Portfolio — 24 April 2026

Minister McAllister used a ministerial media release on 24 April to announce a substantial restructure of NDIS eligibility and support architecture, framing the changes as a return to the scheme's founding purpose of serving people with the most significant and permanent disabilities [TA-260424-ndis-747d568f8f24]. The scale of the problem she identified is significant: the NDIS now covers around 760,000 participants from a broader Australian disability population of roughly 5 million, well beyond the cohort for which it was designed.

McAllister attributed this growth in part to the erosion of non-NDIS disability services, which she described as having withered — leaving people with no viable alternative to the scheme and producing what she called an unsustainable dynamic [TA-260424-ndis-747d568f8f24].

The centrepiece of the reform is a new functional-capacity assessment tool, to be developed over the next 18 months in consultation with the disability community and clinicians [TA-260424-ndis-747d568f8f24]. Once developed, it will underpin reassessments of all current NDIS participants, scheduled to begin in 2028. The shift from diagnostic lists to functional-capacity criteria is the key eligibility change: it moves the threshold question from what condition a person has to what they can and cannot do.

The 18-month development timeline and the 2028 reassessment start date are the two hard sequencing commitments in the release.

For children under nine with autism, McAllister announced a national 'thriving kids' framework to roll out from 1 October, providing information, referral pathways and targeted state-based supports coordinated with states and territories. She was explicit that children will not exit the NDIS until the framework is operational — a sequencing guarantee designed to address concern that reform will remove supports before alternatives are ready.

On social and community supports, McAllister rejected removal in favour of restoration, committing to return them to levels that existed a few years ago. A $200 million inclusive community scheme will back local organisations as part of this effort [TA-260424-ndis-747d568f8f24]. The overall portfolio direction is to narrow the NDIS to its core permanent-disability cohort, build functional-assessment eligibility infrastructure, and use state-based early-childhood programs and restored community services to carry the broader disability population currently relying on the scheme.