Intervene in kids’ lives early or lose $20bn a year, Labor warned

Australia’s failure to intervene early enough in children’s lives to identify health and developmental issues is costing the country more than $20bn a year, new Minderoo report reveals.

Minderoo Foundation co-founder Nicola Forrest. Picture: Supplied

Australia’s failure to intervene early enough in children’s lives to identify health and developmental issues is costing the country more than $20bn a year, prompting Nicola Forrest to declare that taxpayers’ money was being “squandered” in reactive policies that were addressing consequences of inaction.

The co-founder of philanthropic body, Minderoo Foundation, Ms Forrest said the new data was particularly startling because the cost of late intervention had increased by nearly 50 per cent since 2019.

Minderoo’s Cost of Late Intervention report reveals $22bn was spent in 2024 alone, in areas including unemployment support, health crisis services, child protection and youth crime.

“These figures are conservative at best. The true cost is unequivocally higher because the headline figure doesn’t include such things as children missing school and families crumbling under the pressures of complex home environments,” Ms Forrest writes in The Australian.

“This is not about governments spending more money … This can be as simple as child development checks, a timely autism assessment, ensuring a young child with language delays has access to a speech therapist, better post-partum care for mothers, and maternal nurses working with families who may not yet be equipped to deal with complex child health issues.”

Ms Forrest invoked the Victorian Labor government’s early intervention investment framework, a model also used by the Productivity Commission earlier this month as an example of how to improve outcomes across the care economy, as an example to draw from.

The calls for an overhaul in early intervention programs come as the Albanese government mulls how and when to bed down its universal childcare ambition, while also setting up a new system of services for mild to moderately autistic children in the hopes of diverting them away from the NDIS by mid-2027.

Health and Disability Minister Mark Butler’s $2bn Thriving Kids program, which Labor hopes will be backed by the states through matched funding, will seek to support autistic children aged zero to nine through existing systems like maternal health and childcare.