Urgent reform is needed to ensure the NDIS is able to deliver on its primary objective, which is to provide a dignified life for Australians with a profound disability. Cost blowouts that make the scheme unsustainable must be addressed and top of the list is to cull benefits being paid to people for whom the scheme was not devised.

Hannah Neale

A father assaulted a "good Samaritan" who helped his lost son, who has an intellectual disability, when the pair became separated during a hike.

The man, who The Canberra Times has chosen not to name, was fined $1000 in the ACT Magistrates Court on Wednesday.

He had previously pleaded guilty to assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

Watch: From Eddie Mabo to Lindy Chamberlain, here are some of Australia’s most famous court cases.

SARAH ISON 

The number of people with autism and other developmental delays on the NDIS has grown by 11 per cent more than predicted, with Bill Shorten saying people may be “rushing” onto the scheme ahead of ­impending reforms.

STEPHEN LUNN and SARAH ISON

Lauren Price

A care support worker is accused of leaving his client — who has severe autism — in the back of a car on a 40C day while he was allegedly inside a shopping centre buying groceries with the client’s cash.

Police say officers were forced to break into the car after finding the 26-year-old client — who is non-verbal — “visibly distressed” and “heat affected”.

It is alleged the care support worker left the man in the back seat of his parked car at Lakeside Joondalup Shopping Centre on January 13.

NICHOLAS FINCH

Police had to break into a car to rescue a “visibly distressed” severely autistic man who was allegedly left locked in a car by his carer for nearly an hour at a Perth shopping centre on a sweltering day.

Western Australia police officers rescued the 26-year-old man – who lives with severe autism and is non-verbal – after a passer-by saw him in the car parked outside at Lakeside Joondalup Shopping Centre in Perth at 2.30pm on January 12.