SMH · Brittany Busch · Wednesday 22 April 2026
Health Minister Mark Butler announced long-awaited NDIS reforms alongside aged care fixes in a pre-budget National Press Club speech, tackling the scheme's $50 billion cost trajectory.
Fifty billion dollars and the word 'reforms' — the scheme was meant to give disabled Australians a life, and the ministerial response to it blowing out is to bundle it with aged care in the same speech like a two-for-one pub meal. Butler's not fixing the NDIS. He's managing the optics of a budget line that frightens the Treasury. The people who need the scheme are, as usual, somewhere down the agenda after the press release.