Radio interview with Minister Butler, 5AA – 25 July 2025

DAVID PENBERTHY, HOST: We are joined by the person who has the ultimate responsibility in Australia for the management of the NDIS and that is the Federal Health Minister and Member for Hindmarsh, Mark Butler. Minister, good morning, and thanks so much for your time. Obviously, this is a really stressful situation, and we do know that the feds and the state government are working with Bedford to try to resolve it. We spoke to the chair of Bedford, Janet Miller, just before 7 o'clock, and she was making some criticisms about the way organisations like Bedford now operate under the NDIS structures. Are you in a position to shed any light on how things have changed since the NDIS started up and started having oversight for organisations like Bedford?

MARK BUTLER, MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGEING: Morning, guys. This is a really deeply worrying situation, just generally but particularly for people of South Australia who've known Bedford as an icon for eighty years. They've got themselves into a deeply serious financial position and I know that at a national level, big organisations that support people with often quite complex disability are talking to us about the exact nature of funding that they receive and I think that's a legitimate discussion that I'm having with a number of those very big providers. But that doesn't explain the position Bedford's got itself into. It is a really parlous financial position. They came to see me last month and we've been working with them pretty closely ever since, particularly working closely with the state government, which to their credit have really stepped into this space to see whether there's a solution for Bedford. And we'll keep doing that over the course of the day. I know that the Premier's meeting with them, I've been dealing mainly directly with the Treasurer myself, including as recently as yesterday. But I can't overstate the difficulty that Bedford has got itself into and digging them out of this hole is not straightforward. They're really in a very difficult financial position. The tragedy is there's 1,400 people whose jobs are on the line and, you've talked to them, I'm sure.
 
PENBERTHY: Yeah.
 
BUTLER: For many of them, it's much more than a job. It's a social connection that means so much to them. I'm really worried about this, and we're doing everything we can to see whether there's a way forward.
 
PENBERTHY: To that point, this was something that we did ask Janet Miller. I don't know if you managed to hear the interview, but from what I'm hearing, it sounds like Bedford has gone on what could almost be described as a spending spree in the last 12 months, establishing a new commercial kitchen operation, a bakery, a laundry, a recycling operation. They've spent $12 million building a manufacturing facility. A lot of that's on them, is it not?
 
BUTLER: At the end of the day, they're a private organisation, and obviously we're always careful about using taxpayers' money to help out private organisations, whether they're profit-making businesses or not-for-profits like Bedford, to get themselves out of a sticky position. But it does seem clear that they have tried to diversify their financial position, and it's not come off in the way in which they wanted and now they are in really, really dire financial circumstances. For the last several weeks we've been trying to get a clear line of sight of exactly how bad things are and what the pathway out is.
 
Now generally, governments won't give money to a failing business or a failing organisation and hope that the management that's got themselves into that position in the first place is going to be able to get themselves out. Usually what will happen is an independent administrator will come in and do that job. That's what's happened at Whyalla. It's what happened with the Healthscope hospitals that your listeners might be familiar with who are in administration right now to try and find a pathway out. But really what Bedford management is asking the state government and the feds to do is give them money directly to prevent them going into administration in the hope that they can get themselves out of that position. And we've been working hard to understand really whether that's viable.
 
PENBERTHY: So just to be clear on that then, it sounds as though you're not ruling out assistance for Bedford in the event they go into administration and it's a different management group that takes over or a different ownership group that takes over?
 
BUTLER: That's usually what happens. That's usually the process. If there's the confidence of an administrator being able to put some expert independent eyes over the financial books, whether it's something as massive as Whyalla or something like Bedford, then government has a bit more confidence. But the position Bedford has got itself into means there's not that wiggle room. We're really concerned. Whyalla is able to keep operating in administration. The Healthscope hospitals are still operating at full bore. No interruption to their activity at all. But I'm concerned that Bedford is in such a deep financial hole that going into administration they don't have much cash on hand to continue operating in the way in which they do while an administrator works out a path forward, and that's the difficult position that the state government and the feds, and frankly, I think their bank as well has found themselves in.
 
We've been working with them, we've been talking to the company that would likely be the administrator yesterday. Bedford, to their credit, referred that person to us who have been able to have some direct discussions with them. What we want to understand really is what the path forward is, so that hopefully this organisation that's delivered so much to our state could have a viable future.
 
PENBERTHY: Knowing what you know about the disability sector with your oversight obviously in your portfolio, cash flow issues aside, how hopeful would you be that there would be another private operator that would step in and run a business like this? Even in the absence of their alleged overspend, how profitable and how sustainable is it?
 
BUTLER: There are different aspects to Bedford's operations. Some of the support or accommodation in those services, I have a high level of confidence that there would be another organisation that could step in pretty quickly and straightforwardly to do that. The challenge really is Bedford is so big as a provider of employment. They're really by far the biggest here in South Australia. They're the second biggest employment provider to people with disability in the whole country. But finding someone who can step in to take over that scale of operation will be a challenge. That's really what all of us have been grappling with. This is not just another disability organisation providing employment. This is by far the biggest of its type in the state.
 
PENBERTHY: Before we let you go, Mark Butler, can you do the people of South Australia a favour and get Murray Watt to declare the algal bloom a natural disaster?
 
BUTLER: What we've done, and you know, I did a lot of media over course of the last week talking about this and hopefully giving some confidence to South Australians that we were taking that case to Canberra. We did. And on Monday morning, we had cabinet meetings -
 
PENBERTHY: You didn't do enough. You haven't done enough. You really haven’t. I'm telling you, Mark, in the eyes of our listeners, in the eyes of every single person I've spoken to, Murray Watt's visit here was a PR disaster for the Albanese Government.
 
BUTLER: What we were focused on over the last several days was not PR, as important as I understand that is. What we were focused on is, first of all, last week, me trying to do everything I could to lift some awareness at the national level of what was happening here in South Australia. Particularly, the degree to which it had escalated over the last several weeks, but also make sure that when the South Australian government put a request to us as the feds, which they did last week, we carefully considered it. On Monday morning, we delivered it in full. So that's what I'm focused on.
 
PENBERTHY: But it's not in full without it being a natural disaster. I mean, you've lived down the Port Adelaide area. You know it like the back of your hand. How is it not a natural disaster?
 
BUTLER: The important thing right now is do everything the South Australian government has asked of us, and we've done that.
 
PENBERTHY: You haven't done that, though. We had Mali on the show saying it's a natural disaster. It should be declared one.
 
BUTLER: But the reason people are having this debate about terminology is what it unlocks in terms of money. Now, right now, we've given the South Australian government every dollar that they've asked for. The fact is, as you know, David, this is a new situation. This is a new type of extreme ecological event. Yes, it's a disaster. But as I've said over the last several days, I see it more in the nature of a drought. It's slow moving. It's very extreme. It's not like a bushfire that at a single point in time comes in and devastates a town where you know exactly what's happened within an hour of the thing happening. The point is we've got to work with the state. The point is we've got to give very serious consideration for every request they make to support business and support the community.
 
And I accept the criticism that this has been a bit slow. The best time to have done this would have been some weeks ago, maybe even a few months ago, but the second best time is now. We've tried to do and I personally have tried to do everything I can to lift awareness of this, lift a sense of urgency at a national level about this, and right now what we've done is provided every dollar the South Australian government has asked for right now. I suspect there's going to be much more for us to do as well.
 
PENBERTHY: I think there will definitely need to be, and I'm not trying to be rude or to ambush you by asking you about it, but I'm just letting you know the feedback we've been getting is unlike any other issue I can remember. There's a huge sense that SA has been let down. And as you have acknowledged, you were a bit late to the party, so we've just got to keep a massive eye on it because people are really, you know, caravan park operators we spoke to yesterday over on York's general store at Port Vincent, people are saying, we haven't heard anything. And you compare it to a drought, it should be treated like a drought. You get assistance for a drought. Why not this?
 
BUTLER: I agree, and what I've tried to do is frame it as a drought. I think it's much more like a drought than a bushfire. At the end of the day, though, the terminology is not the important thing. The important thing is that South Australians have confidence that their national government is working on this, not just the South Australian government. I hope they've got that now because over the last several days, South Australians have really gone to Canberra with a clear intent to give a sense to everyone of the enormous scale of this disaster.
 
PENBERTHY: Mark Butler, the Federal Health Minister, thanks for joining us.