Inappropriate inducements are named in the NDIS Commission’s 2026-27 priorities. The NDIS Act’s prohibition on inducements commences on 20 November

This is general information about what the Commission and the Act say, not legal advice for any provider.

The three priorities, in the Commission’s words

The Commission sets regulatory priorities based on areas of greatest risk for people with disability, and the integrity of the NDIS, its priorities page says. That page, last updated on 28 September 2026, lists three for 2026-27:

Priority 1

Regulated restrictive practices

NDIS providers who are implementing regulated restrictive practices and are not registered to do so

Priority 2

Exploitative and dishonest behaviour

Exploitative, coercive and dishonest behaviour which puts participants at risk of harm and undermines the integrity of the Scheme

Priority 3

Governance failures

Governance failures impacting the quality and safety of supports in high-risk settings

Under the second, the page says the Commission will prioritise strategic and decisive action against providers that exploit participants or the NDIS, including through unfair pricing, sharp or predatory conduct, inappropriate inducements, regulated promotional activities, false or misleading representations, and serious breaches of the NDIS Code of Conduct. It applies to everyone: All providers (both registered and unregistered), workers and key personnel must act with integrity, honesty and transparency. It also names a place: We will place focus on providers operating in rural, regional and remote areas.

Under the third, it says the Commission will take decisive action against providers that seriously breach the NDIS Code of Conduct or fail to meet NDIS Practice Standards within defined periods, including obligations relating to mandatory registration of Supported Independent Living and relevant Practice Standards. And, a line a provider might not expect from a disability regulator: We will focus on provider compliance with Commonwealth workplace laws, because fair and lawful workplace relations practices, and the protection of worker rights are critical to the delivery of safe, high-quality supports.

The page adds a caveat worth keeping: Our focus may shift as reforms, trends and issues emerge.

What changed from last year’s list

The 2025-26 priorities page had four headings. Set side by side:

From the Commission’s 2025-26 and 2026-27 regulatory priorities pages, read 9 October 2026. Headings only; see the methodology for one quirk of the 2025-26 page.

Read against each other, four things move. Restrictive practices stay first, but the heading narrows from their reduction and elimination to providers implementing them without registration; the aim to reduce, and over time, eliminate regulated restrictive practices is still in the text. Unregistered providers lose their own heading but appear inside the first two. Workforce moves inside the third, as governance and workforce failures. And high-risk health concerns, which in 2025-26 meant mealtime management, wound management and timely access to health services, are not among the three headings for 2026-27. The Commission’s August 2026 mealtime campaign snapshot says it will now target providers with known or alleged non-compliance associated with the provision of support for dysphagia, so that work has not stopped; it has left the headline list.

What is new in the wording is specific conduct (unfair pricing, inappropriate inducements, regulated promotional activities, false or misleading representations), a place (rural, regional and remote areas), mandatory registration of Supported Independent Living, and Commonwealth workplace laws. None of those phrases appears in the 2025-26 headings or text.

Inducements: what the Act prohibits from 20 November

The Commission’s word is inappropriate. The Act’s test is different, and from 20 November it is law. The Securing the NDIS for Future Generations Act, assented to on 20 August, inserts section 73VA into the NDIS Act by Schedule 2 Part 8. Its commencement table gives Part 8 The day after the end of the period of 3 months beginning on the day this Act receives the Royal Assent, and lists that date as 20 November 2026.

1. The prohibition, s 73VA(1)An NDIS provider contravenes it if it gives, or agrees or offers to give, a gift, benefit or other thing that is not the provision of a support or service to a participant, and the thing is reasonably likely to induce a person to engage it to provide, continue, add to or increase supports under a participant’s plan, or to manage the plan’s funding. It does not matter whether the person is the participant.
2. The exceptions, s 73VA(3) to (7)A discount, fee reduction or other benefit that is part of a legitimate pricing practice; the provider’s merchandise; and conduct in a class the NDIS rules prescribe as permitted. The rules may say what does and does not count for each.
3. What the rules cannot permit, s 73VA(8)Alcohol; pharmaceuticals and drugs whose possession is unlawful; cigarettes, cigars, tobacco and e-cigarettes and their accessories; cash or cash-like products; electronic devices.
4. The consequences, s 73VA(9), (10)An offence: imprisonment for 2 years or 120 penalty units, or both. A civil penalty: 10,000 penalty units for a serious contravention by an NDIS provider, 250 in any other case.

The offence is short: A person commits an offence if the person contravenes subsection (1). Much of where the line sits is left to rules. As at 9 October, a search of the Federal Register’s titles for “Inducement” returns no instrument, and no NDIS instrument has been registered since 29 September. We found no rules yet saying what a legitimate pricing practice, merchandise or permitted conduct is.

The Commission has already drawn one line in practice. Its housing and living supports campaign snapshot says it is releasing resources to help SDA providers understand the difference between provision of reasonable transition supports and the offer of inducements that breach the NDIS Code of Conduct and NDIS Practice Standards. That is the Code and the Standards; from 20 November the Act has its own test as well.

The remote line, and the Northern Territory pilot

The rural, regional and remote focus is not new. The Commission’s 2024-25 priorities report, dated November 2025, says that year it had a focus on quality and safe supports in regional and remote locations, and ran targeted compliance campaigns across 77 regional, remote and very remote locations.

What is new is a mechanism. On 30 September the Commission announced a pilot Community Check-In Program in the Northern Territory, delivered by the Northern Territory Disability Advocacy Consortium, which it says comprises Disability Advocacy Service, Darwin Community Legal Service and Integrated Disability Action. Local disability advocates will conduct check-ins with NDIS participants, families, carers and community leaders to strengthen community connections and gather feedback. The release says The pilot program commenced on 1 September 2026 and will run for 12 months. It ties the program to the 2026-27 priorities and to the inducement provisions, which it describes as new offences for providers who offer or give kickbacks and inducements.

To be an effective regulator for some of our most isolated communities, we can’t only operate in a reactive environment led by formal complaints.

The release gives no cost for the pilot and does not say how it will be evaluated.

What a targeted campaign looks like when it arrives

Priorities turn into work partly through targeted campaigns, and the Commission has published snapshots of three. They are the clearest public picture of what a provider in a priority area can expect: visits, document requests, and mostly corrective action rather than sanctions.

From the Commission’s three campaign snapshots. Visits: 416 compliance inspections at dwellings (plus 243 provider meetings, which the 2024-25 report calls site visits); 51 voluntary site visits; 184 site visits across 98 providers.

The support coordination campaign is the most instructive. The snapshot says 4,748 registered and unregistered providers were in scope because they had billed for support coordination and any other services (excluding plan management) in the six months to 31 December 2024, and that the Commission made 51 voluntary site visits, 36 to registered providers and 15 to unregistered ones. Of the 51, it found eight with non-compliance, which it puts at 16 per cent. The housing campaign spoke with 661 participants or their decision-makers and reported that the rules do not specifically require providers to demonstrate how they actively support participant choice beyond their own, or linked, entities’ services.

Our view

This is opinion, built on the documents above. The 2026-27 list is more useful to a provider than last year’s. It names conduct rather than categories, and the conduct it names lines up with law that is about to start. A provider reading the list in October has six weeks before section 73VA commences to look at its referral arrangements, its sign-up offers and anything else that could be reasonably likely to induce a participant, or anyone else, to engage it.

That is also where the gap is. Section 73VA leaves the exceptions that matter most to ordinary providers, a legitimate pricing practice, merchandise and permitted conduct, to NDIS rules, and as at 9 October we could find none. The law starts on a fixed date either way. Providers should not have to learn where the line sits from the first enforcement action, and we think rules or guidance should come before 20 November, not after it.

The Commission’s account of what its priorities achieved is slower and thinner than the priorities themselves. The 2024-25 report is dated November 2025 and mostly lists activity, with outcomes such as Enforced the law using a range of statutory and non-statutory powers. For 2025-26, the page offers two campaign snapshots about fieldwork in 2025. The support coordination campaign visited 51 of 4,748 providers in scope, about 1 in 93 by our arithmetic, and the visits were voluntary. That tells you about providers willing to be visited, and the snapshot does not claim more. The Northern Territory pilot is the most interesting thing here, because it rests on the regulator’s own admission that formal complaints do not reach it from isolated communities. A pilot is worth what it finds, and we would like to see the findings published when its 12 months are up.

What we could and could not check

We read the Commission’s 2026-27 and 2025-26 priorities pages, the 2026-27 fact sheet, the 2024-25 report, the three campaign snapshots and the 30 September release in full, and section 73VA and the commencement table in the authorised Act as made. We did not read the 2026-27 poster beyond its headings, the Commission’s strategic or corporate plans, or the earlier compliance priorities documents from 2019 to 2024. We did not ask the Commission about the pilot’s cost or evaluation. We make no claim about any provider’s compliance, and none of the campaign snapshots names a provider.

For every other date the NDIS Act changes, see the commencement timetable; for what a compliance notice or an infringement notice is, see the Commission’s five enforcement tools.