Press conference with Minister Butler, Canberra – 29 July 2025

MARK BUTLER, MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGEING, MINISTER FOR DISABILITY AND THE NDIS: Morning, everyone. I’m joined here today by some students and student leaders, school leaders from St Edmund’s College here in Canberra, down in Griffith; by Lauren from the Matilda Centre of University of Sydney; Ken Wallace from OurFutures. All of them will be saying a few things about vaping and particularly an initiative that we've been putting in place over the last couple of years. Thank you all for joining us. As we go through the people, I'll introduce them by name, but I want to say a few remarks early on.
 
Vaping rates exploded, particularly among young people over the last five years. Literally exploded year-on-year, from very little vaping five or six years ago, particularly in the pre-COVID period, to rates where as many as one in six high school students and recent high school graduates reported as having vaped as recently as the last couple of years. This was sold to countries right around the world as a therapeutic good that would allow hardened smokers, usually in their middle age, to kick the habit if other attempts to kick smoking hadn't worked. But what we found relatively quickly was that this was quite a different strategy by Big Tobacco. It was a strategy to recruit a new generation to nicotine addiction. You only had to look at the products that were being sold; they were brightly coloured, they often had cartoon characters on them, and they were flavoured in a way to be attractive to young people; bubblegum-flavoured, fruit-flavoured, and the like.
 
The tragedy here in Australia and in other countries around the world is that that cynical strategy by Big Tobacco was starting to work. They were recruiting large numbers of high school-aged Australians to vaping. Increasingly, we found that that was becoming a gateway to smoking cigarettes. Research here in Australia was showing that high school students who vaped were about five times as likely to take up smoking. Terrifyingly, 12-year-olds who vaped, and there was a fair number of them, were 29 times more likely to take up cigarette smoking than 12-year-olds who did not vape. We also started to discover that vaping in and of itself, in spite of being sold as the healthy alternative by Big Tobacco, contained about 200 chemicals, some of which were used in products like weed killer, nail polish remover, products to de-ice airport runways.
 
Nothing had been done about this for too long, and a couple of years ago, along with state and territory health ministers, we put in place a comprehensive response to vaping. That followed a very traditional health policy path here in Australia, focused on reducing supply, reducing demand and reducing harms. In the area of supply reduction, we particularly tried to clamp down at the border to stop these things flowing into Australia in the first place. An import control regulation I put in place at the beginning of last year has resulted in already more than 10 million disposable vapes being seized at the border, taken out of the hands of our young people.
 
States are starting to step up their enforcement activity. South Australia and Queensland have been leading the way, with powers to close stores that are breaching the law in this area as well as illicit tobacco. Over the last week or so, the New South Wales Government, I'm very pleased to say, has announced that they're lifting their game in terms of the powers that will be available to state authorities.
 
But on demand, we've been focused on educating young people about the harms of vaping and helping to give them the tools they need to make a healthy choice about their behaviour. A critical part of that program has been, or that objective has been a program run by the Matilda Centre from the University of Sydney. This centre has been using this particular model to encourage healthy behaviours around alcohol and illicit drugs for many years. It's been proven to work with young teenagers. They were funded to conduct a clinical trial, a randomised clinical trial, over the last couple of years in the area of vaping, to adapt that model to vaping behaviours. They ran, as Lauren will say, that clinical trial across about 40 schools with a few thousand students, some of which who were given the behavioural education around vaping and some of whom weren't. Today, in the highly prestigious medical journal, The Lancet, perhaps the most prestigious, certainly the oldest medical journal in the world, the results of that clinical trial will be published. I'll let Lauren talk about that, but in short, what it shows is that students in Year 7 and Year 8 who were exposed to this training were 65 per cent less likely to take up vaping or to vape in the following 12 months, as well as a range of very positive results that Lauren will talk about. I'm delighted that we've been able to fund this work.
 
Education, prevention, demand reduction is a critical part of our vaping strategy. We've also been online supporting influencers to promote positive messages about vaping or healthy messages about vaping online. We're continuing to do that with the third phase of our social media campaigns, which are showing very positive results in terms of views and likes. But this highly prestigious evidence-based program now that's been proven to work at the 40 schools where it was trialled will now be funded by the federal government to roll out in every single high school. We'll hear from Joel, who's the leader of PE at St Edmund’s, about why that school decided to be a part of this trial and why other schools, every high school for that matter, in Australia should take advantage of the funding that we're making available for them to roll out this program to their Year 7’s and their Year 8’s. Over to Lauren.
 
DR LAUREN GARDNER, THE MATILDA CENTRE, UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY: Thank you. To provide a little bit more background on what the OurFutures Vaping program is, it’s a four-lesson education and skills-building program that’s designed to be delivered during Year 7 or Year 8 health education class. This program is really centring on an interactive online cartoon, and this cartoon was co-designed with students and teachers. Students are really the core, their voice is at the core of everything that we do.
 
The cartoon centres on some characters who are around the same age as the target students and allow us to deliver peer-led messaging as well as model assertiveness and refusal skills. The cartoons are supplemented with a range of fact sheets to really reinforce content as well as teach a facilitated class activity, things like worksheets, class discussions, as well as role-plays. Opportunities for students to really practice the skills that they’ve learnt in the cartoon and think about how they can implement them in their own lives. It’s really a full toolkit for schools that they can use, they can implement. It’s ready, plug-and-play, minimal preparation required from teachers with no formal training either, so it’s there. It’s available today by the OurFutures Institute.
 
As Minister Butler mentioned, we run a large-scale, randomised controlled trial to evaluate the intervention. This is the gold standard type of evaluation of evidence that we can get. And what we found was that, among the schools who did the intervention condition, so students who received the OurFutures vaping intervention, they were significantly less likely to vape compared to those who received standard health education. We also found that students had significantly greater knowledge scores after completing the cartoon. Again, really powerful. We’ve got changes in knowledge, but what is more powerful here is that we managed to translate that into behaviour change, so that’s no easy feat. And the OurFutures vaping program is currently the only program in Australia that is proven to reduce students’ likelihood of vaping. We really encourage schools to reach out if you’re not using the program yet because it’s there, and we want to see every student have access to this effective program and every school have it embedded within curriculum. Thank you.

JOEL RICHARDSON, HEAD OF PE, ST EDMUND’S COLLEGE: Thanks, Lauren. I’m Joel Richardson. I’m the head of PE at St Edmund’s College. The reason why we took on the OurFutures vaping program was essentially coming back from COVID, we saw an uptake in boys with risk-taking behaviours. We’re a school of a thousand boys, and looking at ways to, as Minister Butler said, provide boys with an informed choice on reducing that risk-taking behaviour. We reached out to OurFutures program to be able to provide an evidence-based program to the boys. We ran it a little bit differently to how it was originally planned. We used the four lessons that they originally had, and then we supplemented that with our own information and evidence with our own boys. We always try and work on a think local but act global sort of format at St Edmund’s College. Really focusing on our school and risk-taking behaviours that our boys sort of experience and demonstrate and trying to provide education to those boys around vaping and then the short and long-term risks associated with that. We've seen a dramatic decrease in vaping amongst students, not necessarily just at St Edmund’s College, but having a really close link amongst schools in Canberra, we've seen a drastic reduction in students vaping, particularly around sort of the Years 9, 10 area.
 
Having Nick and Flynn, they’ll talk about it a little bit later, but having gone through the program in Year 8 for our boys. Then being able to transport that into sort of their own life in Years 9 and 10 and really have the education around that was a huge step forward into them making informed choices about reducing the likelihood of them starting to vape. Then, that just adds on to the future risk-taking behaviours that OurFutures also provide as well, and the curriculum that they’ll roll out later on as well. That’s the reason why St Eddies sort of took it on board.
 
JOURNALIST: Why do you think you saw that increase in kids vaping originally?
 
RICHARDSON: After COVID?
 
JOURNALIST: Yeah.
 
RICHARDSON: I think it was probably the time that they had on hand. They went from a really structured life, five days a week at school, particularly at our school we’re a fairly structured school. To give them however many weeks they had off, left to their own devices in a lot of times. I think as Minister Butler said, the way that companies advertised and sold it to students; bright colours, flavours, the next sort of cool thing, that’s what kids buy into. It’s like anything that’s advertised to kids, if they think it’s cool, then they’re going to do it, and I think that’s probably one of the biggest reasons why we saw an uptake. And that’s not just at St Eddies, I think that’s a whole societal problem that we saw that take place.
 
JOURNALIST: And what worried you about that vaping behaviour? What was actually wrong with that? Why were you concerned?
 
RICHARDSON: First and foremost, we have the boys at heart. Like, every decision that I make as the Head of PE or that the college makes, the decision should be around what is best for the boys. If it’s health problems or risks associated with their health, that should be the first thing that we worry about. With the research that’s come out and the risks associated with vaping in men, as Minister Butler said, essentially a gateway drug, then what happens after vaping is a huge concern. So if we can stop it at vaping, or if we can provide the boys with education before they even start to vape, then that’s the core fundamental policy of education and caring for our boys. I might pass over to Flynn and Nick, if you’ve got any questions for them.
 
JOURNALIST: Health education is always a challenge in schools, telling kids what’s cool or not cool or what they can’t do. I’d be interested to hear from both of you: do you feel that your classmates’ perception and understanding of the harms of vaping has changed at all in the last few years?
 
NICHOLAS MESZES, STUDENT, ST EDMUND’S COLLEGE: I’m Nick Meszes, I’m in Year 9 at Eddies. I think that the program has helped us to understand a lot more the impacts of vapes on our bodies and our emotional state. I’ve seen a lot more about how it impacts those around you, not just yourself. I think the program’s helped us all to get a better understanding of the true impacts of vaping.
 
FLYNN ALLAN, STUDENT, ST EDMUND’S COLLEGE: Flynn Allan, Year 9. As Nick said, I think it gave us a lot more education about the program, about what it was. And I think it helped a lot of people understand that vaping’s not good for you. You should never do it, and tell your friends that it’s just not good.
 
JOURNALIST: Do you think, if you can kind of cast your mind back to your thoughts on vaping before you did the program, what did you think of vaping before? Did you think that it was cool or edgy?
 
ALLAN: I never really wanted to try it. I’d never thought of that. But I think the program really reinforced my thinking of that because of the health risks associated with it.
 
MESZES: No, vaping was never on the table for me. I knew it was stupid from the start, but the program definitely helped to educate us a lot more and understand all the health impacts, and all that sort of stuff. It was really good to get that opportunity.
 
JOURNALIST: Minister, could I just ask a question of you? You’ve cited the Generation Vape project, showing vaping going down among 18 to 24-year-olds from 20 to 18 per cent since the last couple of years. But there are other reports, Roy Morgan, for example, who put that rate at 20.5 and going up slightly. So why do you trust the numbers that show what you want them to show, rather than ones that might tell a different story?
 
BUTLER: Roy Morgan was tracking a different cohort. They were tracking young adults over the age of 18. The research that we were focusing on out of Gen Vape was focusing on under-18-year-olds, high school students, who you know have been the major focus of our work. They’ve had three waves now, Gen Vape, that have shown a reduction from a peak, and then a reduction in vaping in that age cohort. SAHMRI, which has conducted research in this area for many years, the South Australian research institute, showed an even larger reduction among teenagers in a jurisdiction that’s probably had the highest level of enforcement of these laws. They showed a very significant reduction, about 30 per cent in vaping among teenagers. And to Joel’s point, South Australian schools have shown a 50 per cent reduction in suspensions as a result of vaping as well.
 
We are not in any way sanguine about this. But I think the vast bulk of research gives us some comfort that at the very least, vaping rates that were increasing at alarming rates year on year, particularly among high school student-aged Australians, have at least peaked and probably have started to reduce. But I know this is a tough fight. It’s a tough fight against the marketing that continues to happen online and on social media about these products. It’s a tough fight to shut this down on the ground in retail settings, as well as illicit tobacco. But we’re determined to keep the fight going. It’s why we want to roll this program out to every high school. It’s why we’re rolling out the additional phases of our social media campaigns, harnessing the power and the reach of influencers that young people listen to, rather than old health ministers like myself. It's why we're encouraging state governments to take the decision like the Minns Government took over the last week to lift their enforcement efforts.
 
JOURNALIST: Any Australian teen or otherwise will tell you, though, if you want to buy a vape in this country, it is incredibly easy. What makes you confident to continue down the path that you've chosen rather than some of the alternate proposals like tax and regulate?
 
BUTLER: I'm not sure I agree with that, because I think if you speak to young people they will overwhelmingly tell you that it is harder and certainly much more expensive to buy a vape than it was before started to take action. Now, I've been very clear from the outset that we were not going to shut down the vape supply entirely, in the same way we haven't over decades been able to shut down the supply of illicit drugs in spite of the fact that that's been illegal to import. But we have made huge inroads in clamping down on that supply at the border. Where you have very significant state government resourcing of enforcement, it is even harder to get them, even more expensive to get them. But again, I'm not sanguine about this. I know this is still a challenge. In no way do I think the job is done here. I want states to step up their enforcement efforts. We are continuing to roll out more and more phases of our efforts around supply, but our efforts as well to reduce demand for these things in the first place.
 
JOURNALIST: An increase in smoking rates among young people was linked to the Federal Government's vape ban in a Roy Morgan research report released earlier this month. It was reported that that data was removed or altered later on. Can you confirm why this report may have been altered? And are there plans to redirect efforts to curbing smoking in young people as well?
 
BUTLER: First of all, I might just build on my response to Clare's question, which is there are a number of pieces of research in this area. The research that I've seen from Gen Vape out of the New South Wales universities and also out of the South Australian institute show that fewer young people are vaping, and fewer young people are smoking. And I, along with everyone else, was concerned about the risk that if we shut down access to vapes that there might be a squeezed balloon effect that resulted in young people taking up smoking cigarettes in greater numbers. The research I've seen from Gen Vape and from SAHMRI indicates that's not the case. The education efforts we're putting in place don't just go to the harms of vaping, in terms of building understanding of that among young people. It also goes to understanding of smoking which are very well evidenced.
 
Now, the Roy Morgan research you talked about, I had a couple of issues with it. One was it sought to present evidence  about the impacts of our reforms in spite of the fact that a whole number of months of research actually predated the introduction of our reforms. And as I said earlier, it dealt with a different age cohort to the age cohort that it was speaking, or at least, media commentary sought to compare it to out of Gen Vape, which was dealing with under 18-year-olds. As to what happened about the publication of this, I think this has been canvassed quite openly publicly about interactions between the Cancer Council Victoria, who was involved in a contracting arrangement with Roy Morgan. And Roy Morgan itself, there was no engagement as far as I’m advised at least between the government and Roy Morgan.
 
JOURNALIST: Minister, the Prime Minister today said it was beyond comprehension that the Israeli Ambassador was arguing there was no starvation in Gaza. In your capacity as a senior Minister, is this a sign that the government’s relations with Israel is at a point of tension?
 
BUTLER: What’s clear is that from the statement that Minister Wong issued along with I think around 27 or 28 other countries at the beginning of last week, right through to the Prime Minister’s statements on Sunday and then in the Parliament yesterday. It is clear that not just Australia but so many other like-minded countries as well are determined to voice our deep, deep distress and concern at what’s happening in Gaza. The humanitarian catastrophe there is indefensible and it’s unacceptable. There must be an immediate resumption of aid flows there. I don’t really have anything to add to the Prime Minister. He’s addressed these issues in very, very deep detail over the last 72 hours.
 
JOURNALIST: Can I ask about Ramsay Health Care and the psychology cuts? Patients have told us that they're angry and disgusted with that decision. The Australian Psychologies Society has said it will have a significant impact for a sector that's already close to breaking point. What level of concern do you have about the effect this could have on a broader sector which is only seeing more and more demand?
 
BUTLER: You're right to say that there's more and more demand for psychological therapy which is why we're rolling out a range of measures. We want to build the psychology workforce. That's really a major constraint that prevents people from getting the support that they need. Budget after budget, we've rolled out more and more psychology training places. We need to build that workforce. We're building ways in which people can get access to mental health support for free by expanding the number of Medicare Mental Health Centres. But also from 1 January we'll for the first time roll out a free digital service. You see this around most other countries, a free digital service of support.
 
In terms of what's happened at Ramsay, as I am advised at least, because we reached out to Ramsay when we saw the reports in the media, that was the first we knew about this decision. About 50 per cent of their patients were being seen virtually or online by psychologists in those clinics and I think that put pressure really on the viability of a range of traditional bricks and mortar models of care. This is not just an issue for Ramsay. More and more we are seeing psychiatrists and psychologists deliver their supports and their therapy online, which I think is making some change to the way in which the providers operate.
 
As I understand it, Ramsay is intending to continue all of the psychologists that they employed in these clinics to provide these services virtually. They're offering that service to their patients where patients want a face-to-face service. They're talking to them about other ways in which to do that. But there's no question we are grappling with a real demand to expand the supply of affordable psychology support for Australians. At the same time, again since COVID, there has been a very significant shift in the way in which clinicians, psychiatrists and psychologists deliver their care to much more of an online model.
 
JOURNALIST: How do you feel about the shift to the online model? Mental health care and psychology is a particular type of care that really, you know, it's conceivable that there's differences in the quality of care you get when you’re in the room with someone and that person can read someone's emotions better than perhaps they can on a screen. Is that troubling to you at all that that's the way this is heading?
 
BUTLER: There's a good evidence base for psychology and psychiatry support being provided virtually, provided there is good technology involved. We first rolled that out when I was the Mental Health Minister back in about 2011 -2012. It was one of the very first telehealth programs, was delivering psychiatry assessments. There is a good evidence base for this, but I want to ensure that patients have choice, that if they want a face-to-face service, that there is the option as far as possible to do that. But there is no question that the sort of workplace culture shift if you like in psychiatry and to a degree in psychology is placing some real pressures on the system. It's a big driver of why we're having difficulty getting consultant psychiatrists to do admission work in private hospitals. Private hospital beds are empty not because there's not a demand for that support, but because hospitals are having real difficulty getting consultant psychiatrists to work in the hospitals now because so many of them prefer instead to do online consultancy work. We're responding to that in different ways. We're looking at ways in which we might bring more consultant psychiatrists from overseas, from jurisdictions that have comparable systems like the UK for example, specifically to do that admission and support work in private hospitals.
 
As I said, there's a bunch of different things happening in this area, increasing demand for mental health support. We're trying to grow the workforce at the same time, but there is a really significant workplace culture shift happening more in mental health than in other specialist areas of health.
 
JOURNALIST: Sorry, back to vapes. You said that you’re buoyed that some state and territories are stepping up enforcement. A couple of weeks ago in WA, the Chief Health Officer admitted that no fines had actually been issued to suppliers. So are you satisfied with WA's response to some jurisdictions lagging behind and would you implore them to strengthen their laws?
 
BUTLER: We have a good discussion going between health ministers. Ultimately, it is a decision for them about their resourcing, about their laws that they put in place. I know when we last got together, the South Australian experience where the state government conferred powers on the relevant minister, that's not actually the health minister, but another minister, to issue closure orders on shops without having to go to court, has been a really significant additional power. I means that already a number of shops have been closed in South Australia where they were found to have been flouting the law, pretty openly flouting the law. Fines are important. There's the possibility of imprisonment for the organisations behind this, which are generally criminal gangs. But some of those powers to close stores really change the risk-reward balance for retailers who think this is just a harmless thing to make themselves a bit of money. At the end of the day, selling these vapes, selling illicit tobacco is ultimately bankrolling organised crime to conduct some very serious criminal activities like sex trafficking, drug trafficking that produces real victims. And I really encourage retailers to think twice about what they are doing. It is the wrong thing to do, and increasingly state governments are gathering around them the resources and the powers to put you in the dock and make you pay a price for doing what you're doing.
 
JOURNALIST: Can I just confirm back on this schools’ program? So it's currently been run as like a trial in a certain number of schools. So are you saying that it is available to all schools now?
 
BUTLER: Funding is now available for every high school in the country to take this up. As Lauren said, the target group is grade 7’s and 8’s. This has been the target group for the work that Matilda Centre has been doing in other areas for many years. I do really want to stress, this was not a small trial. I know you're not suggesting that, Amanda. This was a full-blown, randomised control trial conducted in the most rigorous way, which is why you can see it published in perhaps the world's most prestigious medical journal this morning. This has shown beyond any doubt that educating young people about the harms of this does allow them to make healthy choices themselves and produces a really significant reduction in vaping behaviour.
 
JOURNALIST: Just in your capacity as NDIS Minister, there is currently job advertisement for a new CEO of the NDIA. When can we expect to have a new CEO, and what would you like to see in terms of leadership of that department as it's becoming a huge program to manage?
 
BUTLER: This is a huge program. It absorbs a lot of taxpayer dollars from the Commonwealth. But most importantly, it delivers dignity to about, at the moment 717,000 Australians living with a disability. This is a profound social reform that Labor is so proud of and which the country should be proud of. It really is a very, very significant social program for the country.
 
I want to see a really outstanding individual appointed to head this agency. It’s a relatively independent agency. The decision will be made, largely, by the Board of the NDIA. Obviously, we want to make sure the decision is made as quickly as possible, but it’s got to be the right person. I want them to hasten in a way that ensures that they get the right choice. Because this is an important social program but there is obviously also a really important NDIS reform process underway. We need the right person to lead the NDIA through that process. Yeah.
 
JOURNALIST: Minister, you spoke a little bit about the target group being Year 7 and 8’s. What about Year 11 and 12 and possibly setting them up so that they don’t in the future pick up vaping or the cigarettes? What’s the go with that?

GARDNER: Thank you and apologies for not introducing myself earlier. I'm Dr Lauren Gardner and I'm a Senior Research Fellow based at the Matilda Centre at the University of Sydney. The reason that we targeted Year 7 and 8 students in this trial is because we're actually trying to get in during the critical period for prevention. We're trying to access students, get in before these harmful patterns of use have established.
 
We know that the average onset of e-cigarette use in Australia is around 14, and then it starts to increase from there. We wanted to get in just before that as they're starting to understand what it is we know in the coming years peer pressure is likely to increase, curiosity is likely to increase. We get in and we arm students with the knowledge and the skills so that when they do come to interact with those situations, they actually know how to say no. They know how to, instead, choose healthier coping strategies. So, that's why we really focus in on that age group. And our other programs which are built on the same effective model, the OurFutures prevention model, have shown that delivering programs in that early age group can actually have far-reaching effects. Into early adulthood, for example, our alcohol program, it had effects up to age 20. We were seeing less harmful use of alcohol all through those years.
 
JOURNALIST: And the boy also talked about a cartoon and you talked about the cartoon. Can you just speak a little bit about that, and why a cartoon in particular would help reduce vaping rates?
 
GARDNER: Absolutely. So, the core component of the OurFutures model is these cartoons. Now, the cartoons are both focusing on students who are around the same age as our target students, and this really allows us to deliver peer-led messaging. We know that having educational messages come from another peer, another young person, students are more likely to take that on board and to learn from that and to listen, rather than having it come from an authority figure like a teacher or a police officer. We, in effect, have peer-led messaging but have a little bit more control over it, which is really useful.
 
But these young peers also allow us to model these assertiveness skills and these refusal skills. It's really important for students to find them engaging, which is why we co-design them with them. From the hairstyles, the clothes they're wearing, their names, the storylines, how they interact with the others, that's all co-designed with young people. It really allows them to immerse themselves in that story and to think, okay, this one of my peers can do it this way, so this is how I'm going to apply it in my own life.
 
Now, we do still have a bit of control from teachers. Teachers still play a central role in terms of facilitating the activities, but those activities are really a way for us to reinforce the messages that they've learnt from these cartoons and to practice the skills. So, they might go on and role play; how do I respond assertively, how do I refuse e-cigarettes.
 
And I think it's really also important to mention that although we're focusing on skills that are refusing e-cigarettes, these are skills that can be applied to other substances, but also more broadly. We're talking about how are they navigating these tricky situations and the challenges that come throughout their teenage years. And we've found that is an effective model. Very happy with it.
 
JOURNALIST: Just one more question, if I may, it’s a question from your home state. The South Australian Government's now up to a $15 million package for Bedford, the disability employment provider that's gone into administration. The Premier, though, says it's up to the Commonwealth to determine Bedford's future. So, what, in your ministerial capacity in the Government, generally, are you doing to secure its future and the thousands of people with disabilities who rely on it?
 
BUTLER: I applaud the Malinauskas Government for a package they announced over the course of the weekend. We had been engaging very deeply with them. I'd been talking on a, pretty much, a daily basis with either the Premier or the Treasurer, Stephen Mullighan, about a proper response to, frankly, the pretty dire financial position Bedford had got itself into. A need to understand, really, what had happened, to get to the bottom of what had happened and a way forward for what is, frankly, an icon of South Australia. An organisation that's delivering support, particularly in employment, for people living with disability in South Australia for eight decades.
 
I think what the package that Premier Malinauskas announced on the weekend does is to buy us time. We really were right up against it over the course of the last several days. And what the package from South Australia allows us to do now is to work with McGrathNicol, which is in there as a restructuring advisor, taking over leadership from a former CEO of Bedford, really to get to the bottom of what the position of Bedford is right now and what a viable pathway is into the future.
 
Obviously, my Department, the NDIS, the National Disability Insurance Agency, and the Commission, the NDIS Commission, have to be a part of that and I've tasked them with doing that, with working with McGrathNichol to ensure that, as far as possible, there is a strong future for this organisation. But most importantly, there's a viable future for the 1,400 South Australians that this organisation supports.
 
JOURNALIST: Minister, Premier Roger Cook and several of these ministers, your Labor friends in the West, they have recently been quoted saying that access to primary care has been an issue for hospital and ambulance delays. WA are saying that they've essentially been short-changed in federal funding. Do you agree with this or are they passing the buck? And will WA get a greater share of funding in the new agreement that's currently being negotiated?
 
BUTLER: From the beginning of this month, WA received a double-digit increase, more than 10 per cent increase in the Commonwealth's contribution to the running of their hospital system. That's the biggest increase I think, WA has ever got in Commonwealth hospital funding. And it recognises that hospital systems right across the country are under real pressure. They're still under pressure after COVID but, as a background, there is just general pressure on hospitals that reflect an ageing population and increasing burden of chronic disease.
 
Yes, we're doing our bit to fund not just WA but all states and territories through a fair share of funding from the Commonwealth to operate their hospital systems. But we're also trying to prevent people going to hospital unnecessarily in the first place. That is at the heart of our Medicare Urgent Care Clinic program. We're rolling those clinics out in WA, as we are right around the country. Already they've seen 1.7 million patients in the couple of years we've been running that program, the vast bulk of whom would otherwise have had to go to a hospital emergency department.
 
We are doing the right thing. We're providing significant record funding to states like WA to operate their hospitals, but we're also trying to relieve pressure in the first place, particularly by ensuring that people have another avenue to get urgent care for non-life-threatening emergencies in our fully bulk billed Medicare Urgent Care Clinics. Thanks very much.
 
JOURNALIST: Is the frustration reasonable?
 
BUTLER: I get that all states are under pressure, all territories are under pressure with their hospital systems right now. That, frankly, is something we see right around the world. It's a product of demographic pressures, an ageing population, a growing population, more chronic disease. But there is also a legacy of COVID hospital systems around the world are still struggling through. We've got a one-year agreement that provides very significant increases in hospital funding to every state and every territory. As I've said publicly before, I'm determined to work really hard to reach a longer-term hospital funding agreement with states and territories over the course of the rest of this calendar year.
 
Thanks very much everyone.