Pauline Hanson (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, I do. What I've put up is a motion that we need to have an inquiry—I'd like to have a royal commission, but I've put up a motion for an inquiry—into the NDIS and the NDIA. I think it's an absolute disgrace—the way that has been run and the cost to the Australian taxpayers. It was written on the back of a napkin, initially, and the way it has been abused by a lot of people in this country, through fraud, I think is disgraceful.

It was set up by parents who were worried about the future of their children and how they would be cared for. That's why the scheme was set up.

As to what has happened, over a period of time, in the context of assessed risk and support coordination, in 2024 and 2025: the NDIA data indicates a rapidly expanding and uneven support coordination market, with significant fiscal and governance vulnerabilities. There were over 254,000 unregistered providers—to my understanding, now it's approaching 300,000 registered and unregistered providers, but over 254,000 unregistered providers were operating alongside only 16,000 registered providers, as of 25 June. In my understanding now, it's around 25,000 registered providers and about 280,000 unregistered. Support coordination expenditure exceeded $1.65 billion. Yet measurable participant outcomes remain unclear. These patterns expose several strategic, financial and regulatory risks that could affect the sustainability and integrity of the NDIS. And that is exactly what has happened.

Expenditure on support coordination continues to rise—approximately $1.66 billion in 2024-25—without demonstrable outcomes and improvements. Spending growth outpaces participant growth, increasing fiscal pressure on the scheme and Treasury oversight.

I just want to point this out, also. Take a look at another issue we need to look at: the immigration agents across Australia—look to see if they are importing people as students, or as new workers in NDIS and aged care. This is where our harm is stemming from in a majority of cases. Additionally, they are often NDIS providers, RTOs or the front for the RTO which is funnelling people into recognition of prior learning qualifications, and, believe me, the majority of these for this group of people are not a robust RPL they should be. Nothing but harm and fraud is happening.

There is a case where a shocking case has emerged involving Mumthaj Begam Kantara, a sixty-year-old former immigration agent who was banned from the profession for serious misconduct yet still managed to register and run an NDIS disability support service in Melbourne and allegedly stole nearly $300,000 from the National Disability Insurance Scheme. Begam pleaded guilty to 14 counts of dishonest conduct after claiming around $296,012 in payments for services that were never provided to five disabled clients between 2019 and 2022. Despite her migration agent ban for fraudulent applications and failing clients, she was able to operate the Elite Smart Community Care NDIS company, raising serious questions around oversight and how someone with a history of misconduct could be allowed to register so soon before sentencing.

Government authorities had previously found she was not a fit-and-proper person to give immigration assistance, having misled clients, mishandled fees and lodged fraudulent visa applications. Critics say that this case reveals gaps in monitoring and fraud prevention in both the migration and NDIS systems, especially where vulnerable people are supposed to be protected. Do you think stricter checks and longer bans should apply to people with proven fraud histories, or should systems be reformed entirely? I think they need to be both. They need to be reformed, and these people with proven fraud histories should not be allowed to go under the scheme.

Constantly, I am told by people that services are not provided to them, and we are getting ripped off by billions of dollars for people to actually walk their dogs, go on holidays, go on trips, go fishing, go to the cinemas and they've got to have the help and assistance. It's completely ridiculous what people allow because you want to give them a quality life. There are other people out there who are not on NDIS schemes who would dearly love to have their children allowed to go on riding lessons or swimming classes or on tours or holidays or go skiing or do this and that—everything like that. That's not about a quality of life. NDIS was set up to give people the health care and assistance that they need. It was not set up as a quality of life—enjoying these activities in life that the average person out there can only think of and is trying to save their moneys to do it, but it's not paid for by the taxpayer.

If we don't start reining in the fraud that is happening out there, we are not to have this scheme in the long term. By the rate it's going now—it's around $53 billion a year. This is going to blow out and is expected to be $100 billion by 2032. We're pouring more money into this than what we are with Medicare for the whole of Australia—28 million people. We've got around about 780,000 people that are now on the scheme. It's just mind boggling that these people and their complaints—one actually had chronic fatigue. 'Let's go and apply for NDIS'—we had another one that actually worked for NDIS and thought: 'No, she had lymph node problems, overweight. Let's get on the NDIS.' She was paid about $650,000 a year just to have a couple of carers which employed friends, and this was paying for first-class airfares from America to Australia, buying expensive bottles of alcohol for Christmas presents and buying tickets to the corporate box at the footy match for $45,000 to take family and friends—all thank you very much to the taxpayers. That was really good of the taxpayers, wasn't it? And guess what? She didn't have to pay it back. Where is the accountability?

There are other things that I've heard. I've heard of a prisoner who gets out of prison, gets on the scheme for $1.3 million. Another prisoner is on $803,000. Another prisoner is on $100,000. These are former prisoners. They were in our prisons. What I hear constantly from people is, 'Oh, listen, you mind my child and I'll get the NDIS. You mind my child and I'll mind your child.' They set up these scams. It's just unbelievable what goes on.

I cannot understand why the government has allowed this to happen. And it's not just this government; it was also the previous government. They did it as well. Cuddle therapy. Paying for your rent. Paying for your alcohol. This is all under the NDIS. Another thing people probably don't understand is it's not means-tested. You can be a multimillionaire and you can get NDIS—imagine that. And people do. And there's the rorting that goes on with your house. If you want another home or you want to do extensions because you're on NDIS: 'Well, let's go and get a new bathroom. Let's go and get a deck put on. Let's go and get a ramp put on.' This is out of control. This is costing not just a few thousand dollars; it can be half-a-million-plus.

They wouldn't release the figures for a long time. Some of the people here—we've got more than 5,000 people on the NDIS who are on schemes of more than a million dollars. I ask the question, have these people been paid out by their insurance companies? Maybe they had a road accident or something like that, so are they double-dipping with the scheme? Are they getting NDIS plus their insurance that's been paid out to them? There is so much fraud that is going on.

Another big thing the public should know is the amount they pay out in wages. They can claim wages of up to $195 an hour. Yet if you do that work in the normal field you're possibly getting around $70 or $80 an hour. If you're a nurse, you're getting less than that. But let's go on NDIS. You can make a heap of money out of this. That's why so many people are flooding to it. We've got 300,000 service providers for 780,000 to 800,000 people who are on NDIS. It doesn't make sense, does it? And we have these people jumping over to it because—and then we don't have these people who are professionals to deliver services to those in the community who need those services because they don't pay as much. They can only charge the average person out there about $80.

Oh, and I've got to mention this one! If you want to get your lawn mown it's normally about $70 or $80. 'No, mate, I'm on the NDIS.' 'Well, that's going to cost you $150 at least.' So let's just ramp up the cost. The taxpayer is paying for this. How disgraceful is it that this government has not reined this in. There has not been enough oversight to make sure that taxpayer dollars are accounted for. But that's not unusual for this government. I've seen it in many other departments right across the whole board. You have no respect for the taxpayer whatsoever.

Isn't it amazing that you have two men out there doing the rounds—Drew Pavlou and his mate Peter—

who are out there doing the government's job. They are investigating these businesses that are ripping off the taxpayers. They're the ones that are doing more with this than what the government are. With all your resources, all that fraud and you can't even deal with everything that goes on in this country. And yet you've got two young fellas doing it on the bones of their backsides and funding all this themselves and trying to save the taxpayers money. But the government is not interested in this. It's out there; it's staring you in the face. I get complaints from people all the time to my office. They are fed up with the fraud that's going on. They see it with their family, friends, neighbours and people in the community, and you can't tell me you don't get these complaints.

People have had a gutful, and this government is looking at increasing the capital gains tax and looking at death duties. You want to hit those people. You're attacking superannuation. You want more and more out of the people. You have an opportunity to rein in the NDIS and the fraud that's going on in this country. You have the opportunity to do it, and you don't. You want to tax the people more and more all the time. You don't care about the average person out there, who's trying to cope. I think it's disgraceful to allow some of these services to keep going on and on. You're not reining it in. Until we have equality in our system, regardless of whether you're an NDIS service provider, you should not be paid any more than what the average person is paid to provide the same service to any other person in the community who is not on the NDIS. That's why we need to have an inquiry into this. I wonder if the government has enough backbone to actually allow it to go to an inquiry. Do you really care about the taxpayer out there and want to rein in the problems that we have?

Another one is Cocoon. It collapsed and left a debt of payments owed in the millions—in total, $64 million in collapsed providers. That would've been in unpaid tax, super and wages. All these people have fallen over. You hear of one company being set-up, then they fall over, and then they go and set-up another company. What are you doing about the foreign students coming out here and taking up ABNs which they shouldn't have? No-one other than an Australian citizen should have an ABN. But they're registering ABN numbers, becoming service providers and ripping off the government. Then, at the end of the time, they're sending all the money overseas and they're not paying tax in the country, and you haven't even done anything about that either. This government is so disgraceful. You can't even rein in your own spending. You just think there's a money tree out there. It's plucked from the taxpayer, and you're not dealing with this whole issue. I hope that, because you care about the taxpayer, you will support an inquiry into the fraud that's happening with NDIS.