He didn't say it was going to happen now.

What he said was it will happen as that's what the governing bodies(AFC) want. ATM there is no pressure as the AFC know the situation and know it will take time but... The FFA can't be seen to be sitting on their hands and doing nothing, there will come a day where this will become a requirement.
I can see us going down the path of the J-League were you can progress so far on results but once you get to a certain height on the pyramid to progress further you will need to start fulfilling criteria and obtain the right on field results to progress.

At the moment in Japan you cannot be promoted from 3rd to 2nd division unless you fit the criteria for 1st division and gain the right on field results(finishing top 2). The criteria is things like Capital, A certain level of professionalism, sufficient stadia, sufficient academy, being majority Japanese owned etc. When the J-League started the JFA had a 100 year plan where they planed to have 100 professional Football clubs, that was in 1992, 20 years on and I think there's something like 60 professional Football clubs in Japan.