NDIS rules by state and territory: what differs and where to check

NDIS rules barely change from one state or territory to another. The NDIS Commission sets one national rulebook for how you deliver, record and report supports. What changes is where you go to get some things done. Worker screening is the clearest case: the clearance is national, and the application runs through your own state or territory.

In short

• Most NDIS rules are national: the Practice Standards, the Code of Conduct, registration, incidents and restrictive practice reporting, as at October 2026.
• NDIS worker screening is national in substance and local in process: one clearance, one national database, one application path set where the worker is.
• Clearances are needed for risk-assessed roles and key personnel roles. Each provider identifies its own roles and keeps the records.
• A working with children check is a different check, run by a different body, and does not replace an NDIS worker screening clearance.
• Check the NDIS Commission's worker screening page for your state or territory, and your own government's site for its own checks.

Which NDIS rules are set nationally

NDIS rules about how you deliver, record and report supports are set nationally by the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission. The same words apply to a service in Darwin and a service in Hobart.

The Commission's own site carries that rulebook under headings you will recognise: the NDIS Code of Conduct, the NDIS Practice Standards, behaviour support and restrictive practices, reportable incidents and incident management, and provider registration (NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission, as at October 2026).

That matters for how you plan compliance work. If a requirement sits under one of those headings, you do not need a different quality system, a different incident definition or a different registration process for each state you work in. One set of policies, one audit, one way of recording what happened.

It also means you can be sceptical of anything offering a state-by-state NDIS compliance update. For the national rules, there is nothing to update by state. What is worth tracking by state is narrower, and that is the next part.

Which parts still depend on your state or territory

The parts of NDIS work that still depend on your state or territory are the ones where another government already runs a system of its own. Worker screening is the main one, and alongside it sit working with children and police checks, the authorisation of restrictive practices, and the ordinary state laws underneath your service.

Two of those deserve a careful word.

Restrictive practices. What you must record and report about a regulated restrictive practice is national, and we set that out in restrictive practices: what NDIS providers must record and report. Whether a practice must first be authorised, and who authorises it, is a question for your own state or territory. Start with the Commission's behaviour support and restrictive practices pages for the national duty, then ask your state or territory disability department what authorisation it requires of you. Do not assume the answer carries across a border.

Everything underneath the NDIS. A supported independent living house is still a tenancy somewhere. A nurse giving medication still works under a state health framework. A criminal history check still comes from a state system. None of that is NDIS rule-making, and all of it can differ.

NDIS worker screening: one clearance, applied for locally

An NDIS worker screening check is one national clearance, held in one national record. The NDIS worker screening database holds the information about NDIS worker clearances for all states and territories, so a cleared worker does not need a fresh clearance for every state they work in (Worker screening for registered providers, as at October 2026).

Your side of it runs like this, from the same Commission page:

• Get access to the database. If you are already registered, you reach it through the registered provider portal. If you have not applied for registration yet, you apply for access through the applications portal as an unregistered provider. If your registration application is in and undecided, you can ask the Commission for interim access, giving your ABN and application reference number.
• Check each worker's status. Find the workers linked to your organisation, then read three fields. A current clearance shows a worker status of "Clearance", an expiry date in the future, and an eligible to work status of "Yes". If a worker is not linked to your organisation, link them as an employee first.
• Keep and update your records. Registered providers are responsible for identifying their risk-assessed roles and keeping records of them, and for keeping their worker screening information up to date.

Note what is not national here: the application the worker makes. That is where your state or territory comes in.

Which of your roles need a clearance

The roles that need an NDIS worker screening clearance are risk-assessed roles and key personnel roles. Each provider identifies its own, and that judgement is assessed as part of a registration application.

A risk-assessed role is one involved in the direct delivery of specified supports or services to a person with disability, or one likely to require more than incidental contact with people with disability. More than incidental contact includes physically touching a person, building a rapport with them as an ordinary part of normal duties, or having contact with multiple people with disability as part of delivering a specialist disability support or in a specialist disability accommodation setting. Contact counts whether it is physical, face to face, spoken, written or electronic. People in these roles can be staff, volunteers or students on placement.

Key personnel are the significant roles: those responsible for executive decisions, or with authority or significant influence over planning, directing or controlling provider activities. That takes in the chief executive, directors listed with ASIC, executive staff, managers and board members. A sole trader or self-employed registered provider is both key personnel and in a risk-assessed role, so they need a clearance themselves.

The Commission's worked examples are useful for the grey area. A worker who delivers mobility equipment to homes, trains people in using it and adjusts it to suit them needs a clearance, because the contact involves openness, trust and rapport. A back-office accountant at the same kind of business who only nods hello to people in the lobby does not, because the role is not direct delivery and the contact is incidental. An HR executive on the board who helps write the policies governing what drivers may do needs one, because of the executive role, not the contact.

There are also limited exceptions on the same page: secondary school students on formal work experience in a risk-assessed role, people waiting on the outcome of their own screening application, higher education students on placement, and contractors in risk-assessed roles, plus cases where a clearance is verified and administered by another organisation. Read the conditions rather than assuming one applies to you.

Where to check, and how to keep track of it

The official page to check for your own state or territory is the Commission's worker screening page, as at October 2026. For anything your own government runs, go to that state or territory's own site.

A summary on a consultancy blog, including this one, is a starting point and not the source.

Two habits make this manageable. First, keep a short list of the official pages your compliance work depends on, with the date you last read each one, because rules carry an "as at" date for a reason and yours will go stale. Second, hold the worker screening detail you must keep anyway, the risk-assessed roles and the clearance expiry dates, in one place your managers can read, rather than in a folder only one person opens.

If you want to see how we think about pulling that kind of record together for executives, our NDIS page and our FAQ cover it.

Common questions

Is NDIS worker screening the same in every state or territory?

The clearance is the same thing everywhere: one NDIS worker screening clearance, recorded in one national database that covers all states and territories. What differs is the process a worker follows to get it, which runs through their own state or territory. Check the Commission's worker screening page for the current detail for yours.

Which NDIS rules are set nationally and which are set by the state or territory?

Nationally: the NDIS Practice Standards, the NDIS Code of Conduct, provider registration, incident management and reportable incidents, and what you must record and report about restrictive practices. By state or territory: how a worker applies for screening, working with children and police checks, the authorisation of restrictive practices, and the general laws under your service such as tenancy and health.

Where do I apply for an NDIS worker screening check in my state?

Your worker makes the application, not you, and the place to start is the Commission's worker screening page, which points to the arrangements for each state and territory. Your job as a provider is to identify the risk-assessed roles, give the worker the right instructions, and confirm the clearance in the NDIS worker screening database before they start in that role.

Does a working with children check replace NDIS worker screening?

No. A working with children check is a separate check run by a separate body, and the requirement for a risk-assessed role is an NDIS worker screening clearance. The Commission does list limited cases where a clearance is verified and administered by another organisation, so if you think one covers your situation, read that section on the page for registered providers before relying on it.

Which official page do I check for my state's NDIS worker screening unit?

The NDIS Commission's worker screening page is the one to bookmark, because it is the Commission's own hub and it carries the arrangements for each state and territory. Pair it with your own state or territory government's site for the checks that government runs itself.

Sources

• Worker screening, NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission, as at October 2026
• Worker screening for registered providers, NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission, as at October 2026
• NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission, as at October 2026