Radio interview with Minister Butler, ABC Radio Sydney – 22 August 2025

CRAIG REUCASSEL, HOST: Mark Butler is the Federal Health Minister, joins us now. Morning, Minister.
 
MARK BUTLER, MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGEING, MINISTER FOR DISABILITY AND THE NDIS: Morning, Craig.

REUCASSEL: Yeah. So, look, Glen obviously open for that, and we have people open to it. But a lot of concern as well from parents whose children do have autism and are on the NDIS. How will Thriving Kids save us money but also be able to actually deal with the problems of these children?
 
BUTLER: Glen’s story, I think for me, reinforces what this is all about, and that is recognising that the NDIS has genuinely transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people with disability, and that’s what it was intended to do. But we’ve got to make sure that it’s secure for the future, and that’s really my number one job. Australians cherish what the NDIS has done for their fellow Australians who live with disability, but they are very concerned about the speed with which spending is growing in the NDIS. They’re concerned about the number of dodgy providers in there, this drumbeat of stories that they hear about in their own community or read about in the media of fraudsters and shonks, frankly, making money out of this scheme. We do have a job to secure it for the future, to make sure it retains that broad community support that is there but is under pressure, and we’ve got a blueprint to do that. We’ve got to introduce more discipline, more integrity into the scheme more broadly, and we've got aged care, healthcare, veterans care, well-established systems as a lesson of how to do that.
 
But we also have a review from a couple of years ago that recommended that children with relatively mild to moderate needs, who had essentially flocked to the NDIS because there was no alternative for their parents, should be supported by a broad-based mainstream service, not by a scheme that was set up for permanent profound disability. That's really what I about at my Press Club speech this week.
 
REUCASSEL: And when you say flock to, I mean, it's extraordinary numbers. More than half of new participants on the NDIS are under nine. Seven in 10 people joining the schemes have autism as a primary diagnosis. So this is obviously a huge influx into the NDIS. What do you say to the parents, though, who are concerned about what they're going to get from Thriving Kids? We spoke yesterday to Sarah Langston, the President of the Australian Neurodivergent Parents Association, and she was kind of contrasting, saying the NDIS is this kind of evidence-based support that kind of is key towards or geared towards the actual interest of the child and what that child needs. She said that Thriving Kids is just going to be a kind of generic program. What do you say to these parents about what Thriving Kids is going to actually do?
 
BUTLER: Firstly right to say I think people are shocked at the number of children who've ended up on the NDIS. About one in six grade two boys are on the NDIS, and there are parts of New South Wales where it's as high as one in four. Remember, this is a scheme set up for profound permanent disability. I do want to get back to that original design of the NDIS. It was never designed to support children with developmental delay or mild to moderate symptoms of autism. But what happened is that those broad-based mainstream systems that had been there for many years to support parents and children in those respects were largely wound back in order to pay for the NDIS. What we've got to do is rebuild them.
 
My concern also is about the way in which NDIS supports families and children is that the model of the NDIS is essentially individualised plans and budgets, where participants who usually are on the scheme for their entire lives have a lot of choice and control over how they spend it. What happens for a parent whose four-year-old, three-year-old might not be hitting milestones is that they're given $10 - $20 - $30,000, and then expected to go and find out how to spend it themselves, instead of having high levels of guidance from clinicians about what sorts of therapy, what sorts of play activities are going to assist and support their child.
 
REUCASSEL: Okay. But under the changes here, those that have very severe autism will still have to do what you're saying. They'll still be given the money and have to go and find all this kind of stuff. What is going to be happening on Thriving Kids?
 
BUTLER: They will stay on the NDIS.
 
REUCASSEL: Yeah, they will stay on the NDIS. What is going to happen in Thriving Kids? Can you give us of an explanation to people? So those kids that have moved off NDIS and they might have milder autism, what services are they going to get through Thriving Kids? How is that going to work?
 
BUTLER: The first point I want to stress is that this was the announcement of a plan over the next two years. I said I would sit down with states who are very important partners in this, obviously, but also with the community, with parents, with service providers to design the details of this scheme. But I laid out a range of services that already exist that we're able to tap into. We don't need a blank sheet of paper and a pen here. Very early in life, parents are working with child and maternal health systems around the states that are able to do checks, pick up where there are some differences, for example, in how their young ones are communicating, particularly with their parents, and refer to some very strong evidence-based services that are starting to roll out around the country. We want to focus them. We want to resource them to make them much more accessible to people. Right now, what parents have to do is wait for a very long time to get a formal diagnosis, which can often cost them thousands of dollars. They might be out of reach of a lot of families before they get access to any support. We want it to be readily available in the community in systems where families are already participating; infant maternal health systems, general practices, community health centres, available in other activities that parents are taking their kids to.
 
REUCASSEL: You said the states are very important. The states didn't get a lot of heads up about this. This was Premier Minns speaking yesterday.
 
[Excerpt]
 
CHRIS MINNS, NSW PREMIER: I can't sign a blank cheque. I'm not going to commit sight unseen, but we will commit to working with the Commonwealth Government to have a sustainable disability support program right across the country, and New South Wales of course, will do its bit.
 
[End of excerpt]
 
REUCASSEL: If they are so important to this, why were they kind of not brought into the thing earlier, the idea earlier?
 
BUTLER: We've been talking with them about this for two years. And the feedback very clearly we got from the states was, first of all, they felt that they were being left to do this themselves. The rest of Premier Minns' comments refers to that particularly, the idea that there'd be a New South Wales system, a Victorian system, a Queensland system, so on and so forth, doesn't make sense in 2025. They wanted the Commonwealth to lean in more heavily and take more of a leadership role. I've agreed to do that. They also said they were concerned that we hadn't committed to funding on an ongoing basis. We'd funding for five years. I heard that and I responded to that this week, and committed to funding on an ongoing basis. It's not true that there haven't been discussions. The states and the Commonwealth have been talking about this for almost two years now since we were directed to do so by the Prime Minister and all of the premiers. It's time to get to work. It's time to actually start delivering a program. The report of the NDIS last week showed that the number of children coming onto the scheme, not only is it not slowing, it's increasing. We've got to get about actually delivering the work that the premiers and the Prime Minister set us to do back in 2023 now, almost two ago.
 
REUCASSEL: Look, I think people accept that you've got to fix the NDIS and make sure it doesn't keep swelling at the rate it is. It'll just be a question of, I guess, how you set up this alternative. And we'll be watching with great interest, as will many people who have children with autism. Thanks for speaking to us this morning, Minister.
 
BUTLER: My pleasure, Craig.