As PM Julia Gillard introduced the NDIS Bill to Parliament she guaranteed two things. It would be designed around individual needs, and it would be affordable.

It’s only taken a decade, but it’s now obvious these pressures are directly contradictory. The cost of enrolling young children, in particular boys with autism, was cannibalizing the public goodwill necessary for the scheme to exist. The public would, at some stage, no longer be prepared to foot the bill.

This had been becoming obvious for years, but no politician was prepared to take away shiny gifts once they’d been handed out.

Coalition governments ignored the growing problem because it was often their voters - protective, over-invested parents - who were responsible for the blow-out. Bill Shorten didn’t address the real reason for the added cost either. He refused to act, and simply wandered around blaming bad actors who were supposedly ‘rorting the scheme’.

Now, finally, Mark Butler has acted.

Make no mistake about his determination. He knows he hasn’t got the states on board yet, and he understands the amount of entrenched opposition he faces from the many individuals - parents and providers - who are going to lose out as these reforms kick in.

Nevertheless he’s ploughing ahead because he believes in the reforms. And, critically, Butler’s got Anthony Albanese’s backing. He’ll need all the help he can get if he’s going to make the new scheme work.

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If we want to understand the motivation behind Butler’s reforms, we need to understand the way the scheme has changed over the past decade. The original intention of the NDIS was very different.

At that time, Gillard told Parliament “more than 400,000 people are living with significant and permanent disabilities”. That was, roughly, the number the scheme was budgeted for back in 2012.

This month, the latest NDIS Quarterly Report said 739,414 people are now on the scheme, with that number growing daily. It’s also close to double the original number Gillard proposed, and that was the financial time-bomb embedded in the scheme.

As people (particularly caring parents) realised their children were eligible for NDIS packages, and as other organisations (especially the states) realised they could hand over responsibility, more and more people began enrolling in the scheme.

Why? Because they could. After all, Gillard insisted the scheme would “provide participants with what is necessary to achieve their goals and aspirations, and take part in the community, in keeping with what it is reasonable to expect a scheme to provide”.

What’s changed is the cost. The scheme is no longer politically reasonable. All Butler has done is recognise this. This mightn’t seem like much, but it’s a political gamble that no other minister has been prepared to take until now.

Today, one in five boys at age six is on the scheme. Girls are enrolling at slightly less than half that figure. Their parents won’t be happy.

Butler believes he’s created an off-ramp by insisting that Foundational Supports are the solution and handing responsibility for handling this back to the states.

It’s an elegant solution. Unfortunately, the states aren't on board yet. Neither are the participants, providers, the coalition, or the Greens.

There’s still a long way to go before the reforms are bedded down.