Press conference with Minister Butler, Canberra – 3 February 2026

MARK BUTLER, MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGEING, MINISTER FOR DISABILITY AND THE NDIS: I’m here this morning with Professor Frank Oberklaid, who co-chaired the Thriving Kids Advisory Group with me, and I’ll ask Frank to say a couple of words in due course and to take all the difficult questions about this model of care.
 
Five months ago, at the National Press Club down the hill, I gave a speech about the need for the government to accelerate our existing work with state and territory governments to get the NDIS back on track. We came to government in 2022 with a scheme that was still growing at 22 per cent per annum, placing a very significant burden on the budget, but also dislocating a range of other markets, including the labour market, that was having an impact on the health system, on aged care and a range of other parts of our community as well. I also spoke of the need to address what I viewed as an alarming number of young children who had been enrolled in the NDIS, a number that had risen to as many as one in six young boys, junior primary aged boys, five to seven years of age. In some parts of the country, as high as one in four junior primary age boys had been enrolled onto the NDIS, a scheme that was obviously designed for significant and permanent, usually lifelong, disability. Most of those young children were enrolled for developmental delay or autism. I announced our intention to reinvigorate an earlier National Cabinet decision, first of all, to drive down the rate of growth to ensure that the NDIS was sustainable and could continue in the long term to deliver the promise that it made to Australians living with disability and to their families.
 
I also announced though that we would introduce a new program across the country for children with developmental delay and/or autism with low to moderate support needs to be called Thriving Kids, a program that would ensure that children and their parents were given all of the support that they needed to thrive, to move into school age with as much support as possible. I also announced at the time that I had asked Professor Oberklaid to co-chair an advisory group that would work on developing the model of care for state and territory governments to consider as a rollout of the Thriving Kids program. And just five months on, I can report that the Advisory Group has developed its model of care, and this morning, I'm releasing the report of the Thriving Kids Advisory Group. And as well as thanking Frank, I want to thank all of the members of that advisory group for their terrific work over a relatively short period of time. Frank might talk a bit about the range of different pieces of work that that advisory group did, not just itself but through deep-dives with other stakeholder groups in the community.
 
In that five-month period as well, Mike Freelander has chaired a parliamentary inquiry into our Thriving Kids proposal. The Deputy Chair, Monique Ryan, provided great support, I know, to that inquiry. Two very esteemed paediatricians now in the Parliament. That received hundreds and hundreds of submissions and was able to feed into the Thriving Kids Advisory Group process. Over that period as well, we engaged in deep bilateral discussions with state and territory governments. State and territories had representation on the advisory group itself, we're engaged in that work, developing the model of care, but we're also right through this period engaging with them on a bilateral basis.
 
On Friday, as you're aware, the National Cabinet came together and concluded a new five-year hospital funding agreement, but also at the time, agreed a range of things in relation to the NDIS. And one of those was to endorse the Thriving Kids program. This advisory group report had been provided to states and territories some weeks ago, that had an opportunity to consider the report itself, particularly the model of care that lies at the centre of that report, and they have endorsed it through a National Cabinet decision.
 
Now, the model of care that Frank will talk to, in my view, has essentially four pillars. The first pillar is to raise awareness and early identification of children with developmental issues. The second is to provide ready access to information, advice, and navigation for parents in particular. The third is to build the skills of parents. We know parents are a child's most important teacher and support, particularly in those early years of life. And we want to do everything we can to build the skills, the capability and the confidence of parents to give their children every level of support that they can, but also to connect parents with other parents who are experiencing similar issues. And the fourth pillar is to provide access to targeted support for children and parents who need it. Those targeted supports will be provided by trained workers, usually allied health professionals like speech pathologists, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, and the like. All of this will be overseen by a range of guiding principles. The thing people have complained most about the operation of the NDIS for this cohort is the time it takes to get a diagnosis, the need for a formal diagnosis, which can take years to access and cost thousands of dollars, before parents are given any support for their children. This will be easy to access. It won't require a formal diagnosis. And those supports, importantly, will be child and family centred. They will be available where children and their parents live and learn and play in the community in a broad-based, mainstream way. This will be a program targeted, just to be clear, to children who have developmental delay and/or autism with low to moderate needs. That was the cohort identified all that time ago by the National Cabinet.
 
I just want to finish by talking a little bit about where we are with states and territories. I said that the National Cabinet endorsed this program on Friday, agreed a funding split that would see the Commonwealth provide around at least $1.4 billion of our $2 billion commitment to this program to the states to deliver the services encompassed by this model of care. All of the states and territories signed the national agreement on foundational supports yesterday, which has a number of schedules that go to the Thriving Kids program. Those schedules set out what the Commonwealth will do in this program and what the states will do in this program. Those overarching principles will now be the subject of negotiation with each state and territory government so that we can conclude bilateral agreements with them to see funds flow to them by 20 February. We're aiming to wrap up all of those bilateral schedules or bilateral agreements with every state and territory government before South Australia goes into caretaker later in February. We've got a lot of work to do over coming weeks, but we have done a huge amount of work in just five months to kick-start a process that had frankly started to drift and to provide parents and all of those other groups, educators, and community groups who wrap their arms around parents who have children with developmental issues, to give them confidence that there will be a program program in place to give their children every opportunity to thrive.
 
I'm going to ask Frank to say a few words, and then we're happy to take questions on this program and then any other questions you have for the day.
 
PROFESSOR FRANK OBERKLAID AM, THRIVING KIDS ADVISORY GROUP CO-CHAIR: Thank you, Minister. The professional community working with children and families, and particularly paediatricians, I'm a paediatrician, were really very pleased that finally issues in the NDIS were starting to be addressed. The Minister said it was drifting. It wasn’t drifting, it was a broken system. It did not work for kids, and paediatricians were becoming increasingly frustrated about how it distorted clinical practice The focus on the child's weaknesses and making a diagnosis doesn't work for kids. It may work for adults. Lots and lots of children who have individual differences, might have a developmental delay, might be a bit shy, present with various issues that need to be worked out by the paediatrician. And rather than making a diagnosis, paediatric practice is about what does this child and this family need over the next six-12 months. What sort of supports do they need to make a difference, not what is the diagnosis. And so, it defaulted to children needing to have a diagnosis to get any sort of supports. And paediatricians were getting requests from inexperienced teachers with the words, please confirm a diagnosis of autism so this child can get services. It totally distorted clinical practice.
 
When the Minister approached me and said he's looked hard at NDIS and he thinks that the conceptual model might be wrong, I said, yes, Minister, it is wrong, and thank goodness we're starting to look at it. The fact that Thriving Kids was about to be introduced was very widely applauded by the professional community because it did distort clinical practice. We wanted an approach that got away from looking at what's wrong with a child and what do we need to treat towards acknowledging individual differences, acknowledging that many, many children just need a bit of support over six or 12 months in order to thrive, and their parents need support.
 
The other problem with NDIS, it focused on the child, the child had a condition, the child had a diagnosis, we needed a therapist to fix the child. That's not how paediatrics works. We need to understand what the family needs. Do the parents understand this condition? Do they know how best to support the child? In the Thriving Kids approach, we took what we call a settings approach, where do children go in order to be supported? We start with parents, of course, and the Minister said we needed to make sure that parents had access to good information that they could use to understand child development, to understand child behaviour, to understand what to expect, and importantly, to understand what were the early signs that things are going wrong so they can get some support. Then they go to childcare, they go to maternal and child health nurses, they go to GPs.
 
For each of those settings we wanted three things to happen. One is we wanted those professionals to have enough experience and training to both support parents, give guidance to parents, to pick up problems early and then know what to do about it. And then where there are problems, if they felt that in childcare, for example, if it was beyond their expertise, they knew where to refer to. We're very pleased with the model. We put together an expert group of about 16 people representing all of the disciplines working with children, people with lived experience, people who had managed settings of children with additional needs. As the Minister said, we did deep dives with people outside the group. We looked at the literature, and we looked at best practice overseas and we're very, very pleased with this model. I think objectively, if you look at the model of care, it's very hard to argue with any of it. This provides a framework, an evidence-based framework that will guide the way services are delivered to children and families, hopefully for years to come.
 
JOURNALIST: Can I ask on the Mosman Park suspected double murder suicide? It's been described as a tragedy. It's also raised questions about whether that family was failed by the NDIS. Firstly, what's your reaction to that case? And also, will that case in any way influence your reforms here with Thriving Kids?
 
BUTLER: First of all, this is just the most awful tragedy. I think everyone across Australia is deeply shocked by what has happened over in Perth, but I'm absolutely sure it's particularly rocked the local community in Western Australia. I want to send my condolences to everyone connected to this family for such an awful loss. It's obviously the subject of a police investigation now, and I don't want to say anything that would impact that police investigation. It's an awful tragedy at so many different levels, but particularly the loss of two children's lives, who obviously did not choose to die, is an unspeakable tragedy. Now, I know there's been a bit of commentary over in Western Australia about the NDIS packages that these children were on. I want to be really clear; first of all, I don't want to say anything that would impact the police investigation. I want to give people confidence that the NDIA, the agency, is cooperating fully with the police to the extent that they have any useful inputs to the police investigation. I also want to be clear that there are very clear legal restrictions on our ability, my ability, the ability of the NDIA to say anything about the packages that the children were on. I'm not in a position to respond to some of the speculation that I've seen in the Western Australian media.
 
All I want to say is that this is just an awful tragedy, just an unspeakable tragedy for this family, but for the broader community. And I know the NDIA will do everything it can to assist the police in its inquiries.
 
JOURNALIST: Minister, there's a lot in this report about the role of, and it may be one for you, Professor, as well, there's a lot in this report about the role of family and the role of parents in supporting children with these developmental delays. What's your message to parents who feel that they may now need to shoulder potentially more of the burden here as a result of the changes to the disability system?
 
BUTLER: I might start and then ask Frank to say a few words about that because it's absolutely central to the Thriving Kids model. And I just want to be clear that there was a life before the NDIS. The NDIS has only been in place for a little over a decade. And before that time, all of the services that we're really talking about through the Thriving Kids program did exist at a state level. It has been, it's not rocket science. It's been quite well understood that the best thing you can do for a child who is not hitting developmental milestones is to provide parents with support to support their own children.
 
Now, not every parent, I can say this as a parent myself, has those skills, has those capabilities to identify what the child might need and to be able to deliver it, often on a daily basis. We do this with our children. But that is really at the core of the Thriving Kids program. And to an extent, it's getting back to a system that long existed before the NDIS but has largely been dismantled because of the NDIS really covering the field. And we want to make sure that parents have the confidence, have the capabilities to support their children. Obviously, there will be a point at which many parents and children will need additional targeted supports from trained workers, some of them qualified allied health professionals. That is very much contemplated by the program and will be able to be delivered through it. And I want to make sure that that's as easy to access as possible as well. You don't have to wait for a formal diagnosis. You can access those services in the sort of settings you go to as a parent with your children. Frank, do you want to- just come up to it.
 
OBERKLAID: When medical students come to us after several years of adult medicine, the first thing we teach them is there's no such thing as a child, only a child in a family. Families are key to paediatric practice, and parent understanding of illness and understanding of development is absolutely central. I think it will do the opposite, because it will remove parental anxiety. Does my child have this particular diagnosis? Where do I find a therapist to treat my child? The whole notion is getting away from kids have diagnoses and need treatment towards lots of children have individual differences. And parents are the first teachers, parents are the first supporters. In addition to enhancing the level of information for parents and making sure that it's accessible to them in a practical way they can use it, we want to make sure that each of those settings, everywhere they go for support, childcare, maternal and child health GPs, they have access to that information as well and understand how best to support parents.
 
JOURNALIST: Just a couple of things. One, do you have an expectation or number for how many kids will be using the scheme when it's fully rolled out? Two, you've both spoken about the way that the current system has kind of distorted clinical practice in the workforce. Do you anticipate that there will need to be many changes to workforce in terms of number of professionals, where they operate, how they operate? A lot of allied health professionals, for example, are quite reliant on individual funding packages through the NDIS. And third -
 
BUTLER: Third?
 
JOURNALIST: Sorry.
 
BUTLER: Should be taking notes here.
 
JOURNALIST: Do you anticipate any cost to families, particularly in that fourth stage you talked about with targeted supports through allied health? Will these be fully covered by government funding or will parents expect to pay gap fees for these services?
 
BUTLER: Let me have a go at dealing with all of them. Frank might have a couple of things to say about it. In terms of numbers, the obvious place to start is broadly the number of children on the NDIS under the age of nine now with low to moderate support needs, and we can quantify that broadly. I want to stress that until 1 January 2028, when Thriving Kids is fully operational, NDIS is still open for those children. There won't be access changes made until the beginning of 2028. That's the beginning of the way in which we would model that. But we also think that there's probably unmet need in the community, particularly given how expensive it can be to receive a diagnosis. We have a sense, though we're not able to quantify this precisely, we have a sense that there are parts of the community, particularly some of the poorer parts of our community, that don't have the money it takes to go to a paediatrician to get a formal diagnosis. We will start doing that work with state governments through the bilateral negotiation process. Obviously, one of the jobs of the Commonwealth is going to be to evaluate and monitor the program as rolls out, we'll have a better sense of those numbers then.
 
In terms of the workforce, this is going to have an impact on particularly the allied health workforce. We know that there are significant numbers of children now on the NDIS with low to moderate support needs. Over time, their equivalents in coming years would be on the Thriving Kids program. But we know that children, for example, with moderate needs might be accessing on average as many as 70 therapy sessions a year on an individual basis, often delivered in schools or childcare settings. That presents a logistical challenge for those schools or childcare centres having that number of therapists turn up to their front door saying, I want to see one or other children.
 
There is going to be an impact on the allied health workforce. State government said to us very clearly that they want to take responsibility for targeted supports, the delivery of those supports by qualified workers. They didn't want to see that delivered through the MBS system in the way you might see for adults, for example, under Medicare. They want to deliver that. They want to take responsibility for coordinating those workforces. Many of those will be delivered, for example, in child and family centres that exist at state and territory level, in playgroup settings. There are many examples already of those settings that state governments currently fund. They will have to provide additional funding to that. There's an additionality requirement that you'd be familiar with, Natassia, in the agreement that state and territory governments signed yesterday. We'll watch that very closely. Their $2 billion has to be additional money, as well as the $1.4 billion that we'll be providing to them. I've forgotten your third question.
 
JOURNALIST: Gap fees?
 
BUTLER: Gap fees. I want to be clear, the state government's taking responsibility for that. That will largely leverage off a lot of programs they already run in these sort of settings that I talked about. It won't be a traditional Medicare funded allied health professional visit that might be bulk billed or might attract a gap fee. This will be quite a different model that state governments particularly asked us for, but which we as the Commonwealth agreed to and we think is consistent with the advisory group model.
 
Do you have anything to add to that?
 
OBERKLAID: Can I just address the workforce issue? We discussed that extensively in the Thriving Kids Advisory Group. We had allied health professionals as part of the group. We had GPs, paediatrician, nurses, et cetera. There are issues of both number and capacity and we’re aware of that. During the discussions we engaged with the colleges and the professional associations, they're aware of that as well and will continue to engage. That's a medium to long-term view. There are shortages of every professional group working with children; nurses, speechies, that does need to be addressed, but the report provides a framework for how to do that and how best to do that. There's a lot of fleshing out that needs to be done, but over time hopefully workforce will increase, and importantly the capacity to support children and parents will improve as well.
 
JOURNALIST: Just on the negotiations with states and territories, will that include like details of changes to how supports are delivered in schools, and are you confident that you can get them to put sufficient services in place to bridge that gap now that the carrot of hospital funding is no longer there after that deal was agreed to?
 
BUTLER: Yes and yes to both of those. I mean the schools are obviously an important setting, particularly junior primary school, very important setting as is early childhood education centres and those other settings I talked about more in the community. That will be a big part of the negotiations we have with states. It was really important, I think, for us to bundle together the disability reform and hospital funding deals. I think states recognise that as well, certainly from the Commonwealth perspective, these are overlapping systems. Professor Oberklaid just talked about the workforce impact. One of the things we've seen across health and social care is that the rapid growth of the NDIS and the way in which those markets work has meant that it's often been difficult to access occupational therapy in other parts of the health and social care system. Getting a little bit more of an even spread of that capability into veterans care, into aged care, into public hospitals which have largely public health systems have been largely denuded of a lot of that allied health capability as it's moved into the private sector to participate in NDIS. I think there's going to be a broader benefit to us having bundled those things together. Lizzy?
 
JOURNALIST: Minister, I've got a couple of questions. If we could just go one at a time.
 
BUTLER: Not three, just two or one?
 
JOURNALIST: There might be three, but we'll just go one at a time. Are you any closer on a decision on whether you'll put the weight loss drug Wegovy on the PBS?
 
BUTLER: I've said in principle we have a policy position as a government of listing all recommended medicines from the advisory committee, from PBAC, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee. That's subject to a price negotiation between government and the relevant company, in this case Novo Nordisk, to ensure that taxpayers get the best value for money from that recommendation. Those negotiations are going on right now. Obviously, I would hope to be in a position as soon as possible to be able to undertake that listing, but I'm going to ensure that taxpayers get the best value for money from that.
 
JOURNALIST: Medical practitioners met with Seven News to discuss some of the dangers of medical disinformation online. What's the Government doing to try and curb that?
 
BUTLER: We have pretty limited ability to impact all of the online world, but through our regulators, particularly the Therapeutic Goods Administration  and through professionals, regulators, we try to ensure as far as possible that people are aware of their obligations around advertising or making health claims online or through traditional media channels. That is obviously more difficult to police in an online environment than through the legacy media, but it's something our regulators do a lot of work on.

JOURNALIST: Minister, what is the estimated budgetary impact that this change will have? And what is the estimated growth impact on the NDIS once this change is implemented?
 
BUTLER: Commonwealth and states in 2023 committed $2 billion each. The states as a group, $2 billion and the Commonwealth, $2 billion, $4 billion to the Thriving Kids program. We have said through the agreement struck on Friday that of the Commonwealth's $2 billion commitment at least $1.4 billion will be provided directly to states. There's no change in the Commonwealth's commitment there. It's just that we won't be funding services directly. We'll be providing that money to states.
 
JOURNALIST: Thank you, Minister Butler. Just a question on this model it is proposed, do you expect that this will be the final model that we'll see implemented when that rollout is complete?
 
BUTLER: Yes, I was really pleased. As Professor Oberklaid said, there was very deep engagement with all stakeholder groups that did deep-dives into particular parts of this sector. It was a very broadly representative group, the advisory group, people with lived experience, people out of particular settings, and also all of the relevant professional groups, but importantly state and territory government representatives as well, who were feeding back to all of the other jurisdictions, and we were engaging with them right through this process on a bilateral basis. Plus us giving them early sight, an early read of this advisory group model of care, is why we got agreement by all governments on Friday to this model. Now, obviously, we've got a bit of negotiation about the detail of the way in which that will roll out in South Australia, which might be a little different in Western Australia, which largely sort of will revolve around what they're currently doing and what we can leverage, but I feel very, very confident and pleased about the engagement we've got from all jurisdictions.
 
JOURNALIST: Just on that given that there is still a bit to play out here, what would your message be to families right across the nation who might still be feeling a bit uneasy about what's to come?
 
BUTLER: The thing I have tried to be really clear about to parents is that if your child is currently on the NDIS, then they can remain on the NDIS, subject to the usual rules of the NDIS, of course, but they will remain in place. Between now and 1 January 2028, children with low to moderate support needs will also continue to be able to be enrolled in the NDIS. No change around access will be made until 1 January 2028 when we're confident this Thriving Kids program will be fully up and running. There's an overlap, if you like, for a period of time while we ramp up Thriving Kids until the access changes are made to the NDIS.
 
Sarah and then I'll move back.
 
JOURNALIST: Great. Also three questions. I'm glad Natassia said that.
 
BUTLER: This is not a good precedent Natassia has set. The Prime Minister would not put up with this.

JOURNALIST: Firstly, obviously, $1.4 of the $2 billion goes directly to the states, so sort of $600 million, which would go to the reviewing, the monitoring and so on. Are there any other like national initiatives, particularly Freelander and others looked at things like new Medicare item numbers, national training, these kind of more national initiatives that could be rolled out. Is that something you decided?
 
BUTLER: Yes. Evaluation and monitoring will be a relatively small part of our investment. One of the things that Frank and I worked on almost 15 years ago was a three-year-old Healthy Kids Check, which Tony Abbott then abolished in 2014. We saw that as a really important opportunity for families to go to their local GP at a critical time in a child's development and get a full check on how that child was developing physically, emotionally, and in a range of other ways as well. We want to have another good look at that. We think there's value in families, who particularly by the time a child is two, three or four, are often using their general practice as a really important avenue of support and advice, that we think about whether we reintroduce that. We haven't made a decision. We've made it clear to states we're looking at it.
 
Earlier in a child's life, maybe in their first 18 months to two years, parents will be getting that support and assessment often through state-run child and family health services, and that will be really important. We'll want states to make sure that that's robust, that it's operating not just for the first 6 or 12 months of a child's life, but in an ongoing way. That's one example of something the Commonwealth might look at doing, an MBS-funded three-year-old Healthy Kids Check of the type that Frank and I worked on 15 years ago.
 
We think also the Commonwealth is well placed to put in place a range of the awareness, information, advice, and navigation systems. Some of them will be online. Some of them will look a bit like 1800MEDICARE, which is already providing lots of support to tens and tens of thousands of families and adults. We think really it's going to be a horses for courses thing, where parts of this model are best done nationally rather than eight different systems across states and territories. The Commonwealth will step in. That's the subject of a bit more negotiation with states though.
 
JOURNALIST: If I could also ask on the early childcare, the advisory group also noted the potential to influence early childcare settings given that direct relationship through the administration in Inclusion Support Program and receiving the advice from the PC. So is that also something that is very much on the table? And since we're talking about early childcare and early education, we've mentioned the pressure on workforce in a more allied health scenario. The support staff in schools and others are also feeling a little bit nervous about this, sort of saying maybe that more staff will be needed, maybe pay rises will be needed. What do you think about those two things?
 
BUTLER: I’ll have a start. Frank, you might want to say something about this. Obviously, schools and early childhood are critical settings for supports for people, we recognise that already. State governments or school systems receive very substantial disability funding through the schools funding agreements. Disability loadings have been climbing significantly over recent years. And the Inclusion Support Program you referred to, the ISP, has been a big part of childcare, our childcare funding programs, for a long time, this is not new.
 
I think what states, what schools, principals, and the ECEC sector really did raise as a concern was that the individualised nature of the NDIS meant that they were dealing with a tsunami of therapists coming into their schools and their ECEC centres, saying that they needed room to provide a therapy session to an individual student. That student would be taken out of their learning for that, and it was sort of pretty chaotic. The logistics of that have been pretty chaotic. We think, our advice from those who are representing these parts of the sector on the advisory group, this is going to be a much neater way to, frankly, in a more curated way, provide supports to parents and children. There’s a bit of negotiation to go on this, and we’re working with Jason Clare particularly and Jess Walsh, and their department on what this looks like. But getting that right will be a really important part of Thriving Kids.
 
JOURNALIST: Do you need more than $4 billion? Sorry Minister, before we go to Frank, do you think you’ll need more funding than the $4 billion, given we’re talking about the three year old agreement?
 
BUTLER: We’re pretty confident about this, and obviously it’s been a commitment that’s been in place for a while, we’ve had an opportunity to look at it. Obviously, we’re going to monitor and evaluate this program like every other social program, but we’re confident this commitment is right.
 
OBERKLAID: I guess my take on that is there’s never going to be enough money, and there’s never going to be enough resources, and so we talk about different rather than more. If we can, it’s about increasing the capacity of schools and teachers in early childhood settings, giving teachers more confidence, looking at the job descriptions, making sure that they’ve got the skills to do what we expect them to do. And I think we just have to co-design a system with them. What are their needs, what would they like to do, where are the gaps? Lots and lots of, most schools already have resources, they call them welfare coordinators or learning leaders, etcetera. what are they doing? Can they be re-figured? But I think we do have to have negotiations with the education sector. As the Minister said, that’s a crucial, crucial segment of the population for Thriving Kids. But I think we work with them to better understand their needs. And it’s not just about more, it’s about how can we increase the capacity of teachers and of schools to do this work.
 
JOURNALIST: If I can just ask one broadly on foundational supports, it’s been quite confusing for people to see it be announced, and it’s kind of changed definition over the years. And seeing Thriving Kids as the first priority, at least for now, is this the only part of foundational supports that we’ll see in the short term? Or can we expect people outside of this eight-and-under bracket to be opened to the foundational supports in the short term?

BUTLER: There were two cohorts identified in the NDIS review that was conducted or initiated by Bill Shorten some years ago, conducted by Bruce Bonyhady and Lisa Paul. There were two groups: one is this group that we’re dealing with in the Thriving Kids program. The second group was adults with severe and chronic mental illness. We know that there is substantial unmet need in the community. We undertook analyses of unmet need with state and territory governments over the last few years which quantified that cohort. They were estimated, that cohort, as many as 230,000 mainly adults living with severe and chronic mental illness not receiving any support either through the NDIS or other psycho-social programs run by the Commonwealth or state and territory governments. That really is the second cohort.
 
I think all governments recognise that. The overall commitment by governments to foundational supports back in 2023 was $10 billion. I’ve talked about $4 billion of that being committed to Thriving Kids. There remains a substantial commitment to foundational supports in place by governments. Mental health ministers and health ministers will be meeting at the end of next week. We’re meeting once or twice a year with mental health ministers to do a range of pieces of work important in mental health, but this is obviously one of them. I don’t have any timeframes to announce about that cohort and the existing foundational supports commitments, but that really is the next important piece of work for governments.
 
JOURNALIST: Minister, the meeting on Friday mentioned a five to six per cent growth rate down from 10 per cent, currently 9.5 I think. How do you get there? What’s the feeling in the meeting about the timeframe of reaching that target and other areas that would need scrutiny to save that kind of money?
 
BUTLER: Just to recap, we came to government with 22 per cent growth in the NDIS. There was a commitment by all governments back in 2023 to get that growth down to eight per cent by this year, by 2026. We’re confident we’re on track to do that. We’re still engaged in implementing a arrange of new measures to get to that eight per cent growth rate. I’ve said at my Press Club speech five or six months ago though that we didn’t view eight per cent as a sustainable growth rate ongoing, particularly for a program where there should be relatively stable population. Obviously, there’s population growth, there’s a bit of population ageing in the scheme, but otherwise growth should be something like health inflation plus a measure for population growth and population ageing, which I quantified as five to six per cent. We got endorsement from state and territory governments for that to be the next phase of work by governments in terms of getting the NDIS back on track, and that really was only an agreement taken on Friday. We now need to go through the work involved in developing a timeframe for that, and working out measures that will deliver that level of growth.
 
In the same way we did with the first phase down to eight per cent, that obviously would involve very deep engagement with other jurisdictions, but also so importantly with the disability community itself, and obviously we always make that commitment. Up the back.
 
JOURNALIST: I have two questions. One, do you have any estimate about how much the Thriving Kids program will save from the NDIS? And also, does the delay in the start date for the Thriving Kids program put that five to six per cent target that you’re talking about at risk, or make that harder?
 
BUTLER: There are some savings that have already appeared in the budget around access changes and a range of other measures that we’ve put in place to get to eight per cent. They’re in the budget papers. There will be a minor impact from the delay in access changes from 1 July next year to 1 January, which is only six months. They’re not material really, but they’ll be reported in the usual way. That doesn’t impact the commitment to get to five to six per cent growth. That really is another phase of reform that we’ll engage upon.
 
JOURNALIST: Thank you, Minister. Just one question from me. The Victorian Government is making some changes around GPs and letting them diagnose ADHD. Do you think that’s the right move? Or do you see that maybe some people will end up with the wrong diagnosis, or it could add more pressure onto either Thriving Kids or the NDIS?
 
BUTLER: I don’t necessarily see an impact on Thriving Kids here. But this is something health ministers have talked about for a period of time now, because Victoria’s just really the latest in a series of jurisdictions who’ve decided to make this change to allow GPs to make this diagnosis and prescribe medicines. It’s important to say it won’t be all GPs. Every jurisdiction has said that in order to access this program, GPs would have to undertake additional training to ensure they’re qualified to undertake work that up until now has been the preserve of non-GP specialists.
 
We had a discussion about this at one of our health minister meetings late last year. One of the things we all agreed was that although it’s good to see some states sort of starting to push envelopes and then initiate a discussion. Ultimately, we will want consistency across the country. We have set up an advisory group under the health ministers umbrella to provide us with some advice this year about ways in which we can ensure these arrangements that pretty much every state and territory has now embarked upon are nationally consistent and high quality. Thanks, everyone.