New NDIS eligibility rules will cut 240,000 participants from scheme in four years, documents reveal

More than 240,000 participants are expected to be shifted off the national disability insurance scheme in the four years after new eligibility rules are introduced, internal documents reveal. Newly released departmental modelling also shows proposed cuts to funding for social, civic and community participation will help achieve the single biggest saving of the measures the Albanese government is pursuing to contain the scheme’s ballooning growth. The federal government is planning drastic changes to the NDIS after warnings it was projected to cost $117bn a year in a decade’s time – up from $50bn annually – without urgent and far-reaching interventions. Labor wants to tighten eligibility criteria, subject all participants to standardised assessments and register more types of providers. Announcing the reform last month at the national press club, the health minister, Mark Butler, said preliminary modelling showed the changes would reduce the number of participants to 600,000 by the end of the decade – about 160,000 fewer than existing levels. But a document tabled in the Senate on Wednesday revealed the number of participants to be “exited” – or shifted – from the scheme to achieve that target by mid-2031 was 241,000. The modelling showed participant numbers were forecast to peak at 817,000 next year before the new eligibility rules start on 1 January 2028. …