The Push and the Pull: Why Australia Must Advocate for the AuDHD Community — Together

You're sitting in a waiting room. You've been here before — maybe dozens of times. You're here because your brain works differently — autistic and ADHD — and you've spent years trying to explain exactly how those two things interact. But the system you're navigating was built as if autism and ADHD are two separate stories, happening to two separate kinds of people.

For the estimated 38–40% of autistic Australians who also have ADHD, that's never been true.

AuDHD — the experience of living with both autism and ADHD — isn't just one condition layered on top of another. It's its own thing. The push and the pull. Craving routine but being unable to stick to it. Needing quiet but seeking stimulation. Masking all day to fit in, then crashing into burnout that can last weeks, months, or longer.

And yet, when it comes to government policy, funding, diagnosis, and support, Australia still treats these conditions as if they exist in separate boxes. That needs to change.

Two inquiries, two very different outcomes

In November 2023, the Australian Senate released its inquiry into ADHD assessment and support services. The committee heard from 700 submissions and 79 witnesses. It concluded that ADHD is a "public health concern" requiring a "more consistent and coordinated approach." It made 15 unanimous recommendations.

The government's response? It fully supported one. Nine were supported "in principle" — government language for "we like the idea but won't commit to funding or timelines." Five were simply "noted." ADHD Australia called the response "falls short" — a diplomatic way of saying the community was heard but not listened to.

Contrast that with autism. The Senate Select Committee's inquiry into autistic services led to the development of a National Autism Strategy, a National Roadmap, and $42.2 million in the 2025–26 federal budget. That's real money, directed at a real plan.

For people who are autistic and have ADHD, this gap isn't academic. It means one half of your brain has a national strategy. The other half has "noted."

The diagnostic gap nobody talks about

Here's something that should alarm anyone involved in disability policy: Australia has clinical guidelines for diagnosing autism. It has clinical guidelines for diagnosing ADHD. But as of 2026, there are no nationally adopted clinical guidelines for diagnosing both together.

This matters more than it might sound. When autism and ADHD co-occur, they don't just stack neatly. They mask each other. The ADHD impulsivity can hide the autistic need for predictability. The autistic social patterns can be misread as ADHD inattention. For women and girls especially, whose presentations already differ from the male-skewed diagnostic criteria, this overlap can mean years — sometimes decades — of misdiagnosis or no diagnosis at all.

Researchers at Monash University have found that the gap between a parent first raising concerns and their child receiving a diagnosis can exceed five years. Five years of a child not getting the right support because the system wasn't designed to see them clearly.

And for adults? Medicare doesn't even provide rebates for formal diagnostic assessments of autism or ADHD for anyone aged 25 and over. If you're an adult who suspects you're AuDHD, you're looking at thousands of dollars out of pocket just to get an answer — assuming you can find a clinician who understands the co-occurrence in the first place.

Thriving Kids: progress or a step backwards?

In February 2026, the federal government released details about Thriving Kids, a $4 billion program aimed at providing early support for autistic children and those with developmental delay aged eight and under. On paper, it sounds like good news.

The reality is more complicated. The program is designed to move children with low to moderate support needs away from the NDIS and into a separate system. The Australian Autism Alliance has expressed deep concern that this could undermine the rights of autistic children and their families. A parliamentary inquiry report in December 2025 called for genuine co-design, strong safeguards, and a careful staged approach so no child loses access to support.

But here's the question nobody in government seems to be asking: where does ADHD fit into Thriving Kids? If a child is autistic with low support needs, they may be moved off the NDIS. If that same child also has ADHD — which is the case for roughly four in ten autistic children — what happens to the support they need for executive function, emotional regulation, and daily living skills that stem from the ADHD side?

The answer, right now, is silence. ADHD isn't mentioned in the program's design. And silence is not good enough when you're talking about a child's access to the support that shapes their life.

Why advocacy must be joined up

The autism community has built something powerful in Australia. Organisations like Autism Aspergers Advocacy Australia, the Autism CRC, and grassroots advocates have fought for decades to get autism recognised, funded, and understood. That work has been extraordinary.

The ADHD community has fought its own battles — against stigma, against the myth that it's a childhood condition you grow out of, against a system where medication rules vary wildly between states and a GP in Queensland can prescribe what a GP in New South Wales cannot.

But for the AuDHD community, these parallel fights create a gap in the middle. When autism advocacy doesn't account for ADHD, and ADHD advocacy doesn't account for autism, the people who live at the intersection fall through. The gap isn't that these communities haven't tried. It's that the system still treats AuDHD as an edge case rather than a core category — and policy built in silos will always miss the people living between them.

This isn't a competition for resources or attention. It's an argument for coherence. When the government develops a National Autism Strategy, ADHD should be at the table. When ADHD medication prescribing rules are being harmonised across states, the unique challenges of AuDHD patients should inform the guidelines. When diagnostic criteria are being reviewed, the co-occurrence should be front and centre — not an afterthought.

What the government should do

The evidence is clear. The community has spoken — in Senate inquiries, in submissions, in waiting rooms, and in the quiet exhaustion of people who have spent years navigating systems that were never designed for them. Here's what needs to happen:

Develop national clinical guidelines for AuDHD co-diagnosis. Australia has guidelines for autism alone and ADHD alone. The co-occurrence affects nearly 40% of autistic people. The absence of co-diagnosis guidelines is a gap that costs years of people's lives in delayed or incorrect support.

Extend Medicare rebates for adult diagnostic assessments. Cutting off rebates at age 25 is arbitrary and harmful. Late diagnosis is common in the AuDHD community, particularly for women and non-binary people. Making diagnosis unaffordable doesn't reduce demand — it just ensures that the people who need support the most can't access it.

Ensure Thriving Kids explicitly addresses co-occurring ADHD. A program designed for autistic children that doesn't account for the 38–40% who also have ADHD is a program with a blind spot at its core.

Move beyond "in principle" on the ADHD Senate inquiry recommendations. Fifteen recommendations were made. One was fully supported. The ADHD community deserves the same level of commitment that produced the National Autism Strategy.

Fund research into AuDHD-specific outcomes and interventions. We know these conditions co-occur at high rates. We know far less about what support actually works best for people who have both. Closing that knowledge gap should be a research priority.

This is personal

If you're reading this on audhd.org.au, chances are you already know what it feels like. The burnout that comes from masking both conditions all day. The frustration of explaining to a clinician that yes, you can be autistic and have ADHD — they're not mutually exclusive, and they haven't been since the DSM-5 changed the rules back in 2013. The exhaustion of advocating for yourself in a system that keeps asking you to pick a box.

You shouldn't have to be your own expert, your own advocate, and your own case manager. That's the government's job. And right now, they're not doing enough.

The AuDHD community isn't asking for special treatment. We're asking to be seen as we actually are — not split into two halves that get two different levels of support, two different levels of funding, and two different levels of political will.

It's time for Australia's autism and ADHD advocacy to come together. And it's time for every level of government — federal and state — to stop treating these as separate problems and start building a system that works for the whole person.

Because we are whole people. And we deserve whole support.

This article draws on findings from the Australian Senate Inquiry into ADHD (2023), the National Autism Strategy, Monash University's Turner Institute research on diagnostic barriers, and the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare's 2025 multimorbidity report.

Sources:
Senate Inquiry into ADHD: Executive Summary — Parliament of Australia
Federal Government Response Falls Short — ADHD Australia
Senate Makes 15 Key Recommendations, Now What? — ADHD Australia
Thriving Kids — Australian Government Department of Health
Thriving Kids: The Plan to Move Children Off NDIS — SBS News
No Time to Waste: Barriers to Earlier Diagnosis — Monash Turner Institute
Barriers to Assessment and Diagnosis — Parliament of Australia
ADHD and ASD Co-occurrence Prevalence Meta-Analysis — ScienceDirect
Unmet Needs and Service Priorities for ADHD in Australia — PMC
Australian ADHD Clinical Practice Guideline — PMC