(And What Do They Use to Fund It?)
The NDIS is governed by the National Disability Insurance Scheme Act 2013. This Act was passed by the Commonwealth Parliament in, you guessed it, 2013.
The Act states that it is a Commonwealth Minister who is responsible for the administration of that Act. So, the NDIS is effectively a Commonwealth Government initiative.
The NDIS is funded by a mix of Commonwealth and State & Territory Government funding. State and Territory Governments make their contribution according to relative populations.
That all said, in reality, the NDIS is funded by the Commonwealth.
In 2024-2025, the NDIS was slated to receive revenue of $48.975 billion. Of this, State and Territory Governments were expected to contribute $12.227 billion. So, on these numbers, State and Territory Governments fund about 25% of the NDIS.
But then you need to ask, where do the State and Territory Governments get their money from? We could look at each on in turn, but there is really no need to, because they are all pretty similar. If we take Victoria as an example, we see that in 2024-2025 year total State Government revenue was expected to be $98.1 billion. Of this, $45.6 billion came in the form of Commonwealth grants. That is, the Commonwealth Government gave $45.6 billion to the Victorian State Government.
According to the agreement between Victoria and the Commonwealth, in 2024-2025 Victoria paid $3.214 billion for the NDIS.
So, while Victoria gave the NDIS $3.214 billion to be managed by the Commonwealth Government, the Commonwealth had in turn given Victoria 14 times this much funding.
Essentially, then, all the funding for the NDIS comes from the Commonwealth – 75% of it directly, and 25% of it indirectly via the States and Territories. The way the dollars actually runs is simply a legacy of the way disability services have traditionally been funded prior to the NDIS and the way that our Federation works.
The NDIS uses Australian Dollars. At it’s core, then, the NDIS is funded by the Commonwealth Government.
