National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Participant Service Guarantee and Other Measures) 2021

✦ Plain-English Summary

# National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Participant Service Guarantee and Other Measures) 2021

## What it does
This bill updates the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) to set guaranteed timeframes for how quickly the NDIA must respond to participants, and introduces more flexible ways people can use their funding. It also makes various technical fixes to how the scheme operates.

## Why it matters
NDIS participants have been waiting weeks or months for decisions on their plans and requests. These guarantees mean the NDIA now has legal obligations to respond faster, which could reduce frustration and help people access support they need without endless delays. The flexibility measures let participants better tailor how they spend their funding to suit their actual lives.

## Key details
- **Service timeframes kick in at different speeds**: Some guarantees start just 7 days after the bill becomes law, while others don't start until April 2022 to give the NDIA time to prepare
- **Affects everyone in the NDIS**: These changes apply to all current and future participants dealing with the NDIA
- **Multiple schedules cover different areas**: The bill includes measures for participant guarantees, flexibility in how funding is used, and various other scheme amendments to fix problems that have emerged since 2013

Official Description

Implements certain recommendations of the 2019 review of the National Disability Insurance Scheme Act 2013 (the Tune review) by amending the: National Disability Insurance Scheme Act 2013 to establish the Participant Service Guarantee to provide timeframes and engagement principles for how the National Disability Insurance Agency undertakes key administrative processes; enable participant’s plans to be varied without requiring a full plan review; amend the objects and principles of the Act; clarify the eligibility criteria for people with psychosocial disability; streamline certain administrative processes for participants; provide clarity in relation to decisions about plan management requests and extend the risk assessment process for self-management of funding to those using registered plan management providers; enable the National Disability Insurance Agency to make direct payments on behalf of participants; and remove redundant provisions and make technical amendments; and DisabilityCare Australia Fund Act 2013 to make a consequential amendment.

Committee Referrals

Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee; Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights; Senate Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills

Full bill PDF →APH page →

Audit History

Introduced

28 Oct 2021

Last updated on APH

10 Apr 2026

Outcome date

1 Apr 2022

Last checked by Crossbench

2 days ago

Full text indexed

2 days ago

🗳️

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