This article used text mining processes to map continuity and change in policy principles of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) in Australia and reflect on the underlying agendas of reform. Specifically, this research aimed to: (1) examine the substantive content of the NDIS legislative, operational and reform documentation, (2) assess changes in objects, principles and issues over time, and (3) discuss the implications of these shifting logics and agendas. To achieve this, text mining approaches were applied to ten key NDIS documents from 2011 to 2019.

The findings included a low prevalence of ‘rights’-based terminology, sustained attention to Scheme ‘costs’ but limited latterly attention to ‘sustainability’, and increasing prominence of interpersonal (e.g., ‘family’, ‘community’) and decision-making terminology (e.g., ‘decision’, ‘review’). How these shifts have influenced subsequent proposed reforms is explored and ongoing dilemmas about designing policy that ensures rights and entitlements, while balancing cost, sustainability and consistency are identified.

Marketised models of social care provision in Australia are placing pressures on service providers and driving changes in work organisation and employer practices, with potential to degrade social care jobs. While international experience of marketised social care has demonstrated the vulnerability of social care workers to wage theft and other violations of employment laws, Australia’s relatively strong industrial relations safety net might be expected to be better able to protect these low-paid workers. Nevertheless, there is emerging evidence of negative impacts on the pay and entitlements of frontline workers in the expanding community support and homecare workforce. This study investigates the paid and unpaid work time of disability support workers under Australia’s new National Disability Insurance Scheme. The research takes a novel approach combining analysis of working day diaries and qualitative interviews with employees to expose how jobs are being fragmented and work is being organised into periods of paid and unpaid time, leaving employees paid below their minimum entitlement. The article highlights the role of social care policy along with inadequate employment regulation.

The New South Wales (NSW) Government supports the meaningful participation of children with disability and additional learning needs in community-based not-for-profit preschools. Funding and sector capacity building is provided under the Disability and Inclusion Program to support access and participation in educational programs. Research and theories, which highlight the essential factors for successful inclusion, have been used to guide the development of the program. Baseline data were collected from 680 survey respondents from NSW community preschools regarding barriers to inclusion and supports needed to ensure that inclusion for children with additional needs is successful. Attitude to inclusion was not reported to be a major barrier; however, educators reported the need for specialist support and appropriate training. Data from the program continue to reveal the reality of inclusion for children and the role played by funding and ongoing capacity-building support.

In a period of welfare state retrenchment, Australia's neo-liberal government is continuing to implement an expensive National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). Australia is among the pioneers of welfare measures funded from general revenue. Until recently, however, attempts to establish national schemes of social insurance have failed. The paper reviews this history through the lenses of path dependence accounts. It then presents contrasting descriptions of the NDIS by its Chair, the politician who inspired him, and two feminist policy analysts from a carers’ organisation. Path dependence, these accounts illustrate, has been broken in some respects but consolidated in others. In particular, the dynamics of ‘managed’ capitalist markets, gendered notions of abstract individuals and organisations, and the related difficulties in accounting for unpaid labour are constraining the transformative potential of the NDIS.