The 2026 Reforms, Sorted Into Law, Bill and Announcement

Since the Minister's National Press Club address in April, I have watched the same conversation repeat in planning meetings, coordination calls and my own sessions. Someone has read that 160,000 people will leave the scheme, that eligibility is being rewritten, that people with psychosocial disability are the most exposed, and underneath the practical questions is the real one: am I about to lose everything? Fear grows fastest in the gap between a headline and its detail, and the reform coverage has been nearly all headline. So this article does one job. It sorts the package into three piles: what is already law and operating today, what is a bill before Parliament that has not passed, and what is an announcement still being designed. The piles matter, because your obligations, your risks and your best moves are different in each one.

Pile one: already law, already operating

The 2024 amendments have been in force since October 2024: the defined lists of what is and is not an NDIS support, funding released in periods rather than a lump sum for newer plans, and the tightened requirement that funded supports relate to the impairments that met the access criteria. From 1 July this year, the 2026-27 Pricing Schedule applies, and for psychology it is genuinely good news, the only therapy line that rose, to $252.99 per hour, with travel, telehealth, report writing and non face to face work now on separate claim lines. Plan budgets were indexed in mid July to match. And Thriving Kids, the new program for children under nine with mild to moderate developmental delay and autism, began on 1 July; it does not apply to the adolescent and adult cohort this series is written for, and children already in the scheme were not automatically removed. If you hold a current plan, these are the rules you are actually living under, and nothing in the April speech changed them.

Pile two: before Parliament, not yet law

The Securing the NDIS for Future Generations Bill 2026 was introduced on 14 May. It would give the Minister the power to set binding prices, which matters most to unregistered providers who are not currently bound by the price limits, and it would restrict unscheduled plan reassessments to exceptional changes in circumstances, closing the informal safety valve Part 6 of this series warned about. As I write, the Bill has not passed; the Senate committee examining it is due to report on 14 August 2026. Honesty requires both halves of this: it is not law, and the direction is unmistakable. The rational response is not panic, it is preparation, treating scheduled reassessments as the main event and getting evidence habits in order now, which costs nothing even if the Bill changes shape.

Pile three: announced, being designed, dated 2027 and beyond

The structural reforms are in this pile. Access is planned to move from diagnosis toward standardised functional capacity assessments, designed with a technical advisory group and the disability community, with new eligibility arrangements flagged from January 2028 and a new planning framework from April 2027. The Government's modelling has participant numbers around 600,000 by the end of the decade instead of the projected 900,000 plus, which is where the confronting 160,000 figure comes from. Community participation budgets are slated for a reset from October 2026. And the supports meant to catch people outside the scheme, foundational supports for psychosocial disability in particular, remain under development, a gap the Minister himself has conceded and that advocacy bodies are pressing hard. Two things are true at once here. For people with psychosocial disability, the concern is legitimate and the advocacy matters. And none of this pile has legal force over your plan today; design consultation is precisely the window in which evidence, and voices, count most.

What this means for psychology supports, concretely

Read across the piles and a consistent strategy appears. The scheme is moving from a world where diagnosis opened doors toward one where documented functional capacity decides nearly everything: access, plan size, and survival at reassessment. That is the direction of every pile. For anyone whose plan includes psychology, or should, the highest value move of 2026 is unglamorous: build the functional evidence file described across Parts 3, 5 and 6 of this series while the pathways are stable, keep both funding systems from Part 2 working their proper lanes, and stop treating mid plan fixes as a fallback. People who prepare for the scheme that is coming will also, conveniently, be holding exactly the file that protects them in the scheme that exists.

What participants can do

• Anchor on your plan's dates, not the news cycle. Your current plan runs on current law until its reassessment.
• Get your functional evidence current this year: an up to date report that describes supported functioning, not just diagnosis, is the asset every reform scenario rewards.
• Do not panic spend or park therapy because of headlines; unusual utilisation patterns create the very reassessment questions you are trying to avoid.
• If you have psychosocial disability, put your experience into the consultation processes, directly or through advocacy organisations. The design window is open now.
• When something alarming circulates, run it through the three pile test before acting: is this law, a bill, or an announcement?

What Support Coordinators can do

• Brief your caseload with the three pile framing. Most participant fear right now is a category error, and you can fix a category error in one conversation.
• Prioritise evidence refreshes for psychosocial participants ahead of the 2027 and 2028 milestones, while today's rules and reviewers are known quantities.
• Track the Bill's passage and the committee report in August, because the reassessment restriction changes your service model the day it commences.
• Recalibrate your own advice: language like “we can always request a review later” is aging out from under the sector.
• Channel what you are seeing on the ground into formal consultation submissions. Coordinators hold the pattern data the design process needs.