By Achieve Australia CEO, Jo-Anne Hewitt
19 December 2025
Over the past decade, NDIS pricing has promoted the necessary significant growth of the disability sector to meet demand for the growing scheme. However, the essential guardrails to promote quality and safety for participants were missing. The result is a market where quality providers cannot sustainably deliver complex services to those who the NDIS was created for.
There are currently around 260,000 providers in the NDIS. Only 15,000 of those providers are registered and meet quality standards. This means most of the disability market does not support community expectations for the NDIS.
“What is government buying?” is a common phrase used in public service circles and around the Cabinet table. When it comes to the NDIS, it’s clear that we aren’t always getting what we paid for.
The Federal Government has the unenviable task of wrestling the NDIS into shape in partnership with state and territory governments, satisfying their three stated goals of being sustainable, effective and operating with integrity. The scale of this challenge may seem daunting – but the alternative is unacceptable. Without urgent reform, we will see the failure of the NDIS market, with more people with disability losing access to quality service providers, particularly those with complex and acute needs.
There are three ways that the Federal Government can quickly and effectively shift the NDIS market in the right direction:
The first step is listening to quality providers who can demonstrate what sustainable quality services cost, based on decades of delivering complex supports. The Federal Government must see not-for-profit providers and national provider peak bodies as essential partners in this reform process.
The second step is to adopt independent differentiated pricing in 2026, based on the complexity and risks posed by the type of support provided to an NDIS participant. This would ensure the cost of compliance and reporting is directly tied to an NDIS participant’s support needs, and can be a key lever to drive provider registration.
The third step is recognising the critical role that provider leadership can play in the success of these reforms. The Federal Government cannot regulate its way to a quality NDIS. It’s going to take a consistent values-led approach to unlock the full benefits of NDIS pricing reforms. Not-for-profit boards and CEOs know how to create the service models that consistently deliver quality for participants and value for government investment. This means the Federal Government must prioritise keeping quality not-for-profit providers in the scheme and ending the ‘brain drain’ from our sector.
Ministers Clare and McAllister have been crystal clear about their desire to stamp out fraud in the NDIS – rightly so given its strong correlation to abuse and neglect of people with disability. I’m keen to see ministers being as clear about what quality looks like and costs for the NDIS – shifting the emphasis back to the strengths and value of the NDIS when it works as intended.