After legislating controversial reforms to the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) last week, the government’s plan to cut 160,000 NDIS participants and save A$37.8 billion over four years is underway.

The legislation tightens access to the NDIS by:

• altering the way a person’s needs are assessed
• introducing stricter rules to show a disability is permanent
• allowing automated tools to assess eligibility and plan supports.

But we still don’t know exactly what the new process will look like. Much of the detail has been left to rules, instruments, assessment tools and implementation processes that are still in development.

A new technical advisory group has been set up to advise government. It is expected to complete much of its work by late 2026 and report to government by March 2027. The eligibility changes take effect from January 2028.

People who are already accessing the NDIS will also begin to be reassessed based on the new criteria from 2028. This will happen progressively over three years.

Assessing how your disability impacts daily life

These reforms are designed to move away from assessing NDIS eligibility based on a person’s diagnosis.

Instead, the aim is to have a more consistent and robust approach that assesses a person’s “functional capacity”. This means how much their disability affects their daily life.

A person seeking access to the NDIS needs to demonstrate they have substantially reduced functional capacity and that it’s permanent.

The new assessment process will establish standardised definitions and thresholds for both functional capacity and permanence.

Part of the technical advisory group’s role will be to advise on the criteria and methods used to determine those thresholds. This could involve setting thresholds around particular activities such as dressing, washing, preparing meals or working a paid job.

While there’s a legitimate case for greater consistency in decision-making, standardisation also carries risks. People being assessed often have very different lives and experiences of disability.

The fairness of the system will ultimately depend on how the tools are implemented, and by whom.

It will be harder to show your disability is permanent

Another significant change relates to how a disability is established to be permanent.

The new legislation requires people to have tried all “appropriate treatment options” that could improve or alleviate their impairment. These need to be widely accepted and receive public funding, through Medicare, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) or public hospitals.

The technical advisory group will now consider how this requirement should operate in practice.

The difficulty is that what counts as having tried all appropriate options will depend on the availability and accessibility of treatments.

A person’s treatment may be unaffordable (even if partly covered by Medicare or the PBS) or unavailable in their local area, for example, or may be delayed for reasons outside their control. That person may not be seen to have tried “all appropriate treatment”, despite it being practically out of reach.

People may also feel compelled to pursue treatment for the purposes of NDIS eligibility rather than because it’s the most appropriate or effective option for them.

Disability organisations have already raised concerns about the impact of these rules on autistic people, people with psychosocial disability (resulting from severe mental distress), and people with fluctuating, episodic or cumulative disabilities. For those living in regional and remote areas, assessments and treatments can also be difficult to access.

If a particular treatment is not available and reasonably accessible – or it’s not available in a person’s language, or is culturally unsafe – it shouldn’t be treated as an option the person has simply failed to pursue.

Some decisions will be automated

If Labor has learned anything from the Robodebt episode, it’s that automated decision-making needs a clear legal basis.

The new legislation provides an explicit legal authorisation for the use of automated decision-making.

But it goes further than that. The legislation permits computer programs to undertake any administrative action involving “a discretion being exercised, an evaluative judgement being made, [or] a state of mind being formed”.

That is an exceptionally broad remit, especially for such high-stakes decisions.

Yet there is a striking absence of safeguards.

These are needed because automated systems can reproduce existing inequalities when they rely on biased data or historical patterns of decision-making.

A system can appear neutral while embedding the assumptions and exclusions contained in the data it was built on.

The Multicultural Women’s Alliance, for example, has pointed out that culturally and linguistically diverse women with disability tend to spend less on supports because appropriate services are inaccessible or non-existent. They’re also less likely to have formal documentation of functional capacity in the required formats.

These structural barriers shouldn’t be mistaken for evidence of lower need.

The assessment tools should be tested for cultural and linguistic bias before they are introduced, and testing needs to continue once the system is operating.

The work ahead

While the legislation has passed, the most important details are still being thrashed out. That makes the work of the technical advisory group crucial.

Previous attempts to redesign assessment systems, both here in Australia and overseas, offer important lessons for what comes next.

The government has also received extensive evidence through its parliamentary inquiry into the bill and its potential impacts.

That evidence provides a clear warning about the risks that must be addressed as the new system takes shape.

Perhaps most importantly, if these reforms are to deliver fairer and more consistent decisions, people with disability and disability representatives need to be central to that work, not simply consulted after the key decisions have been made.

Georgia van Toorn, Senior Lecturer in Public Policy and Politics, UNSW

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

When Aldi opened its first supermarket in Sydney in 2001, the stage was set for a fight with Woolworths and Coles. At the time, Australia’s two biggest supermarkets controlled about 71% of the grocery market.

Aldi was an unknown brand, stocked fewer products than its rivals, and premium real estate was already taken.

To be successful, it needed a trump card. Its strategy? To make 90% of its products “own brands”, often sold at lower prices.

By about 2015, it had captured about 9% of Australian supermarket sales.

But recent reports show Woolworths and Coles are holding their smaller competitors at bay. In part, they’ve done it by adopting some of Aldi’s own sales tactics.

Where Australians get their groceries

Last year, the national competition watchdog – the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission – estimated Woolworths had 38% of national supermarket grocery sales, followed by Coles with 29%. That’s a combined total of 67% – not far below their joint total in 2001.

Meanwhile, Aldi had about a 9% market share in 2025, the same as more than a decade ago. Metcash (as a proxy for the independent supermarkets it supplies) had 7%.

More recent figures from analysts UBS suggest Woolworths’ market share has crept higher to 40% – meaning the two biggest players have a joint share that’s barely changed since 2001.

So how have Woolworths and Coles been hanging onto customers?

‘Own brands’ with many names

One of their key strategies has been to follow Aldi’s lead: adding thousands of “own brand” products over recent years.

More commonly known in the past as “home brands”, “own brand” products offer an alternative for consumers looking for better value for money.

Once seen as low-quality, they now have a better reputation and can be found everywhere, from ice creams to laundry powder.

Some are obvious, with names such as Coles Simply or Woolworths Essentials. But there are many products that are simply “own brands” by another name, such as Woofin’ Good pet food (Coles) or Smitten (Woolworths cat food).

Strong demand from shoppers

In the past week, Coles and Woolworths released their 2026 annual reports.

On Tuesday, Coles reported a A$1.09 billion net profit to June 28 this year.

Its report highlighted Coles now has around 5,600 “exclusive to Coles products”. That’s up by 1,600 in the past year alone.

Coles’ sales revenue rose to almost A$41.5 billion, up 5.1% (excluding tobacco sales). But with cost-of-living pressures making shoppers “highly value-conscious”, Coles’ own brand products performed even better:

Our Exclusive to Coles portfolio remained an important source of value and differentiation, with sales continuing to outpace overall sales growth, increasing 6.1%, and Coles Finest growing 9.2%.

With market penetration reaching 35%, Coles’ own brands are now purchased by more than one in three customers who shop at their stores.

On Wednesday, Woolworths reported a A$1.14 billion net profit for the year.

While Woolworths’ annual report contains less detail on its own brands, it confirmed more than 445 new and 680 “refurbished” own and exclusive brands were launched in the past year alone.

Woolworths’ Australian supermarket sales rose to $53.9 billion over the year to June 28, up 5.9% excluding tobacco sales. Sales of own and exclusive brands grew almost as fast, up 5.5%, particularly in meat and fresh food.

More own brands coming

Independent surveys regularly show Aldi is a cheaper place to shop than Woolworths, Coles or IGA.

Yet Aldi is fighting to retain customers, with industry analysts recently concluding its bigger rivals are “winning share” among shoppers.

Looking ahead, Coles and Woolworths have more own brand expansions on the way. For instance, Woolworths plans to build on its current “La Mesita” Mexican, “La Gina” Italian and “Lantern Alley” Asian food ranges – none of which are obvious own brands – with new Middle Eastern and South Asian food ranges.

Why suppliers may be wary

For supermarkets and shoppers, more own brands may seem like a win-win.

Supermarkets have the potential to increase their profitability by selling their own products, as long as they keep a full range of merchandise. And consumers have more own brand options to choose from, which can be quality products at lower prices.

It’s more complicated for supermarket suppliers. These can be companies vying for space on crowded supermarket shelves, through to farmers supplying products like milk for supermarkets to sell under their own brands.

A recent Food and Grocery Code Supervisor, survey of 419 suppliers found some positive trends. More than half (56%) reported they were always treated fairly and respectfully by the big four supermarkets: Woolworths, Coles, Aldi and Metcash, while 74% reported “no issues at all” with them.

But there were still some areas of concern, including almost half of suppliers describing price negotiations as involved or challenging.

Many smaller businesses noted “they cannot absorb costs in the same way as larger competitors”. One supplier said “supermarkets’ internal structures favour corporate fruit production, not family farms”.

An international trend to watch

Looking overseas, there has been a trend for some big retailers to take over some of their suppliers’ business, in what’s known as “vertical integration”.

In the United States, Costco and Walmart aren’t just retailers anymore; they’re also food producers. For instance, Costco set up a US$450 million poultry facility to own the supply chain for its discounted rotisserie chickens: locking in control over costs from farm to the store.

But this isn’t without risks. The more things you do, the greater the risk – like having all your eggs in one very large basket.

Australia hasn’t seen that level of vertical integration yet. But it’s a trend worth watching in future.

Flavio Macau, Associate Dean, School of Business and Law, Edith Cowan University and Reza Kiani Mavi, Senior Lecturer, School of Business and Law, Edith Cowan University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Dolly Parton had first-hand experience of the effects of limited literacy. Her father could not read or write. He was, she once said,

the smartest man I have ever known but I know in my heart his inability to read probably kept him from fulfilling all of his dreams.

This sentiment fuelled her passion for encouraging childhood literacy. It drove her to establish the Imagination Library, with the goal of inspiring “a love of reading and learning from a young age”.

Launched in 1995, the Imagination Library sends children enrolled in the program a free, age-appropriate, culturally inclusive book in the mail every month from birth until their fifth birthday. The program began in Sevier County, Tennessee – Parton’s home county – before spreading across the world. It has established roots in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States and Ireland.

To date, the Imagination Library has distributed 318 million books, with 3.4 million books sent out monthly across these regions.

The Australian program was officially launched in 2013 and now operates in more than 430 locations. Currently, nearly 50,000 Australian children are receiving a free book every month.

Building foundational skills

For the past five years, I have been working firstly on a research project in Tamworth into the effects of the Imagination Library program. As Head of Research at United Way Australia, distributors of the Imagination Library in Australia, I am not involved in the delivery of the program itself. All the data I analysed was de-identified.

The Tamworth region has produced rich data on early childhood literacy. It boasts 98% enrolment of newborns in the Imagination Library program.

The research conducted in Tamworth was then extended to a global sample. Data has been collected from over 86,000 caregivers across the five countries the Imagination Library is delivered in. This study is currently the largest dataset in the world on shared book reading in the home.

One of the key findings from Tamworth was that the program encouraged caregivers to read to their children. Compared to the average Australian child, children in the Imagination Library in Tamworth were found to be read to more often, for longer, and have more books in the home. Further, these early reading routines were maintained.

The worldwide evidence showed that children enrolled in the Imagination Library were significantly more likely to display foundational early literacy skills and to develop an interest in reading compared to those not on the program. In Australia, enrolled children were found to be nine times more likely to be interested in books, 17 times more likely to join in during shared book reading, and six times more likely to demonstrate key emerging literacy skills than those who were not enrolled.

Participants in the study also reported improvements in family interactions during shared book reading. These benefits were evident across socioeconomic differences.

The effects of the program are represented by Abby and her partner, who are raising two boys in regional NSW, aged three and 10 months. They heard about the Imagination Library through a midwife at Tamworth Hospital. Both parents work full time. Although they value reading, they struggled with consistency.

The monthly book delivery removed the guesswork: no browsing, no uncertainty about developmental fit. Says Abby: “It’s simple, it’s free, and the impact goes beyond just the books. It creates connection, routine and joy.”

Lifelong reading

These results reflect studies into similar book distribution programs. Developing early literacy skills is known to correlate with reading success in later life. The most frequently reported benefit was a strong love of books and reading. Three quarters of participating children in Tamworth asked to be read to daily.

In Australia, the NAPLAN results in 2026 show that a third of Australian children are not meeting Year 3 reading benchmarks. For a skill so fundamental to success across all areas of life, this is a disconcerting reality for a country that prides itself on its education.

A report for the Australian government in 2024 found that children with little to no reading in the home were ten times more likely to grow up with poor language and cognitive development.

The simple act of getting more books into the hands of more children has a significant effect. Over the years, Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library has spread the gift of reading to households across the world, regardless of their circumstances. Her dream was to ensure all children grow up with books, instilling a lifelong love of reading.

Every 1.3 seconds, a child somewhere in the world receives a free book from Dolly, and her legacy is rekindled.

Claire Galea, Adjunct Fellow, Western Sydney University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.