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

At the request of Senator Kovacic, the Deputy Chair of the Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme, I present the report of the committee's inquiry into the integrity of the NDIS, together with accompanying documents. I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

I rise today to speak on the tabling of this report. While the coalition members of this committee wish to thank the participants, families and advocates who shared their often harrowing stories, we must be blunt about the findings before us. The NDIS is a life-changing social reform, but its integrity is not a technical afterthought; it is a fundamental condition of its purpose, because for every dollar that is lost to maladministration, misuse, fraud, integrity leakage—whatever you want to call it—is a dollar that doesn't go to a person who needs it most.

The National Disability Insurance Agency has admitted to a broad integrity leakage of between 8.2 and 8.3 per cent, a figure that equates to approximately $3.7 billion every single year lost to errors, noncompliance and criminal fraud. It's a national shame. The chair's report, while documenting the scale of the crisis, fails to deliver the structural solutions required to protect the scheme's future. It can go much further than it does.

We heard chilling evidence from the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission that the scheme is being targeted by higher end organised crime groups, some based offshore, who view the NDIS as merely one component of their much bigger, broader business model. These syndicates don't just commit paperwork errors; they use intimidation and threats of physical violence to coerce vulnerable participants and their families into collusive arrangements, effectively recycling the proceeds of disability fraud into other criminal activities.

We must reject the report's framing that this is the work of a limited number of bad actors. Organised networks that chop and change companies to evade detection and exploit cognitively impaired Australians are a systemic threat, not a residual one. The most glaring structural failure remains the unregistered provider market, which now accounts for a staggering 94 per cent of all active providers. This has created a vast shadow market, operating with almost no accountability to NDIS standard practices. We received evidence of cleanskin registered businesses being sold as commodities to individuals who have never undergone a single screening check.

While criminals exploit the back end of the system, our rural, regional and remote communities are being abandoned at the front end in so-called thin markets. The combination of a flawed pricing model and the government's abrupt 50 per cent cut to travel reimbursement is forcing legitimate high-quality clinicians to withdraw from service.

I actually gave an example that was given in the inquiry about Groote Eylandt, and I wrote to two Labor ministers saying this is a matter of urgency. People on Groote Eylandt who have MJD, which is a progressive condition that means they lose their mobility and independence—it's a devastating condition—need a response soon. They might be out of sight to most of us, but the conditions that they live with every day require urgent, consistent and appropriate responses. I still haven't received a response, and that was weeks and weeks ago. It's not just me waiting. Those people in that community are waiting for a response.

There is great concern, first and foremost, for the very people these providers service.

Most providers do the right thing. They really care for the people they're providing services to, but there needs to be more focus on those that aren't. It's interesting that, in the last couple of weeks, we've seen a big flurry of media reporting on providers to the NDIS that have been charged or are currently in the process, somewhere, of criminal proceedings. We need a better system, not to respond at the end but to intervene early, to make sure every taxpayer dollar in the NDIS goes to a person who needs it most, not to fraudsters.

I talked about the unregistered market. We must close that unregistered market. Integrity must be built into the front of the scheme so we know exactly who is claiming taxpayer money before those funds move elsewhere, move to where they're not being used for the purpose of the scheme. We have to protect whistleblowers against injustice and harmonise NDIS protections with the Corporations Act to ensure that those with the courage to speak up are supported by the law and not punished by it. Australians with disability and the taxpayers who fund this scheme expect those who exploit the vulnerable to be confronted and held accountable, not merely monitored as an efficiency target.

The coalition will continue to fight for a scheme where every dollar reaches the person it was meant to support and where people living with a disability have access to personalised, responsive and appropriate care and support regardless of the postcode that they live in. We can do better. We must do better. As the Prime Minister has said, we must not leave Australians behind, and that includes these Australians. I commend the additional comments to the Senate.

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

I'll just make a few brief remarks on the report now before reserving to continue when the Senate reconvenes. I, first of all, want to thank every member of the committee for the diligence and dedication that we brought together in carrying out this report and this work. I want to thank the witnesses that took the time and energy to share their stories with us as a committee. And I want to thank the secretarial staff, who did such a great job ensuring that we as a committee could undertake our work efficiently and very productively.

Through the course of this inquiry I have had a lot of opportunity to reflect on the realities experienced by those who are the victims of big provider fraud within the NDIS and the experiences of those members of our Australian disability community, who, right now, bear the brunt of that criminal activity while also living under the weight of public discourse around this topic.

I'll save my more detailed comments around the report for when the Senate reconvenes, but I do want to put this very clearly on the record: disabled people and our families are the people who suffer the most when fraud is committed by big providers. We're the ones that lose the services. We're the ones that lose the supports. There is, I think, no community more passionately committed to stamping out provider fraud from the NDIS than disabled people and our families, for this reason.

It has been really heavy and hard for the community to have to bear the weight of that experience while also, from day to day, seeing commentary from the government that fed a narrative—and feeds it to this day—that it is disabled people who are primarily responsible for fraud within the NDIS. I have to say quite bluntly to the government—who, when challenged on this, will talk about the fact that they don't often talk about individual participants in their discourse around this—that what we heard very clearly in the course of the inquiry was that the Fraud Fusion Taskforce does not measure fraud. They do not have a definition of fraud. When asked about the question of fraud, Mr Dardo said, 'We don't measure it.'

Instead, what do they do? Well, they measure something called 'integrity leakage'. Now, what is 'integrity leakage'? I've got to commend Senator Kovacic for one of the most forensic examinations of government spin I've seen in a while, because what we discovered as a committee is that 'integrity leakage' is a broad term for a number of different categories of reported activity—yes, some fraud, but also accidental inappropriate payment. If somebody is required to submit two invoices and they click 'go' and only one invoice comes through, that is bounced back and recorded as 'integrity leakage'. So it includes accidents, mistakes, genuine fraud and 'sharp practice'. Now, what's 'sharp practice', folks? 'Sharp practice' is abuse. 'Sharp practice' is the governmental catch-all for financial exploitation and abusive practice, and that figure is lumped together and reported as integrity leakage.

That's where we get the number of eight to 10 per cent of the NDIS potentially being fraud that we see in the media. That's not fraud. That's 'integrity leakage', and I just think that is so disingenuous. We've seen, over the course of the last couple of months, the minister and other members of the government talk about tackling fraud and the need to tackle fraud, and they've quoted this figure, knowing full well that the taskforce they set up has not told them, and has never, ever told them, that fraud within the NDIS is measured accurately by the work that they do and can be reflected accurately by that particular figure. That's just been left out there, and that's wrong, because leaving that out there as a perception—being so loose with the language—has allowed a lot of people to draw conclusions about what is happening and who is responsible.

What we heard was that the vast majority of fraud that does occur is committed by large providers and that the government's response to these instances of fraud is woeful. In the time that the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission, the so-called cop on the beat, has been in existence, since it was set up, it's secured somewhere between 23 and 25 convictions for fraud.

That's ridiculous. That makes a mockery of the idea that this government is genuinely committed to tackling fraud and to stamping out big-provider fraud in the NDIS. That's nowhere near good enough. These people running these companies need to be held to account. I've got absolutely no time for bureaucratic nonsense that talks about how 'maybe we haven't got convictions, but we have put in place processes that have made it so much harder for these people to rip off the system and to rip off disabled people, so we've diverted fraud away. We've stopped it happening so you wouldn't see it in the figures'. Nonsense! If you want to end fraud in organisations, you send a clear cultural message by putting the perpetrators in prison for a long time, and then you watch the culture change and you watch the fraudulent practice from these companies end. That's how you do it.

We need to strengthen these systems. We need to safeguard those who would report fraud by properly strengthening the whistleblower safeguards in the act. More than anything, this government needs to stop pretending that the legislation—the NDIS bill that it's trying to get through this parliament—was created and is intended to ever tackle fraud, because that's nonsense too. When confronted with a basic question—how much money is this government intending to raise in their budget through these NDIS changes from fraudulent providers versus how much will they raise from cutting the basic and essential supports required by disabled people and their families?—what was their response? Their response was: 'Senators, we intend to raise $40 billion over the next four years or thereabouts from our measures, and, of that amount, less than $5 billion comes from fraudulent providers. The rest is from people's basic plans and supports.' It's an absolute outrage, and we must scrap this bill. I seek leave, however, to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.