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) (14:43): Thank you to the member for her question and for her role in being the deputy chair of the parliamentary inquiry into Thriving Kids, which really helped to inform the Thriving Kids Advisory Group's recommendations not just to the Commonwealth but to all governments about the design of this important program.

As the member knows, when we had discussions with jurisdictions about the rollout of this program that will provide support to children under the age of nine with more mild to moderate support needs associated with developmental delay and/or autism, all state governments indicated that they wanted to take the lead in service delivery. That's not an exclusive operation.

We will be doing things at a Commonwealth level that are appropriate—for example, through primary care settings and the like—but the bulk of service delivery will be undertaken at the state and territory level. What that will mean is that there will be a degree of variation between jurisdictions about the type of service and the location of that service which will largely turn on the history of service delivery that predated the NDIS.

The member is as familiar with that history as anyone in this chamber, I think, given her professional background. We have welcomed that indication of deep interest by state and territory governments to take a lead on that. It means that they can tap into some very longstanding, mature services, ranging from infant and maternal health services to school operations.

At the same time, we have been very clear that there are outcomes that we expect to see and performance indicators that we expect to have met by all state and territory jurisdictions. They are incorporated into the Thriving Kids bilateral agreements that all state governments have signed and implementation plans that all state governments—with the exception, unfortunately, of the Queensland state government—have also completed and submitted to the Commonwealth.

That is the basis on which they will be receiving additional Commonwealth money. The Commonwealth does not have a particular view about ways in which state governments should not do this. The outcomes are important from a Commonwealth perspective, and obviously we'll be monitoring those outcomes very closely.