E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RAF EPSTEIN, HOST: But there is yet another story on the ABC web page, of potential overcharging inside the NDIS. It's become a regular feature, Stories about either alleged fraud or alleged overcharging inside the NDIS. ABC news has got a Melbourne provider, who could have overcharged the NDIS by as much as $300,000. The provider denies any wrongdoing, the regulator is investigating. Bill Shorten joins us. He is, of course, the Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
BILL SHORTEN, MINISTER FOR THE NDIS AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES: Good morning. Good morning Raf.
EPSTEIN: When do you think these stories about potential overcharging and fraud are going to stop?
SHORTEN: Well, I heard you say this has become a become a regular feature. I suspect this has been a regular feature, but it's now only coming to light in a big way because of the steps this government is taking. Also, I should just add that I wish that all the success stories of the NDIS were a regular feature of reporting. That's not a dig at you or your journalist, but there's a lot more good news than bad news on the Scheme, and I sometimes feel like I'm an umbrella in a cyclone reminding people of that, but there's hundreds of thousands of lives being changed.
But returning to the specific complaint, I read it. It is being investigated as much as I want to, I'm just being told by my regulator you can't comment on it for fear of jeopardising the investigation. But I can say to people that since we got in, we've now prioritized closing down the back door of the Scheme to make sure that there is less ability for people to overcharge. I mean, specifically, we've got laws in parliament, currently held up. We want to provide clearer guidance on what you can and can't spend money on, references to visas, engagement costs, wedding costs are not allowed. And we're going to put that beyond doubt. We also want to make it easier for the agency, the NDIA, to manage risky behaviour by support coordinators that's referred to, these people are intermediaries by being able to, um, manage the timing of payments. At the moment, it's possible for big amounts of money to be drawn down suddenly without explanation.
EPSTEIN: Can I get to what you want to do in a moment? I appreciate you feel you've got things in the Parliament that can make a difference, but if I can just drag ourselves back to today, there have been, and I appreciate you can't comment on a particular case that is on the ABC news page, but it's pretty clear there've been warnings and concerns raised about this Melbourne provider since 2020. Doesn't that indicate that whatever is being done right now is not enough?
SHORTEN: No. It indicates to me that what was being done in 2020 wasn't enough. The fact that we're talking about this investigation now, I think proves my point, not so much your point. I can tell you what's being done right now. We now have 99 active prosecutions. We have 548 active investigations. We've got 59 people before the courts or before public prosecutions to make decisions about taking them to court. The fact of the matter is that when I came in as Minister, we had investigation systems fit for - they were state of the art for 1988. The reality is that, and this will disappoint listeners, but we can now tell them we've moved on it. But when you put in a claim between 5 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. previously, it would never get checked. You literally just got paid the next day. There might be post fact checking, but there was never any pre checking. There are now thousands of these claims being checked. And you know, even the complaints process. When I came in, there were about 450 people working in the safety regulator. There's now a thousand.
EPSTEIN: I think people appreciate all those steps, but it does seem like we've got some basic design flaws. This is Labor's creation originally. Would you accept that there are basic design flaws or not?
SHORTEN: I accept that in the ten years since it's been in, issues have emerged. One is clarity about what you can spend money on and what you can't spend money on. It has emerged that the payment system when it was rolled out, I have to say principally under my predecessors, there was a huge element of, if I can put it kindly, naivety, where there was no checking of payments. Also, the powers under the Act, that successive governments administered the NDIS, I found, really didn't give you the ability to interrogate detail. There are plan managers who have been created, really because there were not enough people in the Agency, so these intermediaries have popped up and some of them do great work. And no doubt I'll get hate mail from some of them for even mentioning them. But the reality is there isn't sufficient scrutiny of all of our support coordinators. There isn't sufficient scrutiny of our plan managers. Some are excellent, but some are rubbish. And unfortunately, the good ones get tarred with the bad ones. But that just wasn't enough accreditation.
EPSTEIN: That list of things you say were wrong. Couldn't you have moved on them sooner if they seem as obvious to you? If they seem obvious to you now, could you not have moved on there more quickly? You have been there for two years.
SHORTEN: Well, the funny thing is, I get criticised by some activists for moving too quickly-
EPSTEIN: I'm not sort of I'm asking about the criticism so much. I guess I'm addressing you, but I'm just telling you say these are fundamental problems, why not move more quickly?
SHORTEN: No no, I'm coming to an answer which take longer than 10 seconds. The fact is, I have to do co-design. I have to keep talking to people with disability and I want to do that. We promised a root and branch review of the whole system. It's taken 12 months. The fact is that I have overhauled the complete top leadership of the MDIA. We're now in the process of hiring a new Safeguards Commissioner. I've had to go and convince my colleagues to give me the hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade our fraud detection systems, which has now happened. Yes, I wish that this could have been done two years ago. I wish this could have been done five years ago. It hasn't been. The reason why I'm going into some of these numbers, which I know are a bit boring perhaps at one level, it's showing what we are doing. The fact of the matter is there's now thousands more people working in the Agency. The Agency was almost set up to fail because there was an ideological objection to having too many public servants. The problem is, in 2017, there were 4000 people in the Agency trying to keep an eye on things for 170,000 participants. Now, the Scheme when I came in was over half a million participants. It had the same number of public servants, so I had to hire people. So, there's a lot of people doing a lot of good work, and most participants doing the right thing. But yeah, it has taken two years to get to the point where I can reel off those statistics, but there is a lot of blood, sweat and tears behind getting to this point within two years.
EPSTEIN: On 774, the Minister, Bill Shorten, speaking to us about hopefully both the good stories and the bad stories inside the NDIS, we do always get talkback callers with the good stories in the NDIS, Bill Shorten.
SHORTEN: And you cover it, to be fair, you do give it more air space than some of the other stations.
EPSTEIN: The registration of the providers, that you've got a mixture of people that provide services. Some are registered, some are not. The ones who are not, it's because they don't bring in that much money per year. Would you make a difference if you registered every provider? Is that the path you want to go down?
SHORTEN: Yes, I think that would. Again, I think this will surprise the listeners - by the way, about 10% of service providers have put in invoices are registered. About 90% aren't. A lot of the bigger service providers are registered, but about 15 to $16 billion a year is paid out to unregistered providers, and we don't know who they are. It is not an appropriate system. Now, being registered doesn't mean that you can get a guarantee of doing the right thing.
EPSTEIN: So, when's that changing, the registration?
SHORTEN: Well, we got the review into the Scheme, 12 months that took and that said let's have a registration system for everyone. I got that report in December. I've even got a co-design. So, I've got Natalie Wade, a leading human rights lawyer and a pretty excellent team around her, to spend six months again talking to everyone in the sector about how it could work, because there's a lot of fear that if we register people, people will lose choice and control, and they might hire a local worker who's not registered but does a great job. So, we've had to spend six months consulting people. I got that report on the 4th of July. I've then got to send it to the States, which I've done, and I hopefully in the next month or so, will have plenty to say about what a new registration system might look like. So yeah, we're moving on it, But I have to go through those steps of what's the best interest to the system and the participants. Then I have to, when there's a recommendation, do something about a principles-based regulation system. I then got to go and talk to people again, what that looks like. And we've done excellent consultation on that. But going to this point about speed versus delay, we've got legislation in the Parliament which the Senate had 12 weeks to look at. Then the Greens and the Liberals team up and give me a kick in and say, we need another eight weeks because I'm rushing it. That's what I was really getting at.
EPSTEIN: Okay. I appreciate your time. There are people, I think, waiting on the phone to tell us the good stories and the bad stories as well. Thanks for talking to us.
SHORTEN: Well, and if you get them, forward them on to us because until we’ve got the right system, we'll just deal with individuals.
EPSTEIN: Thank you.
SHORTEN: Thanks.
EPSTEIN: Bill Shorten's the Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
