A plan to shift billions of dollars worth of NDIS spending to the states is snagging on one holdout jurisdiction as a minister also warns criminal gangs have penetrated the scheme.
Queensland is the only state or territory still refusing to take responsibility for autistic and developmentally delayed children with low-to-moderate support needs under the government's new Thriving Kids program.
States have agreed to chip in a combined $4 billion into Thriving Kids over five years, helping prop up Labor's sweeping efforts to curtail runaway NDIS spending.
But Canberra and Brisbane still appear divided on the issue despite the looming October 1 deadline for jurisdictions to sign up, angering Health Minister Mark Butler.
"I'm a little frustrated they haven't signed because all other states and territories, Liberal and Labor alike, CLP government in the NT has signed on," he told ABC Radio on Wednesday.
Queensland Premier David Crisafulli was shirking a responsibility he had previously promised to accept, according to Mr Butler.
"I can't imagine a Queensland government that, for the next 15 months, would sit on its hands and pretend it does not have a very serious obligation to follow the rest of the country," he said.
"Frankly (it should) implement commitments that the premier made at the National Cabinet meeting earlier this year."
Queensland was losing time to bring its Thriving Kids program online, according to Mr Butler, with the state expected to take up development checks, support programs, workforce capability preparation along with a suite of other obligations under the new framework.
The state has reportedly raised red flags over insufficient assurances about the welfare of Queenslanders relying on the NDIS.
The stern rebuke from the minister comes the day after Australia's most important security partners were warned organised crime syndicates were feasting on government programs, in an address by NDIS minister Jenny McAllister.
Senator McAllister paraded $2.1 billion in savings the government had swept up through NDIS fraud crackdowns since 2022, before US, New Zealand, Canadian and British representatives in a Sydney meeting of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing partners
On Wednesday, the senator described the NDIS as having been a "very soft target" and nearly defenceless against criminal gangs.
"We have had to start almost from scratch," she told ABC Radio.
"I also want any would-be criminal to understand that if they see this scheme as a target, they can expect to receive a knock on the door from police."
Senator McAllister highlighted a scheme believed to have defrauded the NDIS of more than $10 million from 2017 to 2021, perpetrated by a western Sydney criminal gang the last of whose six members was jailed on September 8 of this year.
Health professionals had been complicit in what the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission described as systemic rorting of the NDIS by organised crime in a separate review of the scheme's integrity conducted in April.
