Skip to content
Paradoxical.life

1 October 2026

The reset is a date. The person is not.

A fact sheet you can keep. A briefing you can send. Your lived paragraph stays yours. Parliament has a petition door; we will not fake one.

The full rulebookScribe and the pack

Paradoxical.life · Fact sheet · Last verified 10 September 2026

What changes on 1 October 2026

For participants, families, coordinators. Not a substitute for the person’s plan, the Act, or legal advice.

  1. 01

    1 October is not an eligibility change.

    Access-criteria changes begin 1 January 2028. Existing participants are then reassessed over three years. Do not confuse a budget reset with being “kicked off the scheme”.

  2. 02

    Who is hit on 1 October.

    New plans and reassessments from 1 October 2026. Other participants: the same reset at plan renewal from 1 February 2027. If your plan is not being remade on 1 October, the clock may still be your next renewal.

  3. 03

    The two percentages.

    Social, civic and community participation budgets reduced by 50 per cent. Capacity-building daily-activity budgets (improved daily living skills) reduced by 10 per cent. These are the department’s own figures.

  4. 04

    What the government says will not change.

    Essential daily-living supports, employment supports, home and modifications, mobility, consumables, Specialist Disability Accommodation, and continuous 24-hour disability-related care. That is a claim about categories. It is not yet a completed national outcome study of anyone’s next plan.

  5. 05

    The named substitute for community.

    A $200 million Inclusive Communities Fund for community organisations, plus market reforms for group-based activity. A fund announcement is not the same as an accessible activity on your street.

  6. 06

    Already in force (27 August 2026).

    Unscheduled plan reassessments: only the participant, nominee or child representative, on a significant and ongoing change, on the correct form. NDIA has 90 days. Silence is treated as refusal, with review rights. Claim records: keep them three years.

  7. 07

    1 December 2026 — 90 days to claim.

    Claims must be made within 90 days of the support. Previously the window could run to two years. Families who invoice late, or cannot find a worker until the crisis has passed, will feel this as an administrative condition of disability.

  8. 08

    1 February 2027 — unspent funds do not roll over.

    Renewed plans are set at the assessed level, adjusted for current prices. Underspend because the market was thin is not the same as underspend because the need was gone.

  9. 09

    Thriving Kids is 2028, and still being written.

    From 1 January 2028, children aged eight and under with developmental delay and/or autism and low to moderate support needs are pointed at Thriving Kids. Children with permanent and significant disability, or substantially reduced functional capacity, remain eligible. The department still says design is being worked on with the states. A named program is not yet a specified substitute.

  10. 10

    Much of the operational detail is still being written.

    Functional-capacity thresholds: a Technical Advisory Group is to advise; the public number is not yet published. Automated-action instruments: to be published seven days before they start. Ministerial determinations to reduce specified participation funding remain a power, not yet an outcome study.

How to walk it

  1. Find the end date of the current plan, and whether a reassessment is already listed. That date is when the 1 October clock may apply to you.
  2. Ask the coordinator, in writing: which line items are social/civic/community participation, which are capacity-building daily activities, which are daily living, which are 24-hour care. Do not let a 50 per cent cut land on a line that was keeping someone fed, washed, or in the house.
  3. If function has changed — burnout, sleep collapse, school refusal, loss of informal support — do not wait for it to look like a clean capacity drop. Request an unscheduled reassessment on the correct form, as the participant, nominee or child representative.
  4. Diary the 90 days. Silence is treated as refusal. Review rights exist. Use them.
  5. From 1 December, claim within 90 days of the support. Do not sit on invoices.
  6. Keep records three years. The note, the invoice, the weather of the day, what was meant and what was written down.
  7. Do not treat a good twelve-minute call as the week. Take a pack that separates performance from function.
  8. Do not assume Thriving Kids, or the Inclusive Communities Fund, is a like-for-like replacement of individualised support. Ask what is actually bookable where you live.
  9. This is not legal advice. The person’s plan is the plan. A fact sheet is a map, not the territory.

Paradoxical.life · Briefing · Voice of the family · 10 September 2026

What we can see from this side of the desk

Observations, not findings of harm. A law can be improved and still remain imperfect. Financial sustainability matters. So does human sustainability. This is not anti-NDIS, anti-reform, or a party document. It is a record a concerned family member could put in an envelope.

  1. 01

    The cut arrives before the substitute.

    Budget resets begin 1 October 2026. New access criteria and the Thriving Kids handoff begin 1 January 2028. The receiving system is still being designed with the states. Do not remove the bridge before the other side has been built.

  2. 02

    A short good performance will be expensive.

    If planning still treats a twelve-minute call, a packed bag at home, or speech on a kind morning as “mild”, a 50 per cent participation cut will land on people whose community access already depends on conditions the meeting cannot see.

  3. 03

    People do not arrive one diagnosis at a time.

    The direct-impairment test asks support needs to arise from the impairments that got someone through the door. Overlapping ADHD, autism, dyslexia, anxiety, trauma and sleep do not live in separate drawers. A need can be real at the intersection and still look “not direct” on a form.

  4. 04

    Function without context is a vacuum.

    If functional capacity is scored as the ability to do a thing without people, technology, or environment, the assessment will describe a person who does not exist. Fluorescent lights and a tannoy are not personality. They are load.

  5. 05

    Non-response is often the disability.

    Contact rules were improved. Five attempts, preferred means, hospital and homelessness excluded. The remaining design question is unchanged: refusal, inability, and a failed communication design are still not the same thing. Treating silence as refusal will punish the people the scheme exists to support.

  6. 06

    Ninety days is a long time in a family, and a short time in a scheme.

    Life does not always change according to administrative thresholds. Burnout, sleep collapse and loss of informal support may not first present as a clean functional-capacity drop. The 90-day decision window, with silence as refusal, asks families to be well enough to navigate the system at the moment they are least well.

  7. 07

    Ending rollover punishes thin markets.

    From 1 February 2027, unspent funds do not roll over. In a region that cannot staff a worker, underspend is a market failure, not proof the need was gone. Keep the evidence of the wait.

  8. 08

    A 90-day claim window is a disability test in disguise.

    Families in executive overload, AAC-only afternoons, or plan-manager backlog will miss invoices. Fraud control is a legitimate aim. An exception path for disability-related delay is how you stop integrity settings becoming another gate.

  9. 09

    Eligible somewhere is not supported somewhere.

    Thriving Kids is named. The catalogue is not. Inclusive Communities is funded. The local activity is not guaranteed. Track isolation, unpaid care, health-system use and school refusal as the scheme changes — not later, in 2029, after the damage is a finding.

  10. 10

    Automation inherits the assumptions of the system it automates.

    Publication seven days before an automated action starts is a safeguard. It is not a prohibition. Fluctuating disability, missing notes, and a twelve-minute call scored as capacity will travel into the machine unless a human can still see the whole book.

What we ask

  1. Do not cut individualised community support in a postcode until an equivalent, bookable alternative exists in that postcode. Name the receiving service, not only the receiving program.
  2. Publish the Thriving Kids service catalogue, participating states, and the worked interface with 2028 NDIS eligibility before any child is pointed at it.
  3. Publish the Technical Advisory Group’s functional-capacity rules — including how environment, masking, AAC and fluctuating load are treated — before they are applied to a person.
  4. Measure, from 1 October, not from 2029: isolation, unpaid care hours, school refusal, health-system use, and crisis presentations, split by whether the person’s participation budget was reset.
  5. Treat non-response as a communication-design problem until proven otherwise. Preferred means, AAC, and a known adult should be the default, not an exception.
  6. Keep a disability-related exception on the 90-day claim window, and on unscheduled-reassessment silence, so integrity settings do not become another closed door.
  7. Do not let a short good performance, on a kind morning, with one familiar adult, be the functional-capacity assessment.
  8. Make human review of automated action easy to obtain, and publish what data is used and what is missing.

What we will do from our end

The person is the only participant who travels through the entire system. Everyone else may see a chapter. They live the whole book. This is how we keep the book visible.

  • Keep the sequence on the person’s device: what changed, when, and what else changed nearby.
  • Keep said / meant / heard, so a planner’s twelve minutes cannot overwrite a week.
  • Keep capacity weather, so a clear morning and a storm after the assembly can both be true.
  • Keep a meeting pack that is a communication aid, not an NDIS form.
  • Keep Scribe, so the person does not have to type the whole book.
  • Keep the evidence classified. We will not fill a citation by inference. We will not pretend a risk is already a harm.

The question is not whether the NDIS should change. It is whether the people who depend on it remain visible while it does.

Send it

Two voices. Keep them distinct.

Paradoxical.life writes the briefing. You write the lived paragraph. We will not put your child’s name, your diagnosis, or your plan on a public wall. A counter we cannot verify is not a community. A letter in an inbox is.

Open in emailFind my MP

Some email apps truncate long letters. Copy first, then paste. Put your postcode on the first line so the office knows you are theirs.

The petition question

A petition that lives only on this website is a mood. A petition that a senator can present, or that the House e-petitions system can send to a minister with a request for a 90-day reply, is on the record.

We will not collect medical stories in a public signature list. We will not invent a crowd. If you want signatures that Parliament can count, use the House e-petition form, or ask a senator — including Senator Steele-John — to present the Senate wording below.

House e-petitionsHow to petition the Senate

To the Honourable the President and Members of the Senate in Parliament assembled.

The petition of certain citizens and residents of Australia draws the attention of the Senate to the commencement of NDIS budget resets from 1 October 2026 — a 50 per cent reduction in social, civic and community participation budgets and a 10 per cent reduction in capacity-building daily-activity budgets — while the receiving systems named in the 2026 Act, including Thriving Kids, remain incompletely designed.

We note that access-criteria changes do not begin until 1 January 2028; that the department states essential daily-living and 24-hour care supports will not change; and that a $200 million Inclusive Communities Fund has been announced. A fund announcement is not a bookable local service. A named program is not a specified substitute.

Your petitioners request that the Senate:

1. Call on the Government not to reduce individualised community supports in a postcode until an equivalent, bookable alternative exists in that postcode.

2. Require publication of the Thriving Kids service catalogue, participating states, and the worked interface with 2028 NDIS eligibility before any child is pointed at that program.

3. Require publication of the Technical Advisory Group’s functional-capacity rules — including how environment, masking, AAC and fluctuating load are treated — before they are applied to a person.

4. Require measurement, from 1 October 2026, of isolation, unpaid care hours, school refusal, health-system use and crisis presentations, split by whether a person’s participation budget was reset.

5. Treat non-response as a communication-design problem until proven otherwise, and keep a disability-related exception on the 90-day claim window and on unscheduled-reassessment silence.

And your petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray.