Radio interview with Minister Butler, 5AA – 21 August 2025

DAVID PENBERTHY, HOST: Well, the numbers are staggering. If unchecked, the NDIS which currently costs $46 billion a year will within the next decade more than double in cost to the taxpayers to $105 billion. It’s obviously unsustainable, and that’s the point the Federal Health Minister Mark Butler was making yesterday. Minister, thank you for joining us. The figures are just off the charts, aren’t they? How can you wind it back though without causing distress to people?
 
MARK BUTLER, MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGEING, MINISTER FOR DISABILITY AND THE NDIS: This is all about securing the future of a terrific scheme that’s transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people with disability. We’ve got to introduce more discipline, more integrity into this scheme. I think many of your listeners would be appalled at the drumbeat of stories of fraudsters and rip-off merchants making money out of this scheme because we don’t have the sort of systems in place that you see in health, in aged care, in veterans care, systems that make sure that providers in the area are up to scratch, they’re properly qualified, there’s good pricing discipline in the system. So, partly it’s not rocket science. It’s doing what we do in other social programs to get more efficiency, more integrity into the scheme. But I’ve also said that the big growth in the scheme in terms of numbers, which is kids with mild to moderate levels of developmental delay or autism, should be being supported by other systems, not a system that was set up for permanent significant disability.
 
PENBERTHY: Well, is that a big part of the problem, where you talk about the fraudsters and the shonks, is perhaps a bigger problem that there’s actually a lot of legitimate mainstream behavioural or occupational type services, that because of the creation of the NDIS, they’ve all suddenly realised, as have the families of children with some less onerous issues, that if you get onto an NDIS plan, the government can sort of come to the party?
 
BUTLER: What I said yesterday is that it's been the only port in the storm for parents. All of those broad-based services that used to exist for kids who weren't hitting their milestones or might have mild to moderate levels of autism have all largely been dismantled in order to fund the big NDIS. I certainly don't blame parents. It's the only port in the storm that they've had. They’ve had to go and get the diagnosis, often waited a long, long time to get in there, paid thousands of dollars to get it, and ended up on a scheme that wasn't really built for them.
 
What I said yesterday, and we agreed as a set of governments a couple of years ago in principle to do this, that we'd set up a new program for thriving kids that would give parents that level of broad-based mainstream support they need to make sure their kids get on in life well.
 
PENBERTHY: The quarterly report makes for, some of the figures are eye-watering. So 740,000 participants, 23 per cent under the age of nine, 40 per cent with a primary diagnosis of autism. I appreciate there's an, I get the incentive structure component of this. It's the diagnosis part that confuses me. Are you satisfied with the definitions we have around autism and that the people on the medical side of this that are doing the diagnosing are doing the right thing?
 
BUTLER: That's not really a matter for me. I'm not a doctor. But clearly the diagnosis has been the entry point for this scheme, which is why parents have been desperate to get it because it's the only support that's really existed for them. I think your listeners would be pretty shocked to learn now that one in six boys in the average grade 2 classroom is on the NDIS. There are some regions of the country where it's one in four. One in four boys in every grade 2 classroom is on a system set up for permanent and significant disability. And I just don't think that is sustainable. We've got to build a better system for them and for their parents to ensure they have the support they need to thrive.
 
PENBERTHY: I guess that goes to my question then. Do we have some sort of autism epidemic in Australia at the moment? Or is it -
 
BUTLER: We do have higher levels of autism than some other countries. The point really though that I'm focused on is separating those people with severe levels of autism for whom it does present significant permanent disability and they should be on the NDIS long term. For most children who have mild to moderate levels of autism or developmental delay, for whom a more broad-based mainstream system of support is the right way to go.
 
PENBERTHY: Yeah, well, as we said at the start something has to change because the country can't afford such an open-ended approach. Mark Butler, Federal Health Minister, thank you for joining us this morning on 5AA.
 
BUTLER: My pleasure, guys.