 105,000 unlabelled. Ten reform items are costed at $38.1 billion over four years, the largest a $13.2 billion reset of two support budgets for all participants.
22 October 2026
Five NDIS reform consultations have closed. The eligibility thresholds and the budget calculations were not yet in them
The access paper left final thresholds and transition for later, budget calculations come later in 2026, and social and community participation market reform was deferred. None of the five pages publishes submissions; new planning starts April 2027, access changes 1 January 2028.
16 October 2026
A third of the providers in January’s NDIS audit sweep lost their registration. The register took more than a month to show it
252 of the 774 providers given mid-term audit notices on 30 January have had their registration revoked, 236 on 28 July. None of those July revocations was on the register on 28 August. Revocations listed doubled, to 717.
11 October 2026
Pending NDIS worker screening applications rose 92.8 then 26.2 per cent in the first half of 2026. The Commission put the first spike down to renewals
Checks can be renewed up to 90 days before expiry, and an expired check means leaving risk-assessed roles at a registered provider unless the work on application conditions are met. By our sum of the state rows, 9,929 people were awaiting a decision at 30 June 2026.
10 October 2026
NDIS Commissioner launches an inquiry into seclusion and invites participants and families to contribute. Findings are expected in February 2027
Submissions go by email and no closing date is published. In April to June 2026, 234 participants were associated with notifications of unauthorised seclusion. In the governments’ November 2025 progress report, only Victoria’s entry says seclusion of under-18s is prohibited in disability services.
9 October 2026
Inappropriate inducements are named in the NDIS Commission’s 2026-27 priorities. The NDIS Act’s prohibition on inducements commences on 20 November
The regulator’s three priorities for 2026-27 and what changed from last year. What section 73VA prohibits from 20 November, a 12-month advocate check-in pilot in the Northern Territory, and what three of its campaigns reported.
9 October 2026
Families can now access two national Thriving Kids phone lines. Here is what the rest of the Commonwealth’s $2 billion pays for
A nurse line on 1800 882 436 and the Thriving Kids Autism Helpline on 1300 654 789 are listed as available now; the Medicare check at age 3 comes over time. The Budget papers send $1.4 billion of the $2.0 billion to states and territories.
8 October 2026
Changes to the public transport disability standards are due to start on 13 October. Staff disability training is not required for five years
The 2026 amendment to the Transport Standards commences the day after the last day for disallowance, 12 October on the Register. Most new rules bind only new or refurbished vehicles and stations; staff training, information formats and booked seating wait until 2031 for everyone.
8 October 2026
NDIS price limits now have legislative effect under a ministerial determination. The maximums do not apply to self-managed participants
The first section 45C determination, made 16 September, adopts the 2026-27 Pricing Schedules as maximum amounts for Agency-managed and plan-managed funding. Providers must not charge more, and the excess is a debt. What the Act requires next.
7 October 2026
Modelling for the NDIS bill assumed 108,359 exits of participants with autism to mid-2031. 18,723 are children under nine
Two written answers to the Senate committee, read beside the Perth hearing transcript: 91,707 of the assumed exits relate to autistic children aged 0 to 18. Modelled assumptions, not people who have left, and officials called the cohort breakdowns much more uncertain.
7 October 2026
Plan managers will need a deed with the NDIA and may provide no other NDIS supports. Here is the market the Agency described to the Senate
Schedule 2 Part 6 waits on a Proclamation, 1 September 2028 at the latest. The NDIA’s Senate answers: 1,584 active plan managers in 2025-26, 922 paid under $50,000 in fees, and fraud risk flags on over 90 per cent of the smallest 1,000.
7 October 2026
The five things the NDIS Commission can do to a provider, defined by the Commission
A reference page rather than a story. Banning order, compliance notice, enforceable undertaking, suspension or revocation and infringement notice, each in the regulator’s own words, plus why the infringement list is the one a provider check misses.
2 October 2026
Since 1 October the NDIA can suspend your plan if it cannot reach you. Here is the test it must meet first
Five contact attempts over 3 to 4 months, then a plan can be suspended and nothing is paid for supports bought while it lasts. The clocks, the review window, and what the hospital and homelessness safeguard actually requires.
5 October 2026
The NDIS Act changes nine more times before 2028. Here is every date, and the one part with no date at all
The August Act commences in tranches to January 2028. The two parts headed tightening permanence and eligibility based on other services come last, whistleblower protections arrive ten months after the penalties, and one part has no date at all.
30 September 2026
We said we would read the first report on the new action plans. It reports commencement, not progress
Progress updates were optional, the promised indicators are absent, and the Advisory Council had asked for exactly the delayed-action tracking still missing.
30 August 2026
Australia’s disability strategy is halfway through. Its own advisers are sceptical of the scoreboard
The second implementation report mostly lists achievements across 167 pages. It also records the Advisory Council doubting that marginal improvements mean anything, and the newest action plans dropping targets on purpose.
29 August 2026
Your NDIS decision is wrong. You have three months, you can ask by phone, and the person who decided cannot review it
Section 100 is shorter than people expect and three of its provisions are routinely news to the person affected. The one that matters most: a review can be requested orally, and the duty to record and date it sits with the agency.
26 August 2026
From 1 October the minister can cut part of your NDIS plan. The determination is now written: 50 per cent off one group of supports, 10 per cent off another
Section 34A closes the list of supports a cut can touch, which is the assurance that held. The instrument made on 28 September sets the percentages, names six excluded subgroups and defines the high support needs class the 24/7 promise depends on.
26 August 2026
We read all 56 supported employment submissions. The words subminimum, segregated and 2034 appear in none of the Department's eight themes
291,496 words. Of the 53 a machine can read, 36 discuss subminimum wages, 36 say segregated and 18 name 2034. One provider has committed in writing to ending the Supported Wage System by 1 July 2028.
25 August 2026
Securing the NDIS for Future Generations is law. The Senate changed the functional capacity test first
Assent on 20 August as Act No. 66 of 2026, after the Senate agreed 32 government amendments in a single day. An assessment must now count the assistive technology you ordinarily use. The whistleblower protections the Senate added start in July 2027.
25 August 2026
Sixty submissions, eight themes and a timetable that ran out in February. Where supported employment reform actually is
The Department received 60 submissions on the future of supported employment and published 55. It set out eight emerging themes, then extended the process into 2026 on a published schedule that ended on 27 February. The page still says stage two is currently underway.
25 August 2026
The NDIS Practice Standards: which ones apply to you, and what an auditor actually checks
They are named in nearly every enforcement action and explained almost nowhere. We read the instrument: 39 classes of support, two very different audits, and a verification module of four standards that contains none of the participant-rights ones.
23 August 2026
Which NDIS providers must be registered, and which can choose not to be
Compulsory for six kinds of support, optional for everything else. Where it is optional the choice is not the provider’s to make: only participants who self-manage or plan-manage may use an unregistered provider, so an unregistered provider’s market is bounded by someone else’s funding arrangement.
23 August 2026
Half of every NDIS infringement notice ever issued was issued in 2023
We parsed the whole register: 112 entries, 230 notices, June 2020 to 31 July 2026, and 115 of them fall in one year. Reportable incidents are the most common subject, and the register quietly changed how it records dates.
23 August 2026
Nine in ten NDIS complaints are about the agency, not providers. The biggest single subject is how long things take
284,794 of 315,771 participant complaints are about the NDIA itself, against 19,375 about service providers. The largest subject is timeliness. And the agency’s own handling collapsed to 35.8 per cent closed within 21 days in mid-2024 before recovering to 96.4.
18 August 2026
Of 29,991 closed NDIS tribunal cases, 892 reached a decision. The rest ended before a hearing
37,027 cases involving 33,134 participants. Ninety-seven per cent of closed cases end without a ruling and 68.6 per cent are resolved by consent. New cases are at 1.30 per cent of active participants, the highest rate published and close to double two years earlier. The most disputed support is capacity building, which is also the least used.
18 August 2026
Queensland has not signed the foundational supports agreement. We checked the document
Seven of eight states and territories signed. Queensland appears once in the agreement, in the parties list, and there is no Queensland bilateral.
21 August 2026
The Foundational Supports agreement is signed. It commits to one cohort, inside a $10 billion cap
The signed national agreement commits the Commonwealth and seven states and territories to children aged 8 and under with autism or developmental delay and low to moderate needs. Every other group is a future negotiation from the same capped envelope.
19 August 2026
Every NSW council had to remake its disability plan by 1 July. There is no public register to check who did
The Act requires councils to give their plans to Disability Council NSW for publication on its registry of DIAPs. The guidelines still point to a reporting portal with the placeholder text “[add link once online]”, and have since November 2022. We could not find the registry through four routes.
18 August 2026
Only one number in this monthly report keeps changing after it is published
Four editions of the Inclusive Employment Australia workbook, held side by side. The caseload has never been revised and neither have commencements. Exits have been cut every time, April’s by 9 per cent, and the change log that records lesser things says nothing about it.
18 August 2026
Two NDIS deadlines are both 21 days. The agency meets one 96 per cent of the time and the other 32
All seventeen Participant Service Guarantee measures, scored from the NDIA’s own Q4 2025-26 data. Access decisions have gone from 9.4 per cent on time to 95.7 in five quarters. Deciding a participant-requested reassessment, the same 21-day standard, has never topped 32.1 per cent. Three of the four worst measures involve changing an existing plan.
17 August 2026
Five attempts over three months, and homelessness does not count. What the 30 amendments actually say
The committee credited the House amendments with answering everything, and nobody had read them. Two prints of the bill, compared line by line: a hard contact test, a fenced-in cut power, and a new independent review clause nobody has mentioned.
16 August 2026
The committee said pass it, because the amendments already answered the objections
Four of the five sector positions we track were stated before the 1 July amendments the committee relies on. Three senators appended separate views, and they pull in opposite directions.
16 August 2026
The NDIS enforcement register grew by 63 entries in six weeks. The actions actually in force fell by 583
639 compliance notices from the January and March sweeps closed out, 478 on two days in August. Banning orders and revocations in force both rose.
28 August 2026
Published NDIS enforcement actions quadrupled in 2025. That is not the same as enforcement rising
Ninety per cent of the increase is one instrument, revocations of registration halved, and the policy governing what gets published was rewritten the same year.
10 August 2026
The NDIS bill never names the Thriving Kids cohort, but it starts two parts on 1 January 2028 to make way for it
The Securing the NDIS Bill names no age-limited cohort, but its parts on permanence and other service systems start on 1 January 2028, timed by its explanatory memorandum for Thriving Kids. Corrected 11 October 2026.
31 July 2026
Thriving Kids starts on 1 October. The part that moves children off the NDIS now waits on rules every state must agree
State services begin 1 October 2026, but NDIS access does not change until 1 January 2028, that change waits on rules every state must agree, and children already enrolled are to be reassessed under the older criteria.
31 July 2026
The NDIS Commission’s new portal opens on 12 October, and one of its three preparation steps closed on 1 October
Obligations do not change, the system does. Draft behaviour support plans are deleted that day and cannot be recovered, roles do not carry across, and from 12 October a worker deactivated in one portal stays active in the other.
2 October 2026
Ten months of data on the program that replaced Disability Employment Services
A caseload of 257,210 at August, a quarter of it suspended, and job search up from 0.7 to 6.6 per cent. Ten monthly profiles read, including the category that merges part-time work with major personal crisis.
4 August 2026
From compliance notice to a $1.1 million Federal Court penalty: the Oak Tasmania case, end to end
Six admitted contraventions of the Practice Standards and Code of Conduct, 474 of the Reportable Incidents Rules, and a register trail that starts in 2020.
19 July 2026
5.5 million Australians, and an employment gap that has not closed: the AIHW’s 2026 snapshot
One in five Australians has disability; the working-age employment rate is 56 per cent against 82. The flagship report, decoded.
19 July 2026
The Scheme Brief reads the sector’s primary sources end to end and links every factual claim to the document we actually read. Quiet weeks are honest weeks: we publish when the record moves, not to fill space. New here? Start with how this site works.