Canberra during Budget Week is all rushing between meetings, half-finished coffees and conversations picked up mid-thought because everyone is juggling three things at once. It was during one of those quieter gaps that I sat down with Ali France, member for Dickson, and the woman who unseated Peter Dutton at the last election, alongside a handful of other publishers and creators to discuss the future of the NDIS.
France speaks about the scheme differently to many politicians, a mark of her lived experience. There’s less distance in the language she uses and more genuine emotion. Before entering parliament, she became a disability advocate after losing her left leg following an accident, later navigating further health complications that reshaped her relationship with the health system.
Her assessment of the NDIS as it currently stands is blunt.
“The NDIS isn’t working the way it should, in so many different ways,” she says.
Particularly, she points to the growing inequity between metropolitan and regional Australia, an issue that feels especially relevant as the federal government moves ahead with sweeping reforms to the scheme under Health Minister Mark Butler.
France notes that in many regional and rural communities, participants can technically have large support packages approved but still receive little practical help because the workforce simply doesn’t exist.
“People can have a plan and funding, but no providers which means no real support,” she says.
The criticism isn’t new, but it has become increasingly difficult to ignore as the scheme grows. The NDIS was built on the promise of individual choice and control, but that only works if services are actually available to choose from.
In cities, gaps might look like long waitlists or limited provider options. In regional Australia, they can mean no allied health worker, no support coordinator, no regular therapy access at all.
“Where you live shouldn’t determine whether you get care,” France says. “But right now it does.”
That inequity now sits at the centre of the government’s proposed overhaul of the scheme. The government says the changes are designed to stabilise costs, improve consistency and address misuse, while also fixing persistent gaps in access and delivery.
But for many in the disability community, reform fatigue is real. The scheme has spent much of the past decade in a near-constant state of adjustment.
France acknowledges that reality openly.
“It’s gutting for our community. I think it’s going to be a really hard road, but it is a road we have to take,” she says.
For her, the conversation starts with recognising that the system is already failing many of the people it was designed to support particularly those living outside major cities or with complex needs.
“We can’t have this two-tier system,” she says. “Firstly, we have to have providers of last resort. It’s very clear in states like Western Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory that there is such a gap in provision of services.”
“I start from the premise that literally, it’s not working for everybody, and particularly for people with very high-needs disability. If you live in an Indigenous community, there’s no providers, so I don’t think anybody can say the NDIS is doing a good job of what it was supposed to do.”
One of the central reform ideas is the creation of a “provider of last resort” model, effectively a safeguard to ensure participants are not left entirely without support in thin regional markets where private providers are unwilling or unable to operate.
“There has to be a provider of last resort so no one falls through the cracks,” France says.
The reforms are also expected to tighten definitions around what the NDIS will fund, strengthen compliance and fraud controls, and shift greater responsibility toward “foundational supports” delivered outside the scheme itself through mainstream health and community services.
That balancing act, between sustainability and access, is where much of the current concern lies.
“We have to go through some of these processes, and review the rorting,” France says. “I think we’ve tried to rein some of that in, but it’s not going to be able to be reined in without legislative change.”
At the same time, disability advocates have raised concerns that tightening eligibility and reassessment processes could unintentionally create new barriers, particularly for people with less visible disabilities or families trying to access early intervention support.
France repeatedly returns to the question of delivery, what these reforms will actually mean for participants on the ground.
“We need significant reform to make sure the scheme delivers what it was designed to do,” she says.
That includes a sharper focus on early diagnosis and intervention for children, particularly around developmental delay and autism, where delayed access to therapy can have lifelong consequences.
“Early diagnosis and intervention are critical, but too many families are still struggling to access that support.”
The conversation also highlights something often left out of policy debate: the gendered reality of care.
When formal supports fail, informal care fills the gap and that labour disproportionately falls to women. Mothers, daughters and partners reduce work hours, leave jobs or absorb additional emotional and financial strain when systems break down.
It’s one reason the instability of the scheme has become so exhausting for many families and providers alike.
“The scheme has been in a near constant state of change for a decade,” France says. “What people need now is stability and certainty.”
For providers, uncertainty affects staffing, investment and long-term planning. For participants, it affects trust, not just in government policy, but in whether support will still exist when it’s needed.
France is careful not to dismiss the transformative impact the NDIS has had for many Australians. In fact, she argues that its success is exactly why the reforms matter.
“The NDIS has changed lives for the better but that’s exactly why we have to get the reforms right.”