E&OE TRANSCRIPT
 
SUBJECTS: Optus data breach, NDIS hospital discharge and ADHD. 
 
RAF EPSTEIN, HOST: Bill Shorten is the Labor MP for the seat of Maribyrnong here in Melbourne. Of course he is Minister for the NDIS and for Government Services. Good afternoon.
 
BILL SHORTEN, MINISTER FOR THE NDIS AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES: Good afternoon, Raf.
 
EPSTEIN: Have Optus given the Government the information that you've sought?
 
SHORTEN: In some areas, yes, in my area of Services Australia... Not yet. Listen I'll be really blunt. It's been a terrible time for those people who've had their data put up on the dark web. It's a terrible time for people who have Optus who or former customers who are not sure if their data has been breached. This shouldn't be a matter of politics. I'm a bit surprised it's day 12 and it took the Government yesterday to give them a rocket to help speed things up about all working together to protect people's privacy and data.
 
EPSTEIN: So if someone gave Optus their Medicare number to prove their identity, you still haven't been told all of those instances yet?
 
SHORTEN: We've been told the number of people who did that, but we don't know who.
 
EPSTEIN: Do you think Optus know? What information's gone?
 
SHORTEN: I don't know. All I'd say to the senior, sort of damage control team, who've circled the wagons at Optus is the Government is not your problem. The problem is the breach occurred. 
 
Now, there is cooperation in various areas. They're cooperating with the AFP. That's fine. My interest is where people have used government documents as their ID for Optus. We want to know that so that we can red flag it in our system in case any of that data gets into the hands of bad people and they try and use that information to hack into government systems, to acquire further personal information or personal benefit at the expense of the people who provided the ID. I just want to see people protected. I should just very quickly add, if a hacker has got your Medicare number, that's not enough. We use multi-factor ID, but we don't want the hackers getting to first base, much less second base.
 
EPSTEIN: Why are they not giving you what you want as a government?
 
SHORTEN: I think they'd probably say they are. They're working on it. But it's day 12. I don't know what sort of manual about crisis management they have, but I'd get a new one. Anyway, they've said today they're bringing in Deloitte and, you know, they're doing things. That's fine, but when you've got a problem, just reach out and get the help you need. Listen to the lawyers later. Listen to the people telling you how to cover your backside later. The problem is the horse has bolted. This is now just a case of all of us working together to make sure that we do everything we can as fast as we can to make sure that we're protecting people. Now, I think Optus, certainly today, my public servants have been telling me that they've had more outreach from Optus today than they had previously, so that's good. Let's just get it done and make sure that anything that we can do to protect Australians data we can do now.
 
EPSTEIN: I want to get to questions on the NDIS, but I'm just curious. I mean, I'm an Optus customer I didn't even know if I'm not sure what my details are or not. What else might I have used? A driver's license, Medicare number, passport? Are there other government documents I might have used to prove my identity? Like what I give them?
 
SHORTEN: We'd like Optus to tell us all of that, what they've required. I don't know if they've required pensioner concession cards.
 
EPSTEIN: Because you can use things like that for 100 points.
 
SHORTEN: Yeah, you can. So and there might be state government level things as well for ID. I think it's now time to have a conversation. Why do these organisations, these big private sector organisations, keep the data? Once you've established the hundred points, why do they then keep it? If you're no longer a customer, why do they still keep it? The Europeans have better regulation here, I think. But first, the first priority is just to, and I know that the government's working on this with Optus, apprehend or identify who the criminals are. But in the meantime, I don't want to waste any time. Let's just if there's any information which can help us protect people's data going forward as arising out of this breach by timely communication between organisations, just get it done. Like you don't need a PhD in crisis management here, in my opinion.
 
[AD BREAK]
 
EPSTEIN: It's 12 minutes after 5. Bill Shorten's talking about those issues because he's because he is Minister for Government Services. If you've got any queries about that, I'm not sure how easy it will be for us to ask them, but it's worth trying. 1300 22 277. For Lulu, for example, saying “I did get a very specific text from Optus yesterday saying it was only my driver's licence number that had been compromised.” So Lulu is getting a little bit of the information NDIS is also an issue. Grace called, I think as soon as she heard your name on the radio from Heidelberg. What did you want to mention, Grace?
 
GRACE, CALLER: I am a participant on the NDIS. I have severe cerebral palsy. I had a fall in 2019. I went to hospital and they know that I'm an NDIS participant and the NDIS said it was a medical issue and I needed to ask the medical services and they said they had nothing to do that, the NDIS has nothing to do with it. And I'm a football between the NDIS and the health system. So who is supposed to take care of me in this situation? And now the NDIS is saying I've had, I've had surgery and I needed surgery for my arm because I had a fall, because I have cerebral palsy. But they said they can't provide extra therapy and services for me and they what my planners don't understand or even know about cerebral palsy and they haven't even met me so they wouldn't even know me.
 
EPSTEIN: Okay, there's lots of issues there, Grace. So I just want to try and break that down. You're not clear the next stage of your medical treatment, if it's the doctors or the NDIS who are responsible. And the second issue is, I guess, communication with your NDIS planners. Just hang on a tick, Grace. Firstly, Bill Shorten, can you give her any clarity on who's responsible for the next stage of her therapy?
 
SHORTEN: It'll depend how long Grace's in hospital for. If she's receiving medical treatment for her fall that's the hospital system. But once that she's medically fit for discharge, then that would be absolutely an NDIS issue to help work with the hospital. There's a lot of demarcation problems between the health system and disability. There's not enough medicos understand disability and there are some rigid nonsense sort of black and white rules which between hospitals and NDIA, which is, in my opinion, buck passing. Hospitals would normally have a disability liaison person within their hospital team. We've now put on more people to work about hospital discharge. At the moment in Australia, it doesn't sound like this is Grace's particular problem, but it's a problem for the people caught up in it. There's somewhere like 1,500 people tonight who will be going to bed in a hospital bed who are medically fit for discharge.
 
EPSTEIN: Can't get out.
 
SHORTEN: Can't get out. So that is one of the priorities we've made we're putting more staff on to just triage it. I expect a person who's deemed eligible for the NDIS and is we know is going to be discharged. They should meet an NDIS planner within four days ideally, and then within 15 to 30 days there should be a plan for where they're going to live.
 
EPSTEIN: If you're unhappy with your contact with the NDIS planner, who can you appeal to? Who do you appeal that to?
 
SHORTEN: Well, some of that's just a design flaw in the system at the moment. If you're unhappy with a decision, you can always have an internal review so that that is your right. But I think Grace's point is going to the issue that sometimes there are people with particular disabilities for whom the planner is not familiar with. Now, that shouldn't be happening the way it does happen. What happened is that once the Agency, that's the people directly working for the NDIA, got somewhere north of about 3,000 employees and there were about 180,000 participants in the scheme. My predecessors, the Libs, they had a bit of a fetish about not having direct public servants. So we created a whole new tier of service called Local Area Coordinators, and so they're run by non-profits. The problem is that that was a fiction to deal with this ideological objection towards employing more direct staff. The problem with that, though, is that sometimes we don't get the institutional knowledge to deal with.
 
EPSTEIN: In effect, those quote unquote planners don't have the knowledge they need.
 
SHORTEN: Oh, there's a lot of very good ones and a lot of very good. But yeah, I think the problem is that when you've got an outsourced service doing planning advice or when you're hiring planners at a rush, you will get the sort of Grace experience that she's had. So I believe you, Grace. My plan is that we're putting in a new CEO, bringing in a lot more people who have lived experience, including Kurt Fearnley, to the Board of the NDIA. That's good. We're also going to review the planning process because I think it's too cumbersome. I think a person getting a plan done should be able to talk to the planner directly. It shouldn't be done through a series of Chinese whispers. I'd like to bring some of the very qualified Local Area Coordinators into the agency, give them a career in it, the NDIS, and build up that knowledge of different disabilities. I think there needs to be a lot more in-house and external training of planners.
 
EPSTEIN: Good luck, Grace. I'm grateful that you've helped us to understand how the scheme works. I'm not sure if that's going to answer your queries, but I really want to thank you.
 
SHORTEN: Yes, you can also let the producers know your details and we'll get in touch and try and I'm triaging about a thousand matters in my office at the moment. So we do want to make it better for you, Grace.
 
EPSTEIN: Grace, so hang on, Grace, I'll put you on hold. We'll get your details. I'm not sure if you can answer Marilyn's question before we get to the traffic, but this is an Optus issue. Marilyn's in Altona. Where do you want to mention Marilyn?
 
MARILYN, CALLER: Thanks for taking my call. I wanted to know whether the Minister actually has any current information about when we can apply those of us that have been impacted, when we can apply for a new licence or passport or whatever. Obviously the cost of Optus, not our personal cost, because that is currently where we stand. We spent all day yesterday and part of the day before trying to put in place protective measures and checking up on the processes for these things. But I haven't heard a thing from Optus other than confirming that I've been impacted but nothing further to say and obviously I'm concerned about getting on with this as quickly as possible.
 
EPSTEIN: So you want to know when you can apply for a passport, I guess in this case. Do you know, Bill Shorten?
 
SHORTEN: Yeah, I think you should. If Optus have confirmed to you that your passport number's been or that your file has been breached, you should reach out to the passport office straight away. Again, give us your details when we go off air. We'll also send you some contact details. The driver's licence is a state matter, so I'm not as familiar.
 
EPSTEIN: Just on the passport to people. Are they getting a passport number the next day? Do we know how long it's taking?
 
SHORTEN: I don't know how long it's taking. When we came to government, this won't cheer Marilyn up. When we came to government, there was a massive backlog of passports and there's been some pretty hideous delays which we've had to try and fix up. It got better then it's got worse again. But Marilyn, just give us your details after we finish up the call and we'll chase it up for you. But if you've been told by Optus that you're one of the 10,200 whose, information has been breached, then we've just got to get on and sort it out.
 
EPSTEIN: Okay. 1300 222 774 for Marilyn. You hang on one moment. I think we've got traffic ready and then we'll get back to more of your calls on 1300 222 774 but those road details first with Dan Belling.
 
[AD BREAK]
 
EPSTEIN: Now answering your questions on Polliegraph. This is a text question. Bill Shorten from Simone. When will a decision be made about ADHD being added to the NDIS? Will adults be able to access NDIS for ADHD?
 
SHORTEN: The short answer is that if you have ADHD, that is not a bar to getting on to the NDIS. The longer answer is that eligibility for the NDIS is outlined in the Act and it's then there's Operational Guidelines to make sense of it. But my working definition that I use is that if you have a disability and it has significant and severe and permanent effect on on you and it's has a significant effect on your daily living, that's when you become eligible. So just having a disability doesn't automatically make you eligible. The very long answer is that there are Operational Guidelines which sort of broadly group disabilities into three categories. The first category is for really and if you have one of these disabilities, you are deemed automatically on the Scheme. But some examples include if you're deafblind, if you have, if you're an amputee with two or more limbs, you don't have two or more limbs. If you have Pompey's condition which affects your muscles and your heart, it's fatal. So there are some conditions which, by their sheer severity, unarguably put you on. Then there's the second category where the conditions are recognised to be quite severe, but then you also are sometimes required to get more evidence that could be Down Syndrome, level three Autism. These are pretty significant. Then there's a third category, and this is where ADHD matters often end up, where you provide the evidence of disability. And if it's having that significant effect on your ability to cope with daily aspects of living.
 
EPSTEIN: Define significant.
 
SHORTEN: Well, it'll be it's done by a combination of medical evidence and also by the facts and circumstances of your life. It's it's an individual matter. So there's 174 people I checked the other day whose primary condition is ADHD and they're on the Scheme. There's perhaps another 3,000 people for whom ADHD is one of their conditions and they're on the Scheme. I'm not saying, though, that just a diagnosis of ADHD automatically should put you on the Scheme. That's that's not the rule now, and we're not planning any change to that. But I am also saying that if you have ADHD, that doesn't mean that you're barred from the scheme.
 
EPSTEIN: Sounds unlikely though.
 
SHORTEN: Well, it depends on your personal circumstances. It really does depend on your personal circumstances. And that's it is an individual scheme.
 
EPSTEIN: Okay, 24 minutes after five. Simone if you heard that and you want to text a follow up I'll see if I can get to that. Let's go to Grant, who's calling from Preston. What do you want to mention, Grant?
 
GRANT, CALLER: Hi. I just wanted to discuss with Bill the challenges that health care workers and clients that have significant mental health issues face. One, getting onto the NDIS but two making the packages that they've been afforded worthwhile or get used. I work in homelessness and mental health, and I think it's a huge challenge for our clients and for the to make any NDIS packages for the clients beneficial. So we have our team has a very high success rate of getting clients approved, but actually getting them used is extremely hard and there's pretty many.
 
EPSTEIN: So is that asking Grant if someone's got significant issues and say they're, they're homeless, how they can continually access the NDIS, is that what you're asking?
 
GRANT: Yeah.
 
SHORTEN: I think there's a few things and what you're saying Grant, and if you're working in the sector, thanks for what you're doing. There's about 60,000 people I think are on the Scheme, there's over half a million participants who would have a significant mental illness as their primary condition. So it is certainly a significant group of people in the Scheme. I think you go to two other issues though. 
 
One is, and this is a problem I think with Government safety net schemes anyway, which is if you're homeless or you're not tied to a house or a particular location, accessing the safety net is a theory. It's not a reality. I know that I'm trialling a new scheme with Father Bob in South Melbourne and Brendan Nottle in the Salvos at the top of Bourke Street where we've put in a Services Australia. It was formerly known as Centrelink, a very senior trained social worker but who works for the government in there, embedding them in their organisations just to go around and sign people up, help people get access to the scheme. Not everyone is a digital sort of lives in the digital world. So there so when you…
 
EPSTEIN: Say sign them up, but they also may be keeping an eye if that person doesn't have an address.
 
SHORTEN: Yeah, but these are the homeless, these are people who are and making sure that they understand and can access they're plugging them back into the system. Right. So these aren't people for whom the safety net is good or bad. They're not even on it. They're just they're nowhere near landing where the safety net stretched out. So I think one reform, which I want, the NDIA and they're they're a semi-autonomous agency. I'm the Minister for them, but they report to a board of state and federal reps. One thing I want them to do is more outreach. I'm worried that the Scheme is more easily accessed if you're a cliché white, middle class, tertiary educated. But the problem is that's not a cliché. The reality is that we've got to find a way for First Nations people, for people in the regions to be able to access and use their packages and also for people who are homeless. There's also an issue for people in jail where they carry a lot of perhaps a lot of the people there have intellectual disabilities. So I don't have all the answers, Grant, But I'm very alive to. It's great to have a scheme, but if you can't access it, well then it's just a theory.
 
EPSTEIN: Political and policy question Liz Truss in Britain is in all sorts of trouble for unfunded tax cuts. There's been a lot of pressure on your Cabinet. The Cabinet you are a part of, I should say, to drop the stage three tax cuts. You're going to have to drop them or change them.
 
SHORTEN: That's not our policy. We've before 2019 election, we didn't support them. We took the view before the 2022 election when they had been legislated as opposed to before 2019, when they hadn't been legislated, that if they're legislated we weren't going to reverse.
 
EPSTEIN: But, we can't afford them.
 
SHORTEN: Well, when we look at the Budget, we'll see that coming down pretty soon. I agree that there is a big problem with government debt. We've got pressures on health care, aged care, NDIS, defence expenditure. It is a challenge, but we've committed to doing these particular tax cuts. And to the best of my absolute best of my knowledge, there's no change in that policy.
 
EPSTEIN: But does the British situation make it harder?
 
SHORTEN: I think there's different challenges in Britain. I mean, I think Liz Truss. Anyway, I'm not an expert on British politics, but I think she, to win the leadership, decided to become the most low taxing candidate in the field. And of course, she was appealing to Tory Party members who love love a good tax cut debate. So now, having made the promises to the party faithful to beat her rivals, now she's got to pay the piper. These tax cuts, by contrast, were taken to an election and we made our policies clear.
 
EPSTEIN: Final one from Simone. She did text back. It was her question about the ADHD. I'll get some news headlines after this. But someone saying thanks for that clear explanation. As someone on the disability pension, how do you suggest I fund the diagnosis cost of approximately $1,000 for ADHD that I so obviously have? Thanks again. Any suggestions?
 
SHORTEN: It's a good question. I don't know all her circumstances and what she can and can't claim with Medicare. I do think that some of these initial reports not I'm not even sure about ADHD, but the cost of getting reports to the extent that it's a barrier to even be assessed for the Scheme, it's a problem. So again, what I'd say some Simone is again, I don't know all your personal circumstances, what you have claimed, what you haven't claimed, but the Scheme is about individual packages. So happy to talk to her offline. I've said that on a few matters, but one thing is that the former Coalition ministers, you see about 250 matters a month because the words that we're trying to improve the Scheme, we're now my office is directly handling 1,250 matters, but it is an individual Scheme and I take that as a sign of hope that people are hoping the Scheme can be more accessible and more reflective of their needs. So Simone join the queue and we'll see what information we can give you to assist you.
 
EPSTEIN: Do you think Daniel Andrews will win in November?
 
SHORTEN: That'll be up to the voters, but I think he is the best candidate.
 
EPSTEIN: Do you think he'll win?
 
SHORTEN: Well, again, we'll leave that to the voters, but I certainly hope so.
 
EPSTEIN: Thanks for your time.
 
SHORTEN: Thank you Raf.
 
EPSTEIN: Bill Shorten is, of course, the Labor MP for Maribyrnong.