In an effort to reduce fraud and make budget savings on NDIS, Minister for the NDIS, Mark Butler, has proposed the introduction of mandatory registration for NDIS care providers and has submitted the Securing the NDIS for Future Generations Bill 2026 to Parliament which lays the foundation for mandatory registration across NDIS. Minister Butler hopes that by mandating registration of care providers, fraudulent providers will be excluded from the provision of NDIS care services, which will help make budget savings. NDIA currently estimate that 6 to 10 percent of care funding is lost to fraudulent billings– so up to $2.3 Billion annually (Non-SIL).

Lack of regulation of the NDIS provider market has opened the scheme to unauthorized billing and over billing. Currently, only 6% service providers are registered, meaning that the NDIS Quality and Safeguard Commission currently lacks oversight of 93% NDIS providers. Scheme-wide registration of providers is also required in order to screen and safely register all providers onto a Digital Payment Platform which would make payments visible to NDIA thus easier to scan for irregular billing patterns– helping reduce fraud.

So while some form of scheme-wide registration is required- does Minister Butler's proposed ‘Advanced Registration’ model tick all the boxes as outlined in the scheme's blueprint for reform: the NDIS review? And most importantly, does the ‘Advanced Registration’ model deliver promised budget savings?

The maths suggests otherwise.

Minister Butler's proposed ‘Advanced Registration’ model (as outlined Impact Analysis Equivalent: Mandatory Registration of all NDIS Providers submitted to Parliament to support the Amending Bill), requires advanced registration of providers carrying out ‘highest risk supports’ only. Although this sounds like a narrow registration category which will affect few, Minister Butler stated in his budget speech that the scope of ‘highest risk supports’ will be expansively defined to include ‘Assistance with Daily Living and Personal Domestic Support’- a definition which encompasses the provision of all personal care across NDIS. 

This means that high level, complex and onerous regulation would be applied to all support across the scheme– except Social and Community Engagement– which amounts to 75% of the scheme (Non-SIL).