The federal government has announced it will provide $2bn for a program designed to divert children with mild to moderate developmental delays or autism from the NDIS by mid-2027.
In a speech to the National Press Council on Wednesday, the health minister, Mark Butler, said some children placed on the NDIS were being “over-serviced”, putting strain on the scheme’s financial sustainability.
“Tens of thousands of young children with mild to moderate developmental delay or autism are on a scheme set up for permanent disability. I doubt very much that that is what most of their parents really wanted or expected,” he said.
Butler said parents had understandably felt the NDIS was “the only port in the storm”.
“They are desperate – absolutely desperate – to get their children diagnosed because we’ve made it the only way they can get help … the NDIS model just doesn’t suit their needs,” he said.
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Analysis in Nine newspapers this week suggested seven out of 10 new participants in the NDIS had autism as their primary diagnosis.
Changes to the access of NDIS won’t begin until mid-2027 once the Thriving Kids program has been fully rolled out, with work under way to provide a separate foundational support program for adults with severe and complex mental illness.
Children under 15 make up 43% of the scheme’s 717,000 participants but just 13% of all payments, according to an incoming government brief delivered to Butler in May 2025 and obtained by Guardian Australia under freedom of information laws.
The brief also showed participants who had autism or developmental delay as their primary disability made up half of the scheme’s participants but just 23% of payments.
“Families with a young child who is missing some milestones are not best helped by receiving a budget of $10,000 or $20,000 or $30,000 and then being expected to work out themselves how to spend it,” Butler said.
The program is the first clear system proposed to offer “foundational supports” – disability support outside the NDIS – for those with less severe impairments as initially proposed by the NDIS review in late 2023.
After the review’s release, the former NDIS minister, Bill Shorten, announced foundational supports would be jointly funded by the commonwealth and the states and territories and offer two streams: general supports for all people with disability, as well as targeted supports for people who are ineligible for the NDIS and for which their needs cannot be met through mainstream services.
On Wednesday, Butler denied the government was shifting away from foundational supports, instead saying programs, like Thriving Kids, gave shape to the previously “generic term”.
While it had been initially suggested that states and territories would develop their own foundational supports, Butler said the program would be jointly funded between state and territory jurisdictions and the federal government.
Butler said the current 8% growth target for the NDIS by mid-2026 as agreed to by national cabinet was “simply unsustainable” in the medium and long term, proposing it could be lowered to 5 or 6% in the coming years with agreement by national cabinet.
“I feel very deeply the responsibility to doing everything I can to secure (the NDIS’s) future for the long term,” Butler said.
