Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Tyrrell, for the opportunity to speak about the announcement. We have been working with our partners, the states and territories, communities and service providers on foundational supports for a very long time now. In fact, the idea of foundational supports for children, which Thriving Kids responds to, was recommended to us by Professor Bonyhady and Lisa Paul who undertook an extensive review and spoke to many thousands of people about what needed to happen to the scheme. The answer that came back to them and the recommendation that came to government from that inquiry was that we needed to rebuild the system of supports outside of the scheme.

The government then engaged with our state and territory partners, and all parties agreed that the place that we would start would be with children. There are plenty of opportunities to do better for our kids. We don't need parents spending much time, much money, much energy chasing diagnoses when what they're looking for is support. Thriving Kids is all about establishing opportunities for parents to find support when they need it. There will always be the need for children with high support needs to access the NDIS, and Minister Butler made that very clear in the remarks that he made to the National Press Club. But we can do better for the families and the children affected by developmental delay. We intend to do so, and we do intend to do so in partnership with experts, with parents, with families and, of course, with people with disability.