Labor floats ‘Thriving Teens’ scheme as laws pass to remove 240,000 from NDIS

Federal and state governments must urgently start work on setting up new disability systems for older children, teenagers and adults with lower needs after the parliament this week passes laws that will remove 240,000 people from the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

Health and Disability Minister Mark Butler said a scheme akin to a “Thriving Teens” program would need to get off the ground within the next 16 months to make sure older children who no longer qualified for the scheme aren’t left in the lurch when eligibility changes start in 2028.

Labor sealed an agreement with the Coalition on Tuesday to pass its contentious NDIS overhaul, which should recoup $37 billion for the federal budget in the next four years, and $150 billion in a decade. The bill passed the Senate with a tranche of amendments on Tuesday night, and will return to the House this week to become law.

Butler said federal officials were already designing new NDIS eligibility assessments that will come into effect in January 2028, but there was plenty of work to be done by then so that new systems will be ready to cater to people who no longer qualified for the $50 billion scheme under stricter criteria.

State governments, except for Queensland, have implementation plans ready and to start rolling out the Thriving Kids scheme for children under nine with development delays and autism from October this year, with its complete rollout due by the start of 2028.

Even though it will have taken Thriving Kids four years to have gotten off the ground – counting the time between the first state agreement in December 2023 and its official full launch date – Butler said the government was sticking to its timelines for having all other systems prepared.

“We need to have those other systems ready to start on the 1st of January 2028 as well,” Butler said on Tuesday.

“Now the bill passes, really that’s the next piece of work we need to move to very quickly. Very shortly we’ll be in a position to start those discussions formally with states.”

Butler said the government expected to learn a lot from the Thriving Kids process, which would allow it to more quickly design support schemes for older children.

“When I speak to high school principals, they often say we need ‘Thriving Teens’, we need this program for children older than nine,” he said.

“But I don’t gild the lily here. That is a lot of work for all governments ... we’ve got a lot of work to do between now and the end of 2027.”

The laws that will pass the parliament this week enable a wide range of changes designed to restrict eligibility to the NDIS for those with permanent and profound impairments while improving provider registrations, integrity and anti-fraud measures in the scheme.

But the government will also rely on mass cuts to people’s social and community participation budgets to drive down costs quickly. From October, people whose plans are being renewed will have those budget allocations cut by 50 per cent on average, recouping billions for federal coffers.

This was one of the most controversial decisions because it does not discriminate based on participant need.