This body is recorded here mainly as a counter-example, and a useful one.

This database has criticised short funding horizons twice: adult public dental, funded through an agreement running eleven and a half months at a time, and mental health, where the National Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Agreement expired on 30 June 2026 and was extended by a single year after the Productivity Commission found it not effective.

Legal assistance did the opposite. The National Legal Assistance Partnership 2020-25 was independently reviewed by Dr Warren Mundy, who made 39 recommendations and called for unmet geographic need, disaster response baseline funding and an expanded list of priority client groups to be addressed. Attorneys- General then agreed terms in November 2024 for a successor — the National Access to Justice Partnership 2025-30 — commencing 1 July 2025 with $3.9 billion over five years.

Reviewed before expiry, renegotiated before expiry, and settled for five years. That is the sequence this site argues for, done in a portfolio with less political weight than health.

Whether $3.9 billion is enough is a different question and the sector says loudly that it is not: the Law Council puts the shortfall at $500 million a year and centres are turning away more than a thousand people a day. A long agreement at an inadequate level is still inadequate — which is exactly the caution this database attached to the dental proposal.