E&OE TRANSCRIPT
SUBJECTS: NDIS service accessibility; eliminating fraud in the NDIS; Services Australia claim and call wait times reduced; myGov accessibility
GARY ADSHEAD, HOST: Righto, about to talk to my next guest Bill Shorten, the Federal Minister for Government Services and of course the NDIS. He's got responsibility of that as well and he joins me on the line. Thanks very much for your time, Minister.
BILL SHORTEN, MINISTER FOR THE NDIS AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES: Yeah, no worries, pleasure.
ADSHEAD: Now, just quickly, if I can, this NDIS trial that you're running down in the Great Southern region of Western Australia, Katanning way, because I suppose, you know, you've got this responsibility where you have to try and find savings, but you also have to keep the wheels turning. So, what's the trial about?
SHORTEN: Well, whilst we are clamping down on some of the rorts and a minority of service providers who are having a lender, the system at the other end, there's people not getting the services which they're meant to get. So, Don Punch, who's the Disability Minister in Western Australia and I have been talking about how do we handle a situation where people might be completely eligible for some support, but they're in a remote part and the services aren't there. It's not like living in the middle of Perth. So, what we're looking at doing is recognising that one size doesn't fit all in the Scheme, and that in very remote and regional Australia, we've got to see if there's alternative ways that we can deliver services, to make sure that people are actually getting what they're meant to get. I mean, the average - there's 61 NDIS participants in the Shire of Katanning. Their average plan size is $25K, so it's not like a king's ransom. But the average usage of the plans in the last six months was only 45%. So, they've got a plan but they're not able to use it. So I've been chatting with Don and with other Ministers throughout Australia, how do we trial a way of delivering services in a different way so that rather than going through the pretence of getting ten different allied health professionals to drive in from ten different directions, are there services we can pool in the local area, for example, where there's enough, you know, customer flow to justify employing someone locally rather than having a lot of drive in, drive out.
ADSHEAD: Because that's a reality, isn't it? So if you are someone who has perhaps lived all your life in a, you know, not totally remote, but certainly a country area where you might not have all the services you would closer to the city, you don't necessarily want to sort of up and move just because of the circumstance that's come your way. So, it is, it is challenging for you.
SHORTEN: You do get a bit of internal state and national migration to go to where the services are, and I understand that. But surely, we can be cleverer, and in remote and regional Australia we like - I like the idea of individual packages where people have control, choice and control. We've got to make sure that they're actually able to spend the money on reasonable services, which are a sort of approved and, you know, paying for big fuel bills for people to come to Katanning rather than seeing how we can build up a local system there, just, you know, why not be sensible?
ADSHEAD: Now, obviously, you know, one of the things that seems to be going on more in the background at the moment is in terms of those rorters that you talked about. What sort of a level of concern do you have now that some months have gone by where some of those cases are being looked into?
SHORTEN: Well, I should say at the outset, there's 56,000 people on the Scheme in Western Australia and for most people, it's helping their lives for the better. And there's literally tens of thousands of service providers doing the right thing. But you've been around Gary. You know that where there's Government money, it attracts blowflies and opportunistic behaviour and worse. What we've done is I've put in place. I said I'd do it when I got elected two years ago and we've assembled a team. I call it a Fraud Fusion Task Force. Basically, that's a fancy name to say for the first time, we've got 19 Government departments, including the cops, talking to each other, comparing notes. And we're now installing some pretty good ICT to look at the patterns of payment providers, the invoices people are putting in. We've now got hundreds of investigations underway, 56 people now in the courts or with briefs for action in front of the public prosecutors. We've also, working with the ACCC, passed a new rule that says that a company, when they see someone come along with an NDIS package, can't charge them more because they've got the NDIS package, than for an identical service to someone who doesn't have it. I mean, it's not the job of the NDIS to cross-subsidise a business model or someone else. And this sort of, I call it the wedding tax, you know when the couple come along and say we're getting married, all of a sudden, the price of everything goes up. Well, that happens with the NDIS. That's now illegal for identical services.
ADSHEAD: You know we might need to talk off air a bit, but I mean, only recently I saw some videotape of an NDIS provider who had a fleet of Ferraris, Porsches, and other luxury vehicles. You know that – look, is it proof that the system is being rorted? I don't know, but I tell you what. It was alarming when I saw what I saw.
SHORTEN: Yeah, you've got instincts, so tell us off air. We will check that out. Um, as I said, we've now got - when I came in, the Safeguards Commission only had about 400 people. Now it's got a thousand. When I came in, there wasn't really proper investigations happening in the back office of the Scheme. We've now got a lot more resources. But to the - and again, I must say this, you'll have providers listening right now who will send me angry emails saying, don't be mean about occupational therapists or physios or speech pathologists. I'm not. OT’s, speech pathologists, physios, you're great people but there are some people having a lend of it. We've got to have a conversation in this country where we call out bad behaviour without everyone feeling offended because most people are doing the right thing, but the people who rip off taxpayers and more importantly, rip off disabled people, they should rack off.
ADSHEAD: Yeah, well you've got to throw the book at some of them haven't you Minister?
SHORTEN: Bloody oath.
ADSHEAD: And very publicly, so that the warnings are out there, and they might sort of quietly disappear.
SHORTEN: There's now people in jail, okay. And let's be clear, if you think that the NDIS was a soft touch, you should probably hop on your horse and ride out of town now. Stay one campfire ahead of the posse. I mean, most people are doing the right thing, and most participants are, you know, getting benefit. But it is - there is a long tail in this. And just because someone has an I Love NDIS sticker, that's not enough. I want to make sure the providers are registered and accountable. I just think it's common sense to be honest.
ADSHEAD: Especially if that stickers on the back of a Ferrari now then.
SHORTEN: Oh yeah, that will drive me wild.
ADSHEAD: Okay, well, I might talk to you off air. Can I just turn now, because only the other day we were talking about wait times, Centrelink. You're saying that the program that you've embarked on to try and bring down the wait times is working?
SHORTEN: Well, the trend is our friend. We're not there yet fully, but frankly, in Human Services, you've got to get some more humans answering the phones and processing payments. Basically the - you know, I know people carry on about too many public servants, but when they're front lined, you know, sorting out someone's Medicare payment or someone's Age Pension or Disability Pension or someone's Paid Parental Leave, there's not enough of them. I've been fortunate to convince my colleagues in the Cabinet to give me some more front-line workers. So, we've put on an extra 3000, including some in the west, and we've managed to start reducing some of the outstanding claims from about 1.35 million down to the mid 400,000’s. That's about $2.5 billion in the last four months, which is legitimate. In other words, people have incurred the benefit and now we're just paying them.
One of the things, of course, which people hate, waiting on the phone and you still wait on the phone, I'm not saying you don't, but one of the things which was causing delays on the phones, people ringing up and say, where's my money? So as that decreases and we're moving more people online, it's not compulsory, but digital is the quickest, yeah, the wait times for Medicare payments on the phone calls are down nine minutes. The wait times for welfare forms and client questions are down six minutes. But we're not there yet. But it is good, you know, the fact of the matter is, this is bread and butter work for Government. It's not exotic, it's not about, I don't know, purchasing jet fighters overseas or putting a man on the moon, but this is the bread and butter of Government. And I'm very conscious that we need to do better, and, you know, for once, we are. The trend is going in the right direction.
ADSHEAD: You got good contacts in the ATO? You get me one there, sort this situation out? You know how a lot of people, going back about sort of 4 or 5 years ago were hacked, okay. So, I'm one of those people now that whenever I need to go to myGov, whenever I need to go to myGov, no matter what, I usually wait around sort of 50 minutes to an hour to have to go through an identity check every single time. Can you help me?
SHORTEN: There's two - yeah, I probably can. This is going to drive you crazy. There's myGov ID, which is run by the ATO, then there's myGov, which I run, they’re actually different.
ADSHEAD: Yeah, okay. myGov itself is the one that I have to start off with. I have to go through this extraordinary process?
SHORTEN: What happened when they built myGov and built myGovID is that we can take - oh, listen, don't hold me to the exact numbers, but I'll use it for the story. We can take quarter of a million transactions at any point. The pipeline between myGov and the Tax Office can only take 100,000 transactions. So that's what you're describing. That queuing problem.
ADSHEAD: Yeah.
SHORTEN: And they need to expand, I mean they need to expand the pipeline. myGov can take more inquiries in a moment than the myGov ID pipeline to Tax, and you'll get in caught in that traffic jam. So, you know when you're on a four-lane road and all of a sudden it heads to a two-lane road, you get slowed down if there's the same amount of traffic, and tax time is ugly.
ADSHEAD: I wrote to the ATO Commissioner to say, surely, I don't have to go through this every time. Surely you can reset my identity and get it sorted out. But I was told in no uncertain terms that no, this is probably my lot for the rest of my life. I am, I'm stuffed.
SHORTEN: Well, I don’t know about the lot for the rest of your life. The reality is that we do need to - the pipeline needs to be increased so that - I mean, with myGov, we're now world leading. You can use your facial features and you don't even need to remember passwords or multifactor, but we've got to make sure that the rest of Government is linking up with us. And that's on the Government to do. And the different levels of Government.
ADSHEAD: Minister, thanks for –
SHORTEN: I’m sorry for your experience
ADSHEAD: - Ooh, you know, I guess I just sit down with a cup of tea and a shortbread cream and wait patiently, you know me. Minister, thanks very much for your company. We might have a conversation off air with some of your people, and I might send some video your way and see what you make of it after this.
SHORTEN: If there's if there's a rogue, we want to get them, okay?
ADSHEAD: All right. Good on you. Thank you. Bill Shorten, the Federal Minister for Government Services and the NDIS.
