Australia · NDIS legislation
The NDIS bill has passed Parliament, and the 90-day reassessment clock now waits on one signature
Australia's NDIS overhaul completed its passage on August 19 when the House of Representatives agreed to the Senate's 63 amendments. Nothing starts yet. The reassessment provisions, including the rule treating a request undecided at 90 days as refused, commence seven days after Royal Assent, and the rest of the package is staged out to October 2026, February 2027, and January 2028.
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Reported and checked by Caroline M. Last checked August 19, 2026. Research and verification follow the QueueCheck editorial standards. How we verify information
Passage is done; the clock waits on assent
The parliamentary contest is over. On the morning of August 19 the House agreed to the amendments the Senate made the night before, so the NDIS Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill has passed both houses and waits only on Royal Assent. For people watching the reassessment changes, the useful arithmetic is now simple: whenever assent is announced, add seven days, and that is the day the 90-day reassessment window and its treated-as-refused endpoint start applying to real requests. The rest of the package arrives on a published calendar that runs into 2028.
Who the filing date now governs
NDIS participants weighing when to request a plan reassessment, nominees and guardians who file requests on a participant's behalf, and providers and planners who need to know which rulebook governs a request filed this month versus one filed after commencement.
What the House agreed to on August 19
- The House of Representatives agreed to the Senate's amendments on August 19, 2026, completing the bill's passage; the Parliament's bill record now shows it before the Governor-General for assent.
- The 63 Senate amendments, including the rule that an unscheduled reassessment request undecided within 90 days is treated as refused, are part of the final bill the House accepted.
- The department's implementation timeline commences the unscheduled reassessment changes seven days after Royal Assent.
- The wider package is staged: one part commences on October 1, 2026, tighter assessment of supports for new entrants and plan reassessment and renewal changes phase in from February 1, 2027, and the final parts commence on January 1, 2028.
- Royal Assent had not been granted at publication, so no calendar date for commencement exists yet.
Assent, commencement, and the staged calendar
Royal Assent is the Governor-General's formal approval of a bill both houses have passed, and the act's commencement clauses count from that date.
A treated-as-refused outcome at day 90 is a review trigger, not a merits decision; the Senate-passage record linked below decodes how the deemed refusal works.
Passage does not change any current decision timeline: until commencement, the existing rules govern reassessment requests.
The bill reaches well beyond reassessments, and most of its parts commence on the later staged dates rather than in the first seven days.
Reader questions: which rulebook applies
Does the 90-day reassessment rule apply from today?
No. Passage through Parliament is not commencement. The reassessment provisions start seven days after Royal Assent, and assent had not been granted when this was published. Until that date, the current rules govern every request.
I filed a reassessment request last week. Which rules apply to it?
The current rules, today. What happens to requests still undecided when the new provisions commence is a transition question the department's summaries do not answer, so treat the enacted act, or a direct answer from the agency, as the authority on that point rather than any summary, including this one.
Is the bill still able to change before it becomes law?
The text is settled: both houses have agreed to the same bill, and assent is a formal step rather than a fresh review. What remains genuinely open is timing, since assent has no fixed date and the staged commencement dates for later parts could in principle be adjusted by future instruments.
Seven days from a signature
The governing question for any reassessment request becomes its filing date: a request decided under the current rules faces no 90-day architecture, while one made after commencement runs on the new clock with the deemed-refusal endpoint.
The seven-day gap between assent and commencement is short. Anyone who wants to understand the new regime before it applies should read it now rather than watching for the assent notice.
The February 2027 and January 2028 stages mean the scheme's rules will change more than once from here; this record covers the passage, and the dates above say which change lands when.
Pending requests, planned requests, new-regime requests
- If you have a reassessment request pending now, it proceeds under the current rules; passage on August 19 changed nothing about your case.
- If you are preparing a request and the new criteria would treat it differently, the filing date matters: watch for the assent announcement, because commencement follows seven days later.
- If you will request a reassessment under the new regime, build the request to be decidable without follow-up rounds; a 90-day window rewards complete evidence at the start.
The second entry in a running record
This is the second entry in a running record: the Senate passage on August 18 established what the amendments say, this entry records the House agreement that completed passage, and a further record will fix the actual commencement date once assent is announced.
The bill record and the department's own timeline are the two documents doing the work here; reporting had the House vote first, but the dates above are read from the government's published schedule rather than from coverage of it.
The dates nobody has yet
- No assent date existed at publication, so the seven-day commencement date cannot be computed yet; QueueCheck will record it when it is announced.
- The staging described here is the department's published implementation timeline; the enacted act and any instruments made under it govern if they differ.
- The department's material does not spell out how requests already pending at commencement are transitioned; the enacted text is the place that question gets settled.
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Official citation
Published August 19, 2026. Original source: Parliament of Australia: bill record.