NDIS participants want safety and quality … but they also want choice
Mandatory registration of disability service providers sounds simple, until you factor in the effect on free choice, costs and red tape.
As an NDIS participant, I have experienced first-hand the benefits of this approach and I am not alone, with more than 93 per cent of participants choosing a funding administration option that enables us to access unregistered providers.
However, Australia’s largest disability providers are calling for mandatory provider registration, effectively limiting their competition and threatening the heart of what the NDIS stands for – choice, control, and autonomy for participants.
It’s not what participants want, it would drive up costs for the taxpayer, stifle competition and innovation, and make it harder to access services, especially in regional and rural areas.
The big providers argue registration is needed to improve quality and safety.
Let’s be clear: we need to do much more to increase the quality and safety of NDIS services. As NDIS Quality and Safeguards associate commissioner Natalie Wade said in my Summer Foundation podcast last week: “We are done with people with disability dying preventable deaths, of being raped and abused in services.”
NDIS participants are increasingly choosing unregistered providers. Research shows that unregistered providers offer greater flexibility, stronger personal relationships, and often better value for money. In some regional and rural areas, they are not just preferred – they are the only available option.
Participants are drawn to unregistered providers because too often registration comes at the cost of innovation and flexibility. The more heavily regulated a service becomes, the more constrained it is by compliance requirements, reporting obligations, and standardised practices.
This rigidity makes it harder for services to be responsive to the individual needs, preferences, and goals of participants. Mandatory registration can entrench a risk-averse, one-size-fits-all culture.
The disability royal commission taught us that quality and safeguarding is not achieved through provider registration. In fact, the most horrendous cases of abuse uncovered in the royal commission occurred within registered services.
Many of the largest registered providers have been the subject of some of the most egregious failures of care under the NDIS. Registration, in itself, is no guarantee of quality. Yet it comes with a hefty administrative price tag that only large organisations can afford – entrenching monopolies and reducing the diversity of supports available to participants.
The disability royal commission was clear: it did not recommend mandatory registration of NDIS providers.
Similarly, the NDIS Provider and Worker Registration Taskforce, led by Ms Wade, wisely rejected blanket registration, and instead recommended a model that enables appropriate oversight while preserving flexibility and autonomy for self-directed participants.
In the foreword of her advice, Ms Wade writes: “The prospect of being required to use only registered providers immediately took the community back to dark times, where scarce resources and an absence of self-determined choice and control were commonplace when accessing disability supports and services. In fairness, these dark times are not so historical and were standard practice just a decade ago.”
What’s missing from this debate is a deeper understanding of how people with disability actually stay safe – not through red tape, but through relationships, connection, and empowerment. These are known as “natural safeguards”, and they are the most effective, sustainable form of protection we have.
Natural safeguards help us to make informed decisions, understand our rights, and speak up for ourselves. They include networks of people – family, friends, community members – who support us, advocate for us, and keep an eye out when something isn’t right. These safeguards exist well beyond the boundaries of any registration system and are central to protecting people with disability from abuse, neglect, and exploitation.
The future of the NDIS depends not on standardising care through bureaucracy, but on empowering participants to make informed decisions, and on investing in support structures that promote autonomy, dignity, and self-determination. That means keeping people – not bureaucracy – at the centre of quality assurance.
To take action to address quality and safety we must move away from the outdated group home model that is the dominant service offering of large, registered providers. These institutional-style settings are rife with abuse, violence and neglect. Instead, we should be supporting the development of individualised living arrangements – approaches that enable people with disability to choose where we live, who we live with, and how we are supported. Our lives are better and safer when we are supported to live ordinary lives in ordinary homes – not when we’re forced into congregated settings.
Finally, we cannot ignore the cost implications. Mandatory registration would create a closed and less competitive market, driving up prices and adding layers of costly administrative overheads. These higher prices won’t improve outcomes – they will divert funding away from frontline support and undermine the financial sustainability of the NDIS.
Dr George Taleporos is strategic adviser at the Summer Foundation and the independent chair of Every Australian Counts. He is a director of InLife and the Self Manager Hub, and is the host of Reasonable & Necessary, Australia’s leading podcast on the NDIS.
RESOURCES
Study: Exercising meaningful choice and control in the NDIS
NDIS Provider and Worker Registration Taskforce Advice
The National Disability Insurance Scheme was built on the promise that people with disability could choose the services that work best for us and not be limited to a closed market of “government-approved” providers.