Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Integrity and Safeguarding) Bill 2025. For Australians with significant and permanent disability, the NDIS is more than a program; it's a pathway to independence, dignity and opportunity. That's why the coalition's support for the NDIS remains unwavering, but it is also why we must be honest about the challenges the scheme now faces.

The NDIS is at a critical juncture. It was designed to support around 410,000 Australians. Today, it supports more than 760,000 Australians. That growth underscores the importance of ensuring the scheme is sustainable, because sustainability is not an abstract concept; it is what guarantees the NDIS will be there not just for those who rely on it now but for future generations. The government must bring the escalating cost of the NDIS under control before the scheme becomes unsustainable. While the need for reform is clear, the government's progress against its own targets remains uncertain.

The coalition supports the intent of this bill. We support stronger protections for NDIS participants. We support tougher civil and criminal penalties for providers who are doing the wrong thing, because any provider who exploits a person with disability or misuses taxpayer funds must face serious consequences. There is no excuse for that kind of behaviour, and there is no place for it in the NDIS.

We also support the introduction of antipromotion orders. Providers must not be advertising or selling services that are outside the purpose of the scheme. We support giving the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission stronger powers, including banning powers to act against providers delivering poor-quality or unsafe supports.

While we support the introduction of a 90-day cooling-off period, we have circulated an amendment to close an unintended loophole with this measure. It is a loophole that would allow a correspondence nominee to withdraw a participant from the scheme or cancel a withdrawal, even against the participant's wishes. A correspondence nominee is there to assist, not to make decisions against the wishes of the participant. If that line is blurred, it risks removing agency from the people the NDIS is meant to empower. The coalition's amendment makes it clear that these decisions must remain with the participant. We have worked with the government and we are pleased it has agreed to support our amendment. This is a sensible and practical change that will close the loophole, to protect participant choice.

In relation to the antipromotion orders, a report by the ACCC earlier this year found that providers are advertising services clearly not covered by the NDIS. These services include all-inclusive holidays, flights, cruises, dining out and even the cost of ingredients for meals. We are seeing participants being sold equipment that does not match what they were promised. With around 94 per cent of providers operating unregistered, there remains a massive regulatory blind spot. The bill fails to establish direct fraud controls for the majority of the market. Some bad actors within the system are exploiting vulnerable participants and the taxpayers who fund this support. They're getting away with it because weak checks and inconsistent oversight have opened the door. It is essential that the NDIS has greater controls to detect fraud early and to stop exploitation before it harms participants.

The Australian National Audit Office estimates that six to 10 per cent of payments could be non-compliant, incorrect or fraudulent. In 2025, $48.83 billion was spent on the NDIS. If 10 per cent of these claims are fraudulent, we are looking at a staggering loss of $4.8 billion every single year. These losses are driven by systematic misconduct, fraud, false claims or claims for services never delivered.

Law enforcement has also warned that organised crime is now targeting the scheme. In March this year, the Federal Police raided a Sydney home linked to a suspected $3.5 million NDIS fraud syndicate. In February, a Darwin NDIA employee was charged over an alleged $5 million fraud. In my home state of South Australia, a provider overclaimed and charged for services never provided. Another two men defrauded the system of over $465,000. This is systemic exploitation.

This bill is a step in the right direction, but tougher penalties alone will not fix the problem. If the system itself is weak, bad behaviour will continue. The coalition's goal is to deliver a stronger NDIS which delivers better outcomes for participants, providers and the taxpayers who fund it.

Dorinda Cox (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak also on the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Integrity and Safeguarding) Bill 2025. I want to start by acknowledging the work of the Community Affairs Legislation Committee and thanking the secretariat and my fellow senators for their considered engagement. The committee's report makes it clear that these reforms are not just necessary but also overdue. It highlights persistent gaps in safeguarding and enforcement within the scheme and the need for stronger regulatory tools to protect participants and absolutely uphold the integrity of the NDIS.

At its core, this bill is something very simple but also something very important. It is about respect, dignity and safety for people with disabilities. The NDIS is one of the most significant social reforms in this country's history, and it represents a promise that people with disability will be supported to live full, independent and dignified lives. But a promise is only as strong as the system that it upholds. What we know from the royal commission, from the independent review and from the lived experience of participants is that the system has not always been safe. We have seen abuse, we have seen neglect and we have seen exploitation. When that happens, it's not just a failure of compliance; it's also a failure of justice. This bill responds directly to those failures.

When Labor came to government, the NDIS lacked basic prevention controls for fraud and noncompliance. Our government acted. We invested over $550 million to establish the Fraud Fusion Taskforce and began the work of putting the scheme back on a sustainable footing.

But there is more to do. The committee heard clearly that regulatory gaps remain and, in too many cases, the system has not been able to prevent harm or respond effectively when it occurs. There was also strong support across the sector for reforms that strengthen accountability and safeguard participants. This is absolutely what this bill delivers. It strengthens the power of the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission; it enables early intervention, stronger enforcement and real accountability. Most providers are doing the right thing. They are committed, professional and working every day to support people with disabilities. But, unfortunately, some are not. Some exploit a system designed for care. Where there is fraud, there is too often harm, violence, abuse and neglect. This is why this legislation matters.

This bill introduces a stronger and more proportionate penalty framework. It includes higher civil penalties for serious breaches, new criminal offences for the most egregious conduct and real consequences for those who deliberately put participants at risk. Penalties should not be seen as a cost of doing business. They should send a clear message that harm to people with disabilities will not be tolerated. This bill expands on banning order powers. It closes loopholes that have allowed individuals to move across roles to continue operating despite unacceptable conduct. If someone is not fit to work in this space, they should not be able to re-enter through another pathway.

It also introduces antipromotional orders to address predatory and misleading marketing practices. Choice and control must be grounded in honesty and transparency. This bill further strengthens information-gathering powers; this allows the commission to act more quickly and address risks before they escalate into harm. Importantly, this legislation also includes participant safeguards. The 90-day cooling-off period for participants seeking an exit to the scheme is a practical protection. It ensures decisions are informed and are not made under pressure.

This bill is not about punishing providers. It is about protecting people, it is about restoring confidence in the NDIS, and it's also about sustainability. A system that tolerates exploitation is not sustainable, it is not financial, and it certainly is not moral. The NDIS must have a stronger regulatory backbone. It must be proactive, consistent and centred on participants' safety. The Albanese Labor government has been very clear. We will protect the integrity of the NDIS. We will support providers who are doing the right thing. We will act against those who are not, and people with disabilities deserve nothing less.

Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today, I speak to the changes to our NDIS and focus on integrity and on safeguarding. Day after day, disabled people experience violence, abuse, exploitation and neglect. These injustices must be eliminated. This bill moves us steps in the right direction, and, for that reason, the Greens will be supporting it.

That said, there is still much work to be done to ensure that disabled people are free from abuse, from neglect and from violence. We must continue to strengthen our laws, and the NDIS must evolve so that participants and their individual needs are truly at the centre of the scheme. Today, I am putting forward amendments to address key gaps in the NDIS, backed by disabled people, advocates and service providers. One of the key ways that we can strengthen our NDIS is by making it easier for people to speak up when something is going wrong.

A critical reform is strengthening whistleblower protections. Right now, support workers who speak up about neglect or fraud risk discrimination, punishment or the loss of their livelihoods. That is unacceptable. Stronger protections exist in aged care, and the disability sector should be no different. People who come forward to expose wrongdoing deserve protection, not punishment.

Our amendments will allow anonymous disclosures and expand protections to more people, including former workers and participants, so that fear of retaliation does not silence them. I understand the government will be supporting the Greens's amendment. That is a positive step—one that will help more people come forward and expose wrongdoing within our National Disability Insurance Scheme—and I am proud that it will improve the safety and wellbeing of people.

We must be clear: there is still more to do. Even with these amendments, whistleblowers in the NDIS are not yet fully protected. While we have not secured every single change today, I welcome the government's commitment to further consultation. In this bill, the NDIA will get new power to request information from a participant or from a provider. There aren't a lot of guardrails around this change. That's why I'm proposing that the NDIA must consider privacy when it is requesting information. This will mean better protection for participants and those providing a service. It'll mean the participants won't have to choose between exposing their personal information and paying a bill.

Now, I must take this opportunity to raise the deep challenges that disabled people and our families are experiencing because of the significant changes to the NDIS as a result of Labor and the Liberals teaming up in this place. What I am hearing from the community is consistent—cuts, concern, uncertainty. One of the big stinkers that the Liberals and the Labor government teamed up to do was removing the 'reasonable and necessary' supports definition. This definition guaranteed that each NDIS participant would be able to argue for the individual support that they needed. In its place, we have a yes/no list. That yes/no list is too restrictive, leaving disabled people across the country without the support that they have relied on for years.

We need to return to 'reasonable and necessary', and my amendment today would make that happen. Sadly I do not expect the government or the opposition to support this. I nevertheless commend these amendments to the Senate. Each disabled person is different. The supports we need are different and unique, and that should be reflected in our NDIS.

Kerrynne Liddle (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Integrity and Safeguarding) Bill 2025. The coalition will be supporting this legislation while also flagging important amendments we will be moving and registering significant concerns about how far this bill falls short of what is truly needed.

The NDIS currently supports more than 760,000 Australians with disability, including our 65,000 participants in my home state of South Australia. Given the scale of the scheme and the public investment involved, it is essential that parliament continues to carefully scrutinise its performance to ensure it is operating effectively, remains sustainable and delivers safe, effective and appropriate services for participants.

The coalition reaffirms our strong and unequivocal bipartisan support for the NDIS and the role the scheme plays in enabling Australians with significant and permanent disability to live with greater control and choice. This legislation is the second in a series of changes the government has made in response to the 2023 independent review into the NDIS and the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability. One of the most significant, welcome measures in this bill is the introduction of antipromotion orders giving the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission new powers to address providers who advertise or sell products that are clearly inconsistent with the purpose of this scheme.

We must be clear eyed about what this bill does not do. These changes provide no direct regulation of fraud controls for the 94 per cent of NDIS providers who are unregistered, and that's not a minor gap. In my office and those of colleagues, we receive a steady stream of reports from NDIS participants who have sought quotes for basic supports like gardening, cleaning and household assistance only to find that the moment they mention 'NDIS' the price quadruples. This bill does not fix that.

The ANAO has reported that the NDIA estimates that between six per cent and 10 per cent of claim outliers could be non-compliant, fraudulent or incorrect. Law enforcement agencies have warned that organised crime is increasingly targeting the scheme, exploiting fragmented oversight. This is not a peripheral concern; this is an existential threat to the NDIS if it is not confronted directly and decisively by this government. The government cannot claim to be protecting the NDIS while billions of taxpayers' dollars are potentially leaking through fraud and exploitation. Before Labor cuts support to participants, it should start by cutting fraud.

The coalition supports the introduction of a 90-day cooling-off period for participants who wish to withdraw from the scheme. As it is currently drafted, a participant's correspondence nominee—a person appointed simply to receive copies of correspondence—would be able to make or cancel a request to withdraw from the scheme on behalf of the participant. That's inconsistent with section 79(1)(a) of the act, which makes clear that a correspondence nominee cannot act in relation to the preparation, review or replacement of a participant's plan.

The coalition will be moving an amendment to ensure that only the individual participant or their plan nominee can make or withdraw a request to exit the scheme. That's really important. It's about choice and control by the participant or their nominee—no-one else. It's critical. We urge the government to support this amendment. It is straightforward in its fix to an unintended consequence that, if left uncorrected, could expose some of our most vulnerable participants to significant risk.

The broader picture is that the NDIS is at a crossroads. The scheme has grown rapidly. Originally expected to support around 41,000 Australians, it now supports more than 760,000 participants. While it's true that this bill is a step in the right direction, the government must not make the mistake of thinking it is a step for a destination. The destination has not been reached by this bill.

I move the second reading amendment in the coalition's name:

At the end of the motion, add ", but the Senate notes that:

(a) the Government and the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) have been unable to clearly quantify the scale of fraud within the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS);

(b) the NDIA Fraud Fusion Taskforce estimates that up to 10 per cent of NDIS claims are inappropriate, mischievous or outright criminal;

(c) the Government must do more to prevent the fraud and rorting that is rife within the NDIS;

(d) the changes in the bill will do little to remove bad actors from defrauding participants and taxpayers;

(e) the changes in the bill provide no direct regulation or fraud controls for the 94 per cent of NDIS providers who are not registered; and

(f) robust integrity systems are critical to not only protect taxpayer funds but also to protect NDIS participants from exploitation by unscrupulous providers".

Lidia Thorpe (Victoria, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In this country we apparently have a principle in the law that no-one should be tried or punished more than once for the same crime. But in 2024 this place passed an amendment bill to the NDIS, the Getting the NDIS Back on Track No.1 bill, which effectively ripped that principle to shreds. The 2024 amendment has meant that anyone convicted of a crime punishable by imprisonment for two or more years or crimes involving fraud or dishonesty can no longer manage their own NDIS plan or the plans of their children and family members, even after they've served the time.

As we all know—and I keep talking, to educate you fellas, about cultural awareness, to know the situation of the nation—Aboriginal women are disproportionately represented in the criminal legal system as a direct consequence of the racial and gendered violence entrenched in colonial history in this country. A lot of minor offences carry maximum penalties of two years for so-called crimes like failing to follow the direction of the police, or stealing food. What's more, 95 per cent of First Nations people appearing in court charged with a criminal offence have an intellectual disability, cognitive impairment or mental illness. This means that First Peoples and First Nations women, especially those with disabilities, are criminalised.

But instead of giving people control and autonomy to manage their own lives and their own affairs, which is the intention of the NDIS, the amendment that passed in 2024 strips criminalised people of their agency and forces them to relinquish control over their lives and those of their families. The 2024 amendment directly contradicts the push towards self-management and self-direction of disabilities and basically says to criminalised people and their families, 'We don't trust you'. Because the 2024 amendment applies to carers and parents not able to manage plans for their kids, Aboriginal mothers are further punished and Aboriginal children further institutionalised. This is a return to the old mission era: roundin' us up and givin' us our little rations—flour and sugar. The 2024 amendment has meant that family members who serve as critical safeguards and supporters for disabled people and ensure their needs are met in a culturally safe and respectful manner are stopped from managing the care of their loved ones.

I urge the Senate to pass my current amendment to repeal the changes made to NDIS in 2024, because it's not just black fellas that are affected. It's everybody who is affected: everybody who may have made a mistake, got a 2-year term and completely lost control of their own lives. If my amendment is not passed, the idea that Australia does not believe in second chances for criminalised people is further entrenched. I mean, even senators who've been to prison get a second chance! If my amendment is not passed, we entrench the idea that we must punish, and punish again, and offer no pathway to freedom—especially for criminalised First Peoples with a disability.

Wendy Askew (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today in support of the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Integrity and Safeguarding) Bill 2025. At the outset, I reaffirm the coalition's enduring and unequivocal support for the NDIS. It is one of Australia's most significant social reforms, reflecting our commitment to ensuring Australians with permanent and significant disability can live with dignity, independent, safety and choice. The coalition helped build the scheme and we remain committed to protecting it for participants today and for future generations.

The NDIS now supports more than 760,000 participants, far exceeding the original forecast of around 410,000. Growth itself is not the issue. It reflects unmet need and the vital role the scheme plays. However, the pace and scale of growth, combined with weak integrity settings, pose serious risks to participants, taxpayers and the long-term sustainability of the NDIS.

As the scheme has expanded, so, too, have noncompliance, unsafe practices, predatory behaviour and outright fraud, often targeting the most vulnerable Australians. In April 2023, the government committed to limiting annual growth to eight per cent, later reducing this to five to six per cent in August 2025. Yet these targets were announced without a credible plan and growth continues at close to 10 per cent per annum. That trajectory is clearly unsustainable.

Integrity must sit at the centre of decision-making. Participants must be protected from harm and taxpayers must be able to trust that public funds are being used appropriately. This bill seeks to strengthen safeguards and, in many respects, it moves in the right direction. It increases civil and criminal penalties to 10,000 penalty units and expands the powers of the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commissioner, including banning and antipromotion orders.

The coalition supports strong penalties for wrongdoing. Providers who defraud participants or deliver unsafe services must face serious consequences. But penalties alone are not enough. Without effective detection, enforcement and timely action, even the strongest penalties risk being meaningless.

The ACCC's February 2026 report found widespread misleading advertising and unethical conduct, and providers falsely promoting holidays or dining as NDIS supports, selling faulty equipment, refusing refunds and imposing unfair contract terms. The harm to participants and families is significant, and trust in the scheme is eroding. The new antipromotion powers are therefore justified. However, serious gaps remain—94 per cent of NDIS providers are unregistered, yet this bill introduces no regulatory framework for the vast majority of the market. These gaps are being exploited.

Coalition officers hear frequent reports of inflated prices for basic services once providers learn costs will be charged to the NDIS. That is exploitation, and weak verification allows it to continue. Banning powers will only be effective if the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission is properly resourced and able to act quickly. Delay too often means harm has already occurred. We also support expanded electronic claims provided non-digital options remain available, particularly for regional areas such as Tasmania, where connectivity is unreliable.

The coalition supports the 90-day cooling off period for participants seeking to withdraw from the scheme, however concerns remain about proposed section 29A, which could allow a correspondence nominee to request or cancel a withdrawal, undermining participant autonomy. This must be corrected, and the coalition has moved an amendment to ensure only the participant or an appropriate plan nominee can make such a request.

Finally, public confidence is essential. The government cannot clearly quantify fraud, yet the ANAO estimates six-to-10 per cent of NDIS outlays may be noncompliant. That's billions of dollars each year. Every dollar lost to fraud is a dollar denied to Australians with disability. The NDIS is one of Australia's greatest reforms. This this bill is a start, but much more must be done.

Corinne Mulholland (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Australians are rightly proud of the life-changing support the NDIS provides to people with a disability. It is vital that we protect it for the long term by making sure the NDIS is sustainable, is effective, is safe and, most importantly, operates with integrity.

We know that the NDIS wasn't just drifting under the Liberal Party; it was being driven into the ground. The coalition left Labor with a mess—a mess that we must clean up brick by brick. When Labor came to office in 2022, spending on the National Disability Insurance Scheme was growing by 22 per cent a year. The ANAO found that the system set up by the previous government lacked basic prevention controls for fraud and compliance. So it is this government that is restoring integrity to the scheme.

We are cracking down on fraudulent behaviour and dodgy providers. We know that every single dollar that is taken away from a participant by fraud is a dollar they are denied in the care and services they so deeply and desperately need. That is why our government has acted quickly, investing over $550 million in tackling fraud and noncompliance, including setting up the Fraud Fusion Taskforce and amending the NDIS Act. Now more claims are being reviewed every single day than were reviewed in a year under the previous government. That's more scrutiny and more integrity under this government.

Under the coalition, the NDIA required no substantiation for any claim. Under this government, we have the capability to screen every single claim for basic levels of compliance. To go to some of that compliance, let's talk about the warrants. Under the coalition, 30 warrants were issued across four years from 2018 to 2021. Under this government, 77 warrants were executed in just 2025 alone. That is more than double the number of warrants under this government, showing the level of integrity, compliance and cracking down on dodgy behaviour that we are tackling.

Under the coalition, the then CEO of the ACIC, Michael Phelan, said leakage could be as high as 15-to-20 per cent. Under this government in 2024, when he was head of the NDIS commission, he said that the estimate was conservative, but that was 2022, not now. Now, of course, the government has put in place a lot of mitigation strategies.

Unfortunately, where we see fraud in the system, we too often see violence, abuse and neglect of participants. We as a government are determined to clean up the sector and protect people with a disability. This bill will introduce: a stronger penalty framework for breaches, including failures to comply with registration conditions; banning orders; and a code of conduct. It will mean that banning orders can be issued to auditors and consultants. It will give the NDIS commission the power to issue anti-promotion orders, to restrict unscrupulous providers from promoting products or services that undermine the integrity of the NDIS. These are commonsense measures, and they are ready to go.

We know that there is still more work to be done. As a member of the Joint Standing Committee on the NDIS, I know the minister has referred to our committee an inquiry into fraud to recommend future measures. This is something that I know the committee is already looking at in public hearings around the country, to hear from participants firsthand about their experience, to make sure that we can continue to increase integrity, to crack down on fraud and to increase compliance. Our goal over time is to create an integrated system where compliance is easy and noncompliance is hard, because it's what participants deserve, and it's what they'll get from us.

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

The reforms in the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Integrity and Safeguarding) Bill 2025 are long overdue. The National Disability Insurance Scheme has been rife with fraud and corruption since it began. This is always what happens when the government creates a new scheme with a new pot of taxpayers' money. Governments always fail to put in place effective integrity standards and quality safeguards at the beginning. Criminals and grifters exploit the scheme, preying on the taxpayer, and the government only then realises safeguards are necessary. One Nation supports the NDIS to provide reasonable and necessary support for Australians with significant disability. We strongly believe most Australians support it too. However, that support will evaporate unless fraud and corruption are stopped. That support will disappear unless the scheme is returned to its original purpose. One Nation welcomes new requirements imposed on NDIS providers, although we believe these should have been in place from the start. This is a classic case of shutting the stable door long after the horse has bolted.

In this particular case, billions of taxpayers' dollars have gone down the drain without providing any help to any Australian with a disability. We'll never get any of it back. The coalition turned a blind eye to it for years. At least Labor has tried to implement reforms to make the NDIS less corrupt and more sustainable, and One Nation has supported these moves. We'll work with anyone, provided it's in Australia's best interests. However, One Nation understands that much more has to be done to ensure the survival of the NDIS.

I've been out and about in South Australia and the federal seat of Farrer these past couple of weeks. Members of the community have approached me with amazing stories about the NDIS. These stories reinforce the need to overhaul the entire scheme. One of these stories involves the NDIA wanting to give a family $80,000 from the NDIS, which they did not ask for and do not need, just because their son is on the autism spectrum. I am pleased the family saw this as a rort and declined. I've heard similar stories from others whilst also hearing that participants with significant or severe disabilities are not having their more urgent needs met. The NDIS was not originally intended for people with mild autism, but now more than $10 billion per year goes to participants with autism. There's now evidence that some parents go shopping for doctors and looking for an autism diagnosis for their children just to get onto the NDIS. This is plain and simple corruption, and it needs to stop if the NDIS is going to be sustainable.

We must further limit eligibility for the NDIS to Australians with significant disability. We must also limit eligibility of certain treatments and therapies. An obvious example is the NDIS payment for sex worker services, which remains illegal in some jurisdictions. Another big factor in the budget blow-out of the NDIS is pay rates. Specialists like psychiatrists and registered nurses are paid up to three times more under the NDIS than in any other health sector. Not only is this unsustainable and unjustified but it is causing a critical shortage of these specialists in other health sectors, like aged care, disability care, veteran care and overwhelmed public hospitals.

Unskilled workers under the NDIS are being paid obscene amounts of money to do things like fold laundry or drive participants to medical appointments. The basic rate on a working day in a major city is $67 per hour, rising to more than $200 per hour in regional areas and even more on weekends and public holidays. It's no wonder that a third of the new jobs created by the Albanese government are in the NDIS itself. It's no wonder that NDIS spending will reach $52 billion this financial year—almost as much as the entire Defence budget. These are the factors One Nation demands be addressed so the NDIS can survive on the continued goodwill of the Australian taxpayers to fund it.

To listen to Senator Mulholland, who spoke before me, say Labor are the ones calling for accountability and for fraud to stop—if that's the case, why didn't the government support my inquiry last week into fraud that's happening? No, they don't want to and they won't go far enough to shut down this fraud that's happening here. We're talking about 300,000 service providers out there. Only around about 20,000 are registered. People are joining the scam because it is an absolute scam, ripping off the taxpayer, which will cost the taxpayer an estimated $100 billion by 2032.

Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I table an addendum to the explanatory memorandum and a supplementary explanatory memorandum relating to the government amendment to be moved to this bill, the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Integrity and Safeguarding) Bill 2025.

The NDIS has been transformational for the lives of people with disability and for their families, and I am determined to see it take its rightful place amongst the pillars of our uniquely Australian social safety net. This bill is a significant step in the right direction. I thank the thousands of people with disability, their families, support workers and providers as well as the broader community for coming forward and sharing their stories in consultations on this bill, in consultations on scheme reform and in the disability royal commission. We have heard these stories, and for many they have not been easy stories to tell. To those people: you have made a difference. We've heard your stories and we've heard the need for change. We heard that, when things go wrong, far too often vulnerable people do not get the support they need, and that safeguards around fraud and integrity in the NDIS desperately need strengthening.

Under the former coalition government, the NDIS was rendered a soft target. Fewer than 30 staff in the NDIA worked on fraud. Under this government, there are hundreds. Under the coalition, just 30 warrants were issued across four years from 2018 to 2021. Under this government, 77 warrants were executed in just 2025. Under the coalition, there were just five prosecutions in their last year in office. Under this government, 21 prosecutions have commenced already in this financial year.

We are making progress against those who prey on people with disability and the NDIS, but cracking down on bad actors trying to take advantage of the scheme requires further legislative change. This bill aims to address that. It will give the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission additional powers to be the regulator that participants and the scheme need and deserve. It will help the commission step out on the front foot by giving them strengthened regulatory powers and a long-overdue opportunity to be proactive instead of reactive. It will increase deterrence factors, with penalties consistent with our work health and safety laws, recognising that the lives of people with disability are valued as much by this parliament as the lives of any other Australians. Providers who intentionally or negligently harm participants in their care will be held accountable and feel the full force of the law.

Some senators have suggested that this bill does not tackle unregistered providers. This is false. Many of the penalties in this bill apply both to registered and unregistered providers. Banning orders apply both to registered and unregistered providers. All providers are required to adhere to the NDIS Code of Conduct.

Our message to fraudsters is a simple one. If you are banned from the NDIS but choose to contravene that banning order, you do not belong in the disability sector—you belong in prison. If you think you can get rich and cut corners by operating without registration when it is required, you also belong in prison. And, if you think you can get away with shonky marketing which tricks NDIS participants into misusing their funding, then we will fine you as much as $400,000.

We want the scheme to work for participants, not for people looking to make a buck off the back of exploiting people with disability. We know that there is more to do, and I look forward to the work over the coming months of the Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme, led by the formidable member for Corangamite, to consider further measures the government can take to safeguard the integrity of the scheme.

I thank senators for the many sincere contributions made to this debate over the last hour. Many have indicated support for the bill, which I appreciate. I thank the Liberal and Greens representatives who have worked with my office on amendments. I've written to Senator Steele-John confirming the government's intention to consult further on whistleblower protections and can confirm our support for the amendments you intend to move in relation to whistleblowers. There are a number of other amendments that will be moved—including, I understand, opposition amendments—which the government will also support. There are others we cannot support, and I will explain that in the committee stage. Lastly, I want to thank, again, the disability community for their advocacy on these reforms. I am confident they will make a difference and I commend the bill to the chamber.

Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

 The question is that the second reading amendment on sheet 3718 moved on behalf of Senator Ruston be agreed to.

Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—On the coalition's second reading amendment on sheet 3718, could I please have it recorded that Senator Payman supports parts (a) and (f) and opposes parts (b), (c), (d) and (e).