21/08/2025
OPEN LETTER: Minister Butler — Autism Is Not Mild, Temporary or Negotiable. Yesterday, you betrayed our children.
Dear Minister Butler,
Yesterday at the National Press Club, you told the nation that too many autistic children are on the NDIS. You called their supports “overservicing.” You spoke about “mild to moderate autism.” And you suggested autism is “not a permanent disability.”
These words were not just wrong they were discriminatory, harmful, and a betrayal of every autistic child and family.
Autism is lifelong. There is no such thing as “mild autism.” These labels are political inventions, designed to justify stripping children from the NDIS. Children do not stop needing therapy because the government needs to save money. To suggest otherwise is not policy, it is cruelty.
You announced Thriving Kids as the alternative, backed by $2 billion and built on behaviour programs like Inklings programs already rejected by the autistic community as unsafe, compliance-based, and damaging. Families are being told to trust an untested scheme, with no detail, no transparency, and no guarantee that their children will have access to therapies, trusted providers, or meaningful supports.
Let’s be clear: this has been done without input from autistic people, parents, or disability-led organisations. Once again, decisions are being made about our lives, without us. That is not co-design, it is exclusion.
Minister, Australia has ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD). This commits you to:
• Closely consult with and actively involve disabled people in policy decisions (Article 4.3).
• Ensure disabled children enjoy all human rights equally (Article 7).
• Protect children from medical or scientific experimentation without free consent (Article 15).
• Guarantee respect for physical and mental integrity (Article 17).
• Ensure health interventions are based on free and informed consent (Article 25).
You have ignored these obligations. Thriving Kids is being built behind closed doors, without consent, without transparency, and without autistic leadership. That is a direct breach of international law and a direct assault on the rights of children.
Here is what your cuts mean in reality:
• Children will lose speech therapy, OT, and psychology.
• Families will lose choice and control, forced back into broken state systems that already fail.
• Mothers will be driven from the workforce into poverty, forced to homeschool and care without support.
• Autistic children will regress, mask, burn out, and suffer long-term harm all to balance a budget.
Minister Butler, you are dismantling the NDIS. You are punishing children and parents for your government’s failure to properly fund mainstream services. And you are doing it with language that demeans and dismisses us.
Autism is not temporary. Autism is not mild. Our children are not “overserviced.” They are human beings with dignity, rights, and futures worth investing in.
Hope in Colour Advocacy will not stay silent while you trample those rights. We will fight, we will organise, and we will hold you accountable.
History will not remember you for $46 billion in “savings.” It will remember that under your watch, autistic children were abandoned, silenced, and stripped of the supports they were promised for life.
We call on these leaders and organisations to stand with us and demand answers:
Mark Butler MP
Anthony Albanese
Amanda Rishworth MP
Senator Jordon Steele-John
Dr Monique Ryan
Lauren Kathage MP
Rob Mitchell MP - Federal Labor Member for McEwen
Australian Labor Party
Gerard Rennick People First Party
The Australian Greens
Children and Young People with Disability Australia
Every Australian Counts
Yellow Ladybugs
Regional Autistic Engagement Network
Australian Neurodivergent Parents Association - ANPA
People with Disability Australia
People First Victoria
Aspect - Autism Spectrum Australia
Autism Goals ASD School Advocates
Autism Awareness Australia
Reframing Autism
Women With Disabilities Australia (WWDA)
ABC Australia
The Guardian
Herald Sun
Women's Agenda
A Current Affair
7NEWS Australia
9 News
Guardian Australia
The Australian
The Age
Sincerely,
Shanntelle Marks
Founder | Hope in Colour Advocacy
