QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE
Mr BUTLER (Hindmarsh—Minister for Disability and the National Disability Insurance Scheme, Minister for Health and Ageing and Deputy Leader of the House) (14:52): Thank you to the member for Mackellar and thank you to Zoe for representing Adelaide's western suburbs up there in the southern speaker's gallery. The way we'll ensure that is by making sure foundational supports are agreed by 1 January 2028.
That is the agreement that all jurisdictions made with the Prime Minister through their heads of government, the premiers and chief ministers. This is not something that came out of the blue earlier this year. It was a decision of National Cabinet, back in 2023, to accept and endorse the core recommendations of the NDIS review that Bruce Bonyhady and Lisa Paul conducted back then, a central recommendation of which was to build that second tier of disability supports that was always envisaged by the Productivity Commission when recommending that our government back then put in place an NDIS.
The tragedy is that those second tier supports weren't put in place. Many of them did pre-exist the NDIS, as the member knows, and were either dismantled entirely by state governments or at least degraded to a significant degree. Back in 2023, when heads of government were making that decision, there was also a commitment for $10 billion—half funded by the Commonwealth and half collectively by states and territories—to fund what were called foundational supports, as recommended by the NDIS review.
As the member knows, Thriving Kids is well under way. I've seen implementation plans, I think, by all state governments, with the exception of Queensland. We're very satisfied with progress being made there.
They will start to ramp up from 1 October, with the expectation that they will be fully rolled out from 1 January 2028, when access and eligibility rules change for that cohort, which, as the member knows, is children under the age of nine. For other participants or potential participants who would not satisfy the new substantially reduced functional capacity test that is currently being developed by the technical advisory group—I had my second meeting with them the week before last—yes, foundational support systems will have to be built for them as well.
For kids over the age of nine and adults who might not end up being on the NDIS as a result of that new test being introduced, there's a lot of work for state governments and the Commonwealth to do there. We're committed to doing that work. The minister for the NDIS, Senator McAllister, met with her disability minister colleagues again on Friday.
That was reaffirmed as an agreed commitment by all state governments. Now, I understand people are nervous about these changes. I understand that they are significant changes about which we have had very constructive discussions with the opposition, which I want to acknowledge right now.
And there's a lot of work to do, but we are absolutely committed to doing that. And as the Prime Minister and I have made clear, obviously we will not let Australians fall between two stools without proper supports. We will have them in place by 1 January.