Thriving Kids starts on 1 October. The part that moves children off the NDIS now waits on rules every state must agree

Updated 20 October 2026. The 24 August note below says we had not found a document reconciling the Commonwealth’s $2 billion with the $4 billion all governments are investing. Documents in our own files do. Budget Paper No. 2, circulated on 12 May 2026, refers to the Commonwealth’s $2 billion contribution towards establishing the $4 billion Thriving Kids program. The explanatory statement to the regulations that authorise the Commonwealth’s direct national Thriving Kids investments (up to $202.9 million), registered on 25 August 2026, records that on 30 January 2026 the National Cabinet agreed to $2.0 billion, matched by states, to deliver Thriving Kids. And the department’s About Thriving Kids page, read again on 20 October, now says it plainly: The Australian Government and state and territory governments are each contributing $2 billion. So the $4 billion is the Commonwealth’s $2 billion and a matching $2 billion from the states and territories, as the money section below already sets out. The 24 August note was right not to treat the difference as an increase, and wrong that nothing reconciled the two: the Budget paper had, three months earlier. The Budget paper and the explanatory statement are now sources 9 and 10.

Updated 11 October 2026. Two things have moved since this piece and its 25 August note, and we have rewritten the headline to match. First, the 25 August note said the Thriving Kids access change does not sit in the Securing the NDIS bill. The bill’s own explanatory memorandum, which we had not read, set 1 January 2028 as the start date for its parts on permanence and on eligibility where other services are available, to enable the commencement of Thriving Kids. Those parts are now law in Act No. 66 of 2026, and we have corrected the House-stage piece that missed them. Second, the department’s page on the changes (last updated 2 October 2026) now states that Children aged 8 and under with developmental delay and/or autism and low to moderate support needs will no longer be eligible for the NDIS, and that from 1 January 2028 those applying will be assessed against the new criteria. Its Thriving Kids pages no longer say the change needs an amendment to the Act. What has not happened is the detail. The same page says We are currently working on the design and details for Thriving Kids with states and territories before making any changes to the laws, and For any changes to NDIS eligibility rules, the Minister requires agreement from all states and territories. So the step still to come is a set of rules agreed by every state and territory, not a bill. The protection for children already enrolled is unchanged on that page. The text below is left as published.

Updated 25 August 2026. The Bill this page describes is now an Act. It finally passed both Houses on 19 August 2026 and received assent on 20 August 2026 as Act No. 66 of 2026, and the Federal Register lists it as in force. The Senate agreed 32 government amendments before it passed. We have set out what the Senate changed, and when each part starts. This piece said in terms that the bill had not passed and that Parliament's record listed it as before the Senate. That was accurate when we wrote it on 18 August and stopped being accurate the next day. The passage of the Act does not change what this piece is about, which is whether the Thriving Kids access change sits in this bill; it does not, as we set out below. The text is left as published.

Update, 24 August 2026: the department rewrote the page this story quoted

The department restructured its Thriving Kids pages, and the version now published carries a last-updated date of 13 August 2026. The specific sentences we quoted from it on 31 July are no longer on the site, so we have converted those passages to reported speech rather than leave quotation marks around wording a reader cannot now check. What we reported has not changed; where it came from has.

The substance survives on the replacement page. It states that There are no changes to how people access the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) until 1 January 2028 and that All supports will be rolled out by 1 January 2028, and it describes the cohort as children aged 8 and under with developmental delay and/or autism with low to moderate support needs. That is the same eligibility date and the same cohort this story was built on.

One figure has moved and it is worth recording. The announcement this story worked from described a Commonwealth commitment of $2 billion over five years. The replacement page states that All governments are investing $4 billion in Thriving Kids over 5 years from mid-2026, which is a combined Commonwealth, state and territory figure rather than a larger Commonwealth one. We have not found a document reconciling the two, and we are not treating the difference as an increase. (Documents do reconcile them: see the note of 20 October.)

Update, 18 August 2026: the committee reported, and two senators put the sequencing in writing

The Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee tabled its final report on 14 August 2026, on time. It carries a single recommendation, numbered 1: The committee recommends that the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 be passed.

The bill has not passed. Parliament’s own record lists its status as before the Senate: read a first time there on 12 August 2026, second reading moved the same day, and the second reading debate resumed on 17 August 2026. So the headline above still holds, and the 1 January 2028 access change still depends on a law that has not been made.

We have covered the report itself, and what the three sets of appended views argue, in a separate piece. What follows here is only the part that bears on Thriving Kids.

Three sets of senators appended their own views, and two of them speak directly to the worry this story raised in July. The Australian Greens filed a dissenting report with 11 recommendations which, the committee’s own summary records, cover issues including fully implementing foundational supports before any current participant is removed from the Scheme. Senator David Pocock filed a separate dissenting report making the same point as a formal recommendation: that changes restricting NDIS access not commence for an affected group until appropriate foundational or mainstream supports for that group are funded, operating and accessible. He also recommends the government report to Parliament quarterly on what foundational supports will exist, who can access them and when they start. Coalition senators added comments of their own.

One passage in Pocock’s report bears directly on Thriving Kids. He records that, in answers to questions on notice from the Independent Member for Kurrajong, the ACT Government confirmed that beyond the Thriving Kids program there has been no agreement between the ACT Government and the Commonwealth on developing additional foundational supports, including their potential timing and which groups might access them. Thriving Kids, in other words, is so far the only piece of the foundational supports architecture that has been agreed in that jurisdiction. Pocock also notes that the access changes are expected to begin in 2028, leaving roughly 18 months to work out who will need support outside the NDIS, design and fund it, and build a workforce to deliver it, which he calls a very short runway.

None of this changes what happens on 1 October. It does mean the sequencing question below is no longer only our reading of the dates: it is now on the record in a tabled committee report, as a recommendation the Senate can accept or reject while it debates the bill.

Update, 31 July 2026: we checked the bill

This story said the access amendments “have not been made” and that we had not established whether the Securing the NDIS for Future Generations Bill 2026 contains them. We then read the Parliament’s record. The bill had already passed the House of Representatives on 2 July 2026, four weeks before this was written, and its summary contains no age-limited Thriving Kids clause but does define ‘functional capacity’ and require consideration of eligibility for other service systems when determining NDIS access. Nothing below is withdrawn: a Thriving Kids-specific amendment still does not exist. But the sentence describing the legislation as not yet existing was too broad, and we should have checked the progress record before publishing. The full follow-up is here.

How we sourced this

The $4 billion over five years for Thriving Kids and the $10 billion over five years for Foundational Supports, the statement that at least $1.4 billion of the Australian Government’s $2 billion goes as direct funding to states, the eligible cohort and the description of who remains on the NDIS, the 1 October 2026 rollout of state services, the expectation of being at scale from 1 January 2028, the in-principle agreement to change NDIS access and its 1 January 2028 commencement, the reassessment protection for children enrolled before that date, the statement that the changes will require amendments to the National Disability Insurance Scheme Act 2013, and both quoted passages about ongoing engagement and details being made available closer to commencement are from the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing’s Thriving Kids page, read in full on 31 July 2026. That page is stamped as last updated 13 May 2026.

The referral date, submission closing date and 14 August 2026 reporting date for the Securing the NDIS for Future Generations Bill 2026 are from the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee’s inquiry page for that bill.

We have not read the bill, the Thriving Kids Advisory Group final report, the parliamentary inquiry report, or any state or territory implementation material, and we have not established whether the bill before the Senate contains the access amendments the department refers to. No figure here is ours; the observation that the Commonwealth is passing at least seventy per cent of its own contribution to the states is arithmetic on the two published figures. The sections headed “What is still missing” are our opinion, built on the sourced facts above, and no claim is made about the conduct of any department, minister or government.