Government has swung the axe at the NDIS but corporations are cashing in. Claudia Weisenberger investigates the revolving doors from public sector to private.
The former chief executive of the National Disability Insurance Agency now runs Australia’s largest NDIS equipment retailer. His predecessor is now managing director of McMillan Shakespeare, which owns Plan Tracker, one of Australia’s larger NDIS plan management providers. No rule prevented either appointment. None exists.
The NDIS is a $53.8 billion annual market.
The people who built it now profit from it.
The people it was built for are losing the one thing it promised them: the right to choose their own supports, their own providers, their own life. Before the NDIS, someone else made those choices for them. That system is coming back.
A market, not a service
In February 2026, Quadrant Private Equity — the owner of Aidacare, Australia’s largest NDIS mobility equipment retailer — borrowed $540 million against the business and paid it to themselves as a dividend.
That is what private equity does. What makes it remarkable is where the money came from: NDIS participants buying wheelchairs, hoists and mobility aids — people whose funding comes from the public purse.
One month later, Aidacare signed a court-enforceable undertaking with the ACCC, admitting it had likely misled NDIS participants about their consumer rights for more than three years.
Customers were told they were not entitled to repairs or refunds when they were. Aidacare agreed to remediate those affected. No financial penalty was imposed.
The plan management market is consolidating the same way. My Plan Manager alone supports close to 50,000 participants. The government’s proposed plan management tender will favour operators at this scale. The more than 1,400 smaller plan managers — the ones who know their participants by name and catch the invoices that shouldn’t be paid — are unlikely to qualify. When they go, so does the scrutiny they provide.
Martin Hoffman: the price-setter
Martin Hoffman was NDIA chief executive from 2019 to 2022. In that role he oversaw the pricing framework for assistive technology — the rules that determine what every supplier in the scheme can charge for a wheelchair, a hoist, a communication device. He had access to confidential pricing frameworks, supplier contracts and market intelligence unavailable to any private buyer.
In July 2023 — more than twelve months after leaving the agency — he became chief executive of Aidacare. The man who set the prices now runs the company charging them. The knowledge he carried with him when he left the NDIA went with him. He has not been required to explain what he took or how it has been used. No rule requires him to.
When Michael West Media put these questions to Aidacare, the company said Mr Hoffman’s transition was consistent with applicable post-separation obligations and did not give rise to a conflict of interest. That statement is almost certainly accurate. No rule was broken. No rule existed to break.
Rob De Luca: the scheme builder
Rob De Luca ran the NDIA before Hoffman, from August 2017 to May 2019. In the same month he left, he became chief executive of Zenitas Healthcare — a major NDIS provider.
He is now managing director of McMillan Shakespeare, which owns Plan Tracker, one of the country’s larger NDIS plan management providers. The participants whose scheme he helped build now fund the businesses he runs.
When Michael West Media put questions to him, De Luca said he had always complied with his legal, governance and confidentiality obligations.
No rule required him to do more.
Three actors. One pattern
Hoffman. De Luca. Quadrant Private Equity. Three actors. One pattern.
Hoffman moved from setting the rules for the equipment market into running its largest company. The knowledge he carried with him went with him. No rule required him to explain what he took.
De Luca moved from running the scheme into the providers that profit from it. The participants whose scheme he helped build now fund the businesses he runs. No rule prevented that either.
Quadrant Private Equity owns Aidacare
— where Hoffman now works — and also controlled APM, one of the companies selected to run the NDIS independent assessment pilot in 2020. That model was abandoned in 2021 after disabled Australians rejected it.
The NDIS Amendment Act 2026 is bringing it back. The same firm that profits from selling wheelchairs is now well positioned to profit from assessing who needs one.
The revolving door is not a loophole. It is the design.
What participants are set to lose
The NDIS gave disabled people something they had never had: the right to choose. Choose their own providers. Choose their own plan manager. Replace them if the service wasn’t good enough.
Before the NDIS, a provider decided what you ate, when you slept and whether you could go outside. The scheme was written specifically to end that. Every change currently being made reverses it.
The equipment market has gone to private equity.
Plan management is being handed to large operators. Home and living supports are returning to block funding — fixed payments to providers, not individuals.
The person in the wheelchair will have no more choice than they had before 2013. We will have gone backwards and called it reform.
Two fixes. Neither proposed
Two things could protect participants.
- A cooling-off period for NDIA executives moving into the market would stop insider knowledge being used commercially.
- A plan management tender designed to preserve smaller operators would keep the people currently catching fraud in the scheme.
Neither is being proposed. The people who would propose them work in a system that has made the current arrangement possible and has never been required to account for it.
The former regulators now run the market.
The people who built the rules now profit from them.
And the people the rules were built to protect are losing the one thing the scheme promised: the right to choose. The Albanese Government is cutting participants and calling it sustainability. The door the NDIS opened in 2013 is being closed. Not by one decision. One consultation at a time.
Statements provided by Aidacare (via Sodali & Co) and Rob De Luca (McMillan Shakespeare) in response to questions from Michael West Media, August 2026.
Minister McAllister’s office was contacted for comment but did not respond.
Claudia Weisenberger is a management consultant with deep experience in pharmaceuticals, hospital transformations, and strategic due diligence across four continents. She combines sharp analysis with hands-on execution.