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

I have to agree with Senator Steele-John with regard to this. There should be an explanation, but we're not going to get one from the Labor government with regard to the NDIS. With the way it is being operated now, it is an unsustainable scheme. In 2016, the scheme had approximately 30,000 participants. Now we have 610,502. It is unsustainable. In the last budget of the Labor Party, at the moment it is about $35 billion a year. You've added another $21 billion to it over the next four years, and it's going to be costing $56 billion. It's estimated to rise over $90 billion in less than 10 years. It is unsustainable.

The people we have on this scheme are not means tested. We means test for pensions and disability pensions, but we don't mean test for the NDIS. I can't understand why. It should be means tested. The number of children we have put on this scheme has blown out terribly. As of June 2023, we have 99,395 children younger than seven with an NDIS plan, and a further 14,556 accessing Early connections. This is unsustainable. We are getting more kids on it for autism—what level of autism? We need a government that actually controls who goes onto these schemes. You can't have doctors just willy-nilly looking after friends and families and ticking off on it—'Yes, go on the NDIS.' It cannot happen that way. It should be government doctors only, responsible to the taxpayers, advising who gets onto these schemes. As I said, it needs to be means tested. That's the only way we will be able to have this scheme into the foreseeable future. The number of people getting onto the scheme on a daily basis is astounding. I don't have those figures here with me at the moment, but I know it is to the tune of thousands who are getting on it every day.

And then you read reports like this one, about an $11 million NDIS rort. The rorting in the scheme is unbelievable. We've know about this for years, and large numbers of people have complained about it. I have to say, I'm impressed that Bill Shorten has actually jumped on this to rein the scheme in. In this report I mentioned, the woman is in New South Wales. They spent a quarter of the money in real estate. It was found in bank accounts, and they did a raid on their office. But what penalties are we going to have? That's what I ask. There were another two fellows in South Australia who were caught up with rorting the scheme, and they got two years. Two years! How much money did they get out of it? Are they going to keep those proceeds? Doing two years in prison is nothing if you're walking away with millions of dollars. It is pathetic—absolutely pathetic—if you do not do more to rein in the fraud that is happening with the NDIS. It's the same as my efforts to get you to rein in the fraud that is happening in the Aboriginal industry—you turn a blind eye to it. You're not interested. You don't care about the taxpayers' dollars.

It is important to rein in the frauds that are happening with the NDIS. When the whole scheme was first sold to me, I questioned it right from the very beginning. In the very beginning, they said it was going to cost $2 billion, and that was the administration cost. I questioned that. I spoke to those parents and they said, 'We need to know that our children are going to be cared for and looked after and have a decent sort of life.' I could understand that. But the people we are putting on the NDIS scheme are bloody ridiculous. I heard of a prisoner who got out of prison and, because he can't handle life by himself, he's on the NDIS scheme—$100,000 a year because he can't go out and walk the streets by himself. He doesn't want to do shopping by himself. This is what we're paying for. We're paying for people to go horseriding. We're paying for them to take holidays to places that that average person can't go to. We're actually paying for them to have these holidays. Sex workers are being paid as well.

This is why you will not expose what this is costing. You don't want the Australian people to know this. But we have to know this, because the next thing you will be wanting to do is to tax Australians more. Why don't you cough up and let us know what your plan is? With most things, you haven't got a plan at all. (Time expired)