This is general information about a published parliamentary document. It says nothing about whether any particular person will remain eligible for the NDIS.

What the document is

On 14 May 2026 the Senate agreed six orders, moved by Senator Jordon Steele-John, for the production of documents on National Disability Insurance Scheme Treasury modelling, three directed to the Minister for the NDIS and three to the Treasurer. Senator Jenny McAllister, as Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme, answered all six with one consolidated response, because all the requested modelling is held by the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing. It was tabled in the Senate on 27 May 2026 as document 2026-002028.

After a one-page covering letter come three pages of tables: participants, total participant costs, and the budget impact of ten reform items. They are scanned images with no text layer, so we read and typed every figure below from the pages themselves.

Participants, with and without the reforms

Page 2 gives participant numbers at each 30 June. The 2025 figure is marked actual; the rest are estimates.

NDIS participants at each 30 June, 2025 to 2031, as tabled in the response to Senate orders 503 to 508. Without the reforms: 739,414 (2025 actual) rising to 944,000 in 2031. With the reforms: 817,000 at the 2027 peak, falling to 598,000 in 2031. Cumulative assumed exits: 33,000 by 2028, 125,000 by 2029, 205,000 by 2030, 241,000 by 2031. Without the reforms With the reforms Actual, 30 June 2025 0k 200k 400k 600k 800k 1,000k 30 June 2025, actual: 739,414 739,414 2025 30 June 2026, without the reforms: 783,000 30 June 2026, with the reforms: 783,000 783k 783k 2026 30 June 2027, without the reforms: 817,000 30 June 2027, with the reforms: 817,000 817k 817k 2027 30 June 2028, without the reforms: 842,000 30 June 2028, with the reforms: 789,000 842k 789k 2028 33k 30 June 2029, without the reforms: 876,000 30 June 2029, with the reforms: 710,000 876k 710k 2029 125k 30 June 2030, without the reforms: 910,000 30 June 2030, with the reforms: 632,000 910k 632k 2030 205k 30 June 2031, without the reforms: 944,000 30 June 2031, with the reforms: 598,000 944k 598k 2031 241k Participants at 30 June Bold figures under the axis: entered before 1 Jan 2028 and assumed exited, cumulative to that 30 June
NDIS participants at each 30 June, without and with the reforms, and participants who entered before 1 January 2028 assumed exited (running total). Source: response to Senate orders 503 to 508, page 2, tabled 27 May 2026. 2025 is the actual; later years are estimates rounded to the nearest thousand.
  • Without the reforms the scheme keeps growing: 783,000 in 2026, 817,000 in 2027, 842,000 in 2028, 876,000 in 2029, 910,000 in 2030 and 944,000 in 2031.
  • With the reforms the numbers are the same to 2027, then fall every year: 789,000 in 2028, 710,000 in 2029, 632,000 in 2030 and 598,000 in 2031. That is 219,000 below the 2027 peak and 141,414 below the 739,414 in the scheme on 30 June 2025.
  • The exits row is labelled Entered scheme before 1 Jan 28 and assumed to be exited: 33,000 by 30 June 2028, 125,000 by 2029, 205,000 by 2030 and 241,000 by 2031. The figures rise each year and reach the 241,000 an official gave the Senate committee in August as the total number of exits to 2031, so we read them as running totals.

The part of the gap the table does not explain

From 2028 the gap between the two lines is larger than the exits. At 30 June 2031 the gap is 346,000 and the exits are 241,000, leaving 105,000. The same subtraction leaves 20,000 in 2028, 41,000 in 2029 and 73,000 in 2030.

The table gives that remainder no label. The exits row counts only people who Entered scheme before 1 Jan 28, the date the new access rules were to start. At the committee’s Perth hearing on 6 August, the Department official who gave the exit figures said there were projections as well that needed to be made around diversions in addition to exits. That fits people who would have joined after that date and are modelled not to. The document does not say so, and we have not seen a published diversion figure.

The money

Page 3 sets total NDIS participant costs in the 2026-27 Budget against the 2025-26 Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO), on an underlying cash basis.

  • Over four years, 2026-27 to 2029-30: $213.5 billion in the Budget against $238.1 billion at MYEFO, $24.6 billion lower. The gap widens each year, to $12.2 billion in 2029-30 alone ($54.2 billion against $66.4 billion).
  • Over 12 years: $728.7 billion against $913.5 billion, $184.9 billion lower. The table does not say which 12 years.
  • In 2025-26, the Budget figure is $691 million higher than MYEFO’s.

Page 4 costs ten reform items over the years to 2029-30. Together they reduce expenses by $38.1 billion on the fiscal balance and $37.8 billion on the underlying cash balance. The largest:

  • $13.2 billion: Reset of Social Community and Civic Participation and Capacity Building – Daily Activities Budgets for all participants.
  • $9.3 billion: Introduce an Objective Test of Substantially Reduced Functional Capacity.
  • $3.9 billion: Lower growth due to Implementation of New Framework Planning.
  • $3.1 billion: tightening the criteria for unscheduled reassessment requests, ending plan rollovers and stopping unspent funds being rolled over.
  • $2.9 billion: strengthening guidance around what is reasonable and necessary.
  • $2.6 billion: Differentiated pricing for unregistered providers.

The other four are plan management and support coordination reforms ($1.4 billion), making the Minister the decision maker on pricing, with related fraud measures ($0.9 billion), Access changes to enable Thriving Kids rollout ($0.5 billion) and mandatory registration for high-risk providers ($0.2 billion). Every item is zero in 2025-26.

The two pages measure different things. Over the same four years the reform items cut $37.8 billion in cash, while total participant cost estimates fell $24.6 billion from MYEFO, a figure that can include other changes to the estimates. The document does not break down the $13.2 billion difference.

What the document does not cover

  • It predates the Act. It compares Pre-reforms and After reforms without naming the bill, and it was tabled on 27 May. The Senate agreed 32 government amendments on 18 August and the Act received assent on 20 August, as the Parliament’s bill page records. We have not seen a version of these tables for the Act as passed. What the amendments changed is in our report on the Senate amendments.
  • It does not break the figures down. There is nothing by age, disability or state. The breakdown for autistic participants came later, in written answers to the committee, covered in our report on the autism exit figures.
  • It does not show method. No assumptions, no actuarial report, no uncertainty range. At the August hearing the official said there is quite a lot of uncertainty around this data.

Our view

This is opinion, built on the document above. The savings get the attention, but the participant table is the more important page. It shows the government’s modelling, in May, had an NDIS that is smaller in 2031 than it was in 2025, by about 141,000 people. That is a legitimate policy choice for a government to make and argue for. It should be argued for in those terms, with the number on the table.

Two things follow. First, the 105,000 the table leaves unlabelled is the figure most worth asking for: if it is people diverted from the scheme, they are the people foundational supports and Thriving Kids have to reach, and no published figure yet says how many of them those programs are built for. Second, the Senate changed the bill before it passed. The public has these tables for a bill that no longer exists in that form; it should get them for the law that does.

We will report whether the next budget update, the 2026-27 MYEFO, revises these figures for the Act as passed.

What we could and could not check

We read all four pages as images and checked the arithmetic the tables allow: the four yearly cost figures sum to each four-year total (MYEFO’s within $1 million, rounding), the 12-year change equals the difference between the two 12-year totals, and the ten reform items sum to the stated total within rounding. The participant figures cannot be checked against each other, because the table does not say what the unlabelled part of the gap is. We have not seen the modelling itself, which the response does not include. We have not sought comment from the Department or the NDIA.