Libby Coker (Corangamite, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme. What action is the Albanese Labor government taking to protect participants by cracking down on fraud and rorts in the NDIS?

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

I thank the member for her question and for the work she does on the Joint Standing Committee on the NDIS. The government and, I think, most people in the parliament are very committed to the NDIS and its future and to it delivering outcomes for participants. Since we promised to focus on stamping fraud out of the NDIS, we've made some significant advances in identifying, stopping and deterring the fraud that has been happening for years in the scheme.

In October 2022, we committed $126 million to establish the long-overdue Fraud Fusion Taskforce. It's a multiagency taskforce to better protect taxpayers and participants. Before we set up the Fraud Fusion Taskforce, there were 41 fraud investigations on hand and 13 before the courts. I'm pleased to advise the House that in the March quarter of this year there are now 548 fraud investigations underway and 59 individuals before the courts. Before we established the Fraud Fusion Taskforce, about $214 million in payments for about 5,000 participants was being evaluated. Now, several billion dollars in payments is being evaluated for tens of thousands of participants.

For almost every single type of fraud that we're investigating now, we've discovered that this has been going on for years. For every provider fraud, we find historic claiming data for that provider or a similar group of providers going back for years. The normally avuncular member for Deakin made a chippy contribution in the debate where he said that most rorts started under Labor. Most rorts started—

No, you were nice to me personally, thank you. But the problem is that the rorts have been rife for years. The NDIA did not have a system to see, deter or detect. We are making up for years of bad systems. I think the members of the parliament would be shocked by some of the examples. There was a longstanding vulnerability of identity management for participants and providers. Get this: under the previous government, they were literally paying non-existent ghosts payments in the scheme. The prepayment claims scrutiny was non-existent. It used to be, under the previous government, that they would look at 21 claims a day—21 out of tens of thousands. We now look at thousands. But get this: so bad was the system that if you made a claim between 5 pm and 6.30 pm—I kid you not—there was no scrutiny. You just got paid within the 24 hours.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The minister will pause. The member for Deakin knows what's going to happen soon. He's on a warning. I would just like there to be one day where I don't have to remove him.

Not you, Member for New England—you're fine. If the member for Deakin wants to stay, he won't say anything else for the remainder of this answer and hopefully the remainder of all answers.

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

I know that everyone in this House wants to stamp out the rorts, but I have to say that it takes a Labor government to fix the NDIS.