Asked if this meant there would be new guidelines,Shorten said,“I think we need to have clarity around entry”.

A recent research paper by scholar Maathu Ranjan,who is on leave from her role as a senior actuary at the National Disability Insurance Agency,also suggested the scheme could explainwhy Australia’s autism diagnosis rate outstrips the global average.

But while Australia’s autism rates are higher than in the UK and the United States,they are on par with Japan,where early intervention is common and has been proven to help children later in life.

Shorten said he did not question people’s autism diagnoses or the benefits of early intervention.

“I’ve got no doubt that diagnosis may be correct ... We all know early intervention is an excellent tool to help get kids with developmental delay to do better because we’re helping them earlier,” he said.

“But the NDIS is in danger of becoming the only lifeboat in the ocean ... So we’ve got to have a conversation in Australia about helping kids with milder forms of developmental delay who don’t need to be on the NDIS.”

NDIS architect Professor Bruce Bonyhady,who co-chaired the review,said recently that children’s developmental difficulties and disabilities are mainstream issues that should be serviced in homes,early childhood settings,schools or family centres,rather than in clinical settings.

But Shorten said there would be no overnight changes to how people access support.

“Anything we do has to be done with people,not to them. There’ll be a lot of fear and panic because[quite a lot of people are] on the scheme because there is nothing else,” he said.

“We’ll walk,we won’t run. This will be a transition,it won’t be an overnight earthquake.”

The review is expected to be published after a national cabinet meeting next month.

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