Doorstop with Minister Butler, Perth – 12 September 2025

MARK BUTLER, MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGEING, MINISTER FOR DISABILITY AND THE NDIS: Can I say that's been a very productive meeting of health ministers where we dealt with a whole range of issues confronting the health system and ensuring that collectively we're able to deliver the best possible care to Australians.
 
I particularly want to just mention very quickly that we received a review into the IVF sector we commissioned at our last meeting in June, and we accepted all of the recommendations out of that review. A series of recommendations that will deliver more independence, more transparency and the highest possible quality of care to the many thousands of families who are seeking this sector's help in helping them build a family. And there is no greater investment of hope and confidence that I can imagine people making into a sector than the investment of hope to help build a family. I know as a father of a beautiful IVF baby myself that the damage to confidence in this sector over the last several months demanded that health ministers take action. We want to see an independent accreditation system and we decided to do that at this meeting after that rapid review. We want to see the highest possible standard right across the country so that every family can be confident they're getting the best possible care and support from this sector. And we want to see much more transparency as well. I thank the health ministers for their agreement to do this review, with Victoria particularly leading it.
 
Can I also say that we had a great opportunity to discuss the Federal Government's latest offer for hospital funding going forward. We're investing huge amounts more into Medicare, to strengthen Medicare; more doctors, more nurses, more bulk billing, more Urgent Care Clinics. We're also investing record amounts into aged care, and today we had a chance to discuss our offer to invest $20 billion more into our hard-working public hospitals. Obviously, we’ve got a long way to go with negotiations. Those negotiations do not just encompass hospital funding, they also deal with NDIS reform and our commitment to building a Thriving Kids program for children under the age of nine. But this was a really good opportunity to have a discussion with my health minister colleagues about the common issues we have going forward. Happy to take questions.
 
JOURNALIST: Have all the states signed up for the Thriving Kids program? And if not, why not?
 
BUTLER: All premiers, chief ministers, and the Prime Minister two years ago agreed to recommendations from the NDIS review, the independent review of the NDIS, to create a system of what they described as foundational supports. In particular, a system of supports for children under the age of nine with mild to moderate needs around developmental delay and autism. That work, frankly, has not proceeded as quickly as I think it should, which is why some weeks ago at the Press Club I leaned into it a little bit more than maybe the Commonwealth had been to date, and indicated our determination to get that work moving. That will be work that is shared between jurisdictions. The National Cabinet, the first ministers of all of our governments, agreed to split that funding 50-50 and I'm determined to do that work over the course of the rest of this year.
 
JOURNALIST: Do you have any states or territories on board yet?
 
BUTLER: As I said, premiers and chief ministers agreed to this work. We have written to premiers and chief ministers proposing a way forward to develop of that design of that program, I’m very confident that we’re going to make good progress over the coming months.
 
JOURNALIST: What is the sticking point? Or, what are the sticking points that your colleagues are bringing to you?
 
BUTLER: What I heard when I first was appointed to the Disability and NDIS portfolio were two things from states and territories. Firstly, they said that they didn't think the Commonwealth was leaning into this enough and instead was leaving the design of this program up to individual states and territories. I heard from stakeholders themselves, from families and service providers, that they wanted the Commonwealth to lean into it more to ensure there was national consistency rather than eight different schemes built up in every individual state and territory. And I also heard from states that they were concerned that our funding was only committed for five years, rather than on an ongoing basis. And in my speech to the Press Club some weeks ago, where I outlined our determination to design a Thriving Kids program in partnership with states, responded to all of those concerns.
 
JOURNALIST: State health ministers say that 2,500 aged care patients are basically why hospitals are overcrowded at the moment. The problem is getting worse and worse. Minister Park said he's not satisfied by the response so far. What do you say to that?
 
BUTLER: I agree with my state and territory colleagues that we need to see more building in the aged care sector. When we came to Government this was a sector in absolute crisis. There was no building of new beds going on, staff were leaving the sector in droves. There were huge wait lists for Home Care Packages, in spite of the fact that we knew that the demand for aged care was about to skyrocket as the oldest of the baby boomer generation started to hit that age of entry into the system in their late 70s and very early 80s. There is no area of policy where we spent more energy and more money in our first term than aged care.
 
JOURNALIST: The state ministers acknowledged that you were left a mess in aged care, but they did say that you've been acting too slowly as well. They said they'd been raising this for two years, and they said action should have been taken yesterday. Do you accept your share of the blame for slow progress so far?
 
BUTLER: I accept that we are responsible for aged care, but we have crammed a decade of reform into three short years. Providers, frankly, said they found it difficult to keep up with the pace of change that we were demanding of them. But if you look at the aged care sector now, they're recruiting, they're retaining the workforce they need. We've got more home care packages than we've ever had into the system, about twice as many already as we had only five years ago. Although the build was operating far too slowly, we're starting to see signs, having passed our new Aged Care Act at the end of last year, that the build rate of aged care beds is starting to climb quite significantly.
 
Now, it's not climbing fast enough, and we still do have a backlog of demand that we need to work with states and territories on. I think we've had a really good discussion over the course of last night and today as well about some of the more short-term arrangements that we can put in place to help relieve some of the pressure that my colleagues have talked to you about. We have invested about $600 million over the last period of time to fund different services that ensure that older people are able to be cared for out in the community instead of admitted to hospital in the first place. Those things are having an impact but I recognise there's much more we need to do to build an aged care system that is fit for the sort of demand that is coming down the road.
 
JOURNALIST: Is there an element of deflection from the states? Do you feel like you're a scapegoat?
 
BUTLER: No, I accept that we collectively have to do more. As we build some of these systems, we're going to need cooperation from states and territories. The discussion I just had with them indicates they want to work with the Commonwealth on this. They recognise, frankly, the mess that we inherited after the Royal Commission had described the aged care sector in one word, “neglect”. A condition that was frankly compounded by the impact of the pandemic. I think the states recognise the work we've done over the last three years, but I recognise their frustration that the aged care sector is not building the beds at a pace we need them, and we need to do more to make sure that happens.
 
JOURNALIST: So how long will it take to turn that around? And can you give public a target date that we can hold you to account for?
 
BUTLER: I'm not going to give a particular target date. I think the sector knows the sort of numbers that we need in terms of new beds into the system every year to accommodate the new ageing baby boomers that are coming into the system. We're not there yet, we're far from it. My sense, the reports I'm getting is that the number of beds being built next year compared to this year is significantly higher, close to twice as many. That means we're going in the right direction. But we had a really good discussion with health ministers in the room just now about ways in which we can deal with the period between when those decisions are made and when the beds actually open.
 
Obviously, it takes some time after a decision is made to build a new facility, to get it up and running, and to actually get the doors open. We need to recognise there's a gap period there that we need to work together to fill.
 
JOURNALIST: An aged care provider here has asked the Premier for $100 million each year for the next 10 years. That's obviously just in WA, do you have any idea how much it would cost to even fix the 2,500 lapse that we have at the moment?
 
BUTLER: I know the provider you're talking about. I've seen those media reports. I've known that provider for probably 20 years and worked closely with him and his company. And I had discussions right across the country about what we needed to do as a Commonwealth to change the policy settings to make this sector investable. We took that advice, we passed that legislation through the Parliament just before Christmas. Now we need providers to put their money where their mouth was last year and start making plans to build these new facilities.
 
JOURNALIST: When you say there needs to be more collaboration between state and federal, are there any levers that state governments aren't pulling that you want to see them pull to improve aged care homes?
 
BUTLER: Not aged care homes particularly, but we need to work -
 
JOURNALIST: Number of beds.
 
BUTLER: We've worked really well on trying to ensure that people who don't need to go to hospital are able to be cared for in the community. We've rolled out 90 Urgent Care Clinics right across the country, we've got another 47 to roll out, tenders have closed for them. That is diverting activity from emergency departments. We've got programs that we're funding for states and territories to deliver to try and ensure older Australians aren't going to hospital unnecessarily, including from aged care facilities. That is having an impact. I think the challenge we all recognise is really once older Australians are in a hospital, that getting them out of a hospital after they're medically able to be discharged is not proving as easy as, frankly, it should be. And that requires more building of aged care beds, and in the interim before they open some innovative thinking that I think we discussed really cooperatively and constructively today about how to deal with the gap.
 
JOURNALIST: Any dollar figure, though, that you think the Federal Government is looking at here?
 
BUTLER: I'm not going to put a dollar figure on it. I've said to states that we've put a very generous offer of hospital funding on the table, $20 billion more than states would receive for their hospitals if they continued with the agreement, or if we all continued with the agreement that they signed with Scott Morrison. This is a generous offer on top of the record investments we're making to Medicare and in aged care. And if they want to talk about some additional measures in relation to longer stay older patients or older Australians who are in hospital longer than they medically have to be, then we're happy to talk about that in the context of those negotiations.
 
JOURNALIST: Will WA get a per capita share this time?
 
BUTLER: WA has got a per capita share of the funding that we've put in place to help with older Australians in hospital through the strengthening Medicare -
 
JOURNALIST: Per capita share of health.
 
BUTLER: If you'll let me finish. Through the strengthening Medicare agreement that Commonwealths and states and territories agreed the year before last, that was distributed on a population share basis.

JOURNALIST: You came under strong criticism, sorry, just one last question. You came under strong criticism from state and territory health ministers over linking federal funding to hospitals to that NDIS reform. Does your Government remain staunch in that? And if so, why? Why have you proposed that kind of funding model?
 
BUTLER: I didn't link the two, National Cabinet did. All of their bosses, for those ministers who've made a complaint about that, all of their bosses signed on to a National Cabinet deal in December 2023 that linked the negotiation of a new hospital funding agreement to our shared commitment to NDIS reform. That was a very clear decision made by the Prime Minister, all premiers, all chief ministers. And of course, as a Minister I’m working to that direction. Thanks very much.