Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme) Share this | Hansard source

I said in question time that the now opposition, when they were in government, did nothing to tackle fraud and allowed the circumstances to dictate whether crooks could come in. Did I hear in this motion any outrage about that? No! I also said that they didn't reform the NDIS and that they allowed a set of circumstances where participants were not getting a good deal or being looked after. Did they complain about that? No, they didn't. But what I should've realised is that the only way you can get something more than a heartbeat out of the opposition is to say that they didn't issue a press release.

I apologise for missing the five press releases you did in nine years—or the six or the 10.

But what I'm most amused about—and I don't know if there is a capacity for insight and self-reflection on the part of whoever dreamed this tactic up—is that there was no outrage about the NDIS, no outrage about their lack of effort in reform and no outrage about the payment systems they allowed to occur, but, 'Goodness me! I will fight to the death if you insult me for not putting out a press release.' How do you find a lost coalition politician in the forest? You stake an allegation that they didn't issue a press release and they will find you!

I listened to the Manager of Opposition Business and I waited for him to go through all of the actions they took to fix up NDIS fraud. But, to be fair to him, he couldn't talk about it, because you did nothing. You did absolutely nothing. This is what we found out upon coming to government. We found out that, under the current opposition, they had a payment system in the NDIS where thousands of invoices were submitted, and each day they would check 20—20 out of thousands—before they paid it. On a really good day, apparently they could go up to 21.

Of course, we also found out—and I'm sure, when I say this, the little voices inside some of the coalition members' heads are going to say, 'How could that have happened?'—that between 5 pm at 6.30 pm on any day when these characters were mismanaging the NDIS, if an invoice whistled in—

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