E&OE TRANSCRIPT

SUBJECTS: Mental Health Legal Centre Report into NDIS participants in the supported residential system; Fraud Fusion Taskforce

BILL SHORTEN, MINISTER FOR THE NDIS AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES: Well, good morning, everybody. Today I'm joined by Charlotte Jones, the manager of the Mental Health Legal Service, by Lloyd Williams, the federal secretary of the Health and Community Services Union, representing workers in this industry, and also by Ashley, a health professional who, along with other people has - he wouldn't say it, but I will - a heroic and modest whistle-blower drawing attention to the terrible shame we are seeing with the way that some NDIS participants are being treated in the supported residential system in Victoria, and I suspect Australia. Today we're talking about a report which I commissioned with the Mental Health Legal Centre to look at issues of abuse of vulnerable people, NDIS participants, within the boarding house system in Victoria. The report came about because I met with several whistle-blowers, these were individual carers, nurses, health professionals, who noticed a pattern that vulnerable NDIS participants who they had a long-term relationship with were being effectively cut off from these carers – these whistle-blowers. What we have essentially ascertained is a pattern of what I would say is almost human trafficking of NDIS participants who have six figure support accounts. And what we have is individual NDIS service companies, cold bloodedly and calculatedly, cutting off these vulnerable people, many of whom have psychosocial or intellectual disability conditions. Cutting these vulnerable people off from anyone else, and then effectively mining or harvesting these individuals’ NDIS accounts and in the process treating these people very poorly.

There are about 4000 people who use the state residential boarding house schemes in Victoria, of which about 1600 we estimate are NDIS participants. Now there are some facilities which are doing a great job, but what we have detected, and what I've learned through this report, is in the last 4 or 5 years, a whole new ruthless business model has emerged where some people who run these accommodation services have now set up NDIS service companies. Then what they do is they get a participant who has a package, it could be on average between $103,000 and $196,000 a year, in some cases, possibly more. What they do is they bribe these people to cut off all ties with anyone else in the community. They then put them in unsafe conditions - poor food, poor privacy, poor safety, poor care - and then they systematically loot these people's accounts. This is the conclusion of a report which we commissioned from the Mental Health Legal Centre. We are now considering it, but we're doing more than that. We want to basically run any unethical and criminal operator out of business, out of town, out of the NDIS.

The NDIS is here to stay. It's changing people's lives. But there is no doubt that in the last number of years the neglect and the oversight of the system has seen vulnerable people with lucrative support packages fall through the cracks and effectively be human trafficked. What I'd like to do now is ask Charlotte to speak and then Lloyd, from the perspective of the good workforce in the system, and then perhaps we might hear some of Ashley's direct stories, which are shocking.

CHARLOTTE JONES, CEO MENTAL HEALTH LEGAL CENTRE: Hello, my name is Charlotte Jones and I'm the CEO of the Mental Health Legal Centre.

JOURNALIST: So, Charlotte, when this report was commissioned, had you been hearing stories like this from providers such as Ash? Like how long from before?

JONES: We started work on this prior to COVID, in approximately the June of 2019. We began writing to people and saying, we’re really concerned about what's happening in these SRS environments. We were unclear of the level of neglect and abuse, but we knew that systems weren't working well. We knew that people were very vulnerable. We knew that people were living in conditions we wouldn't find acceptable. We were working with a group of nurses who specialise in dealing with homeless people, and they were seeing these conditions on a regular basis in a variety of environments. So, we started to track those and then suddenly some of their clients would literally just disappear.

JOURNALIST: And so, when you looked into this further, did what you find shock you?

JONES: It shocked me because I couldn't actually understand that people saw people as human cargo for money. I couldn't believe the amount of money that people would sacrifice people for, looking at them and seeing an NDIS package suddenly meant they had a target on their back and it made them almost invisible to everybody else. They couldn't be seen because they were kept in places that most people don't look and because nobody was looking, it was easy to take them.

JOURNALIST: When you say places most people don't look, where exactly were they being kept?

JONES: Initially, a lot of these people were in what we call SRS or state regulated services, sorry, supportive residential services and those supportive residential services house anywhere between 6 to 80 people. Most people have them in their neighbourhoods. They're local to most areas, but people just don't see the residents. They don't see them as regular parts of the community. And then it's really easy for them to be gone, and nobody's asking any questions, largely apart from the owner of the residence who said, well, they were here before and now they're not.

JOURNALIST: Right. And have you heard from the residents themselves about the impact this has had on them as part of creating this report?

JONES: We've heard from residents and we've consulted widely with a group of residents. They are - a lot of them are really traumatized by what they've experienced. A lot of them are really confused by what they've experienced and a lot of them don't actually understand that they're being exploited. They don't understand the size and scale of their NDIS package. A lot of that information is withheld from them and a lot of them then don't understand why it's wrong if they go somewhere else and live somewhere else if it has a nice big flat screen TV and somebody is prepared to give them cigarettes or alcohol.

JOURNALIST: And we've heard today from Mr. Shorten that a new taskforce will be established within the NDIS Fraud Taskforce, I think it's called the Fraud Fusion Taskforce. Was that one of the recommendations of your report and what were some of the others?

JONES: We've yet to get to the full set of recommendations, but we do know that the Fraud Fusion Taskforce is an important element of that. We also know that the regulators need to step up. We also know that we need to work with a number of agencies to think about where all these people are and where they're now kept, particularly in supported independent living accommodation. One of the issues is that's not regulated. We don't actually know where a lot of these people are at the moment, so we need to go and find them.

JOURNALIST: So quoting the article this morning, about 4000 people in Victoria live in accommodation with a psycho-social or intellectual disability, 1600 of them receiving NDIS support. Is that the full number that live in this accommodation or do you think there are many more that that are being exploited like this that we don't know about?

JONES: I think there's many more that are being exploited that we don't know about yet. I think a lot of them have been moved into SIL accommodation, and as you empty one system, more come into the other system. SRSs are used as a place to put people, particularly who are homeless within the psychiatric system. So, there's almost like a feeder system that's just feeding people in and through and then they're located and then a SIL provider or another provider who is not reputable is taking them.

JOURNALIST: So is there any responsibility for the SRSs then? Like, are they unwillingly being used as this feeder system?

JONES: Partially, some of them are, yes. They're not compliant in this, but there are so many layers of complexity to how this is playing out that it takes, it's going to take, some real effort to help people understand how they move people and how then we stop those occurrences happening without those people having legitimate advocacy and support.

SHORTEN: What we might do is also hear from Lloyd and Ashley. Lloyd represents a lot of the workers in the industry and seen some of the patents and Ash I think will give you some stories as well.

JOURNALIST: Yeah. Yeah. I was about to ask Lloyd actually, if Lloyd, if you could come up right to the microphone?

LLOYD WILLIAMS, NATIONAL SECRETARY HEALTH WORKERS UNION: Lloyd Williams, I'm the national secretary of the Health Services Union. And first of all, could I thank Minister Shorten for his decisive action on this report in referring this such serious matter to his fraud taskforce. And also thank Ash in particular for his bravery in coming forward and exposing, you know, these appalling circumstances. I think everybody who's read this report will be absolutely appalled and disgusted as to what's happening with vulnerable people with a disability who are having their lives, you know, being traumatised and effectively being held captive by these dodgy providers. We need to ensure that these dodgy providers do not operate in the system. And we're thankful that the Federal Government is reforming the system to make sure that this can't happen going forward, I have to say that we are concerned that both the State and the Commonwealth Quality and Safeguard Commissions and regulators have not stepped up and dealt with these matters. They must do so. I understand that they've been -  particularly federally - they've been under-resourced in the past, but that's not a reason to not deal with these things forcefully. People with a disability have a right to ensure that they live in a safe environment without coercion and without abuse. Workers that work in the system have to feel safe in their workplace so that they feel confident to come forward and expose these terrible occurrences.

JOURNALIST: So, well, speaking of the workers that you represent, are you saying that they have been coerced as well not to reveal these practices?

WILLIAMS: Oh, look, we find all the time that many workers are frightened about their employment and frightened to come forward and expose these things. So that's why what Ash has done in coming forward has shown such bravery and commitment from him. But we need more workers to come forward and blow the whistle on these dodgy providers.

JOURNALIST: Do they come forward to the union before they do to the regulators, do you find Lloyd? Like, are you hearing about these tales?

WILLIAMS: When they do come forward to the union, we refer them to the regulators, and we encourage them to expose this. And if they provide us with information, we pass it on. But the problem is, many just do not come forward because they are concerned about their own job security, and they're concerned as to what these dodgy providers will do to them. They also feel that they are coerced into not saying anything. You know, this wall of silence has to come down.

JOURNALIST: So, Minister, just one on today's report. First of all, you were one of the people that helped to first develop the NDIS and its creation ten years ago, was exploitation of this kind something you could have anticipated back when you were developing it?

SHORTEN: You can't anticipate that some of our fellow humans will behave criminally towards the most vulnerable. That was never the aim of the scheme. But there has been nine years in between when Labor first proposed the NDIS. Unfortunately, we haven't been in charge of the rollout over nine years. This report today is due to courageous individuals calling out the wrong thing, who met with me in this very room August, September last year and their stories were so harrowing it prompted me to try and find some resources, scarce but important resources, so that the Mental Health Legal Centre could put together the patterns. What we've also been doing at the same time is putting together a proper payments integrity system. This is a $35 billion scheme, but I didn't, I couldn't have believed the level of neglect, ineptitude, and negligence of my predecessors that there’s $35 billion being paid out but there's insufficient scrutiny about who's receiving the money. This is not on the heads of the participants. What we are seeing is a system where invoices are put in with no scrutiny. We have a system where you have literally billions of dollars being paid so that people with disabilities can have some choice and control in their lives but there are some providers of supported independent living services who see the person with the disability, with the NDIS package, as human cargo, as a human ATM, as an opportunity to make a lot of money out of and exploit. And I am staggered at the level of opportunistic, unethical, and criminal behaviour.

JOURNALIST: And speaking of the Fraud Fusion Taskforce, we've only seen a brief mention of that this morning. How exactly will it work to crack down on this kind of predatory behaviour?

SHORTEN: Well, the Mental Health Legal Centre's interim report was sufficiently concerning that we've now provided already the names of 50 plus providers. We've now provided the names of participants in the case studies. This Fraud Fusion Taskforce was an initiative last October because it didn't exist before then to get the tax office talking to the police, talking to the National Disability Insurance Agency, talking to the regulators, getting everyone to get out of their ivory towers and talk to each other. Crooks leave footprints, crooks leave digital footprints. They think they're smarter than the rest of us, but now we're on to them. These crooks will be found because they're greedy, lazy, and they're returning and repeating the same tricks of invoices. So, what we'll do is give this valuable data, which wasn't available before the hard work of individuals and the Legal Centre and now we've got names, businesses, company names. Some of these crooks have got pretty complicated corporate structures. They've basically been relying on years and years of previous government just finding it too hard, just too difficult to track it down. But now we're putting the resources in because we want the NDIS to be here in the future. We want it to change people's lives, but it's certainly not to be used as a piggy bank for crooks.

JOURNALIST: And onto a few other questions from Adelaide here now, Minister. So, they're asking specifically about the South Australian MP Frank Pangallo, who received a letter from you regarding the circumstances of a man named Neil D’Cruz. Why have you been unable to use your discretion in his case?

SHORTEN: Because the Agency is independent of government and the Minister can't just simply make every decision for an independent body. We've certainly put the information that the family provided to the Agency. We know there have been plenty of discussions. It's a pretty complicated back story. We hope that there'll be a resolution, but Ministers don't make final decisions. There's millions of decisions in the NDA and that sort of political engagement would be foolish, to be honest.

JOURNALIST: The family has also reached out to you again asking for Neil to receive the Disability Support Pension. Is that something that you'll consider?

SHORTEN: There's nearly 800,000 people on the DSP. They're pretty well-established guidelines. I'm sympathetic to the case, but they've got to sort of meet the guidelines. And that's just it's the system which we have in Australia.

JOURNALIST: And lastly on that matter, I understand that Neil's at risk of losing his home within 3 to 4 months. Do you have any response to that?

SHORTEN: No one wants that. Again, there's complicated circumstances about ownership. If there's a way to resolve the matter satisfactorily, absolutely I expect it to be found.

JOURNALIST: And I guess just back on to these exploitative providers, Minister, is there any way of estimating exactly how much it has cost the NDIS for them to be draining the accounts of these vulnerable clients?

SHORTEN: We can't yet, but what we do know is that for people with particularly acute disabilities, they are eligible for what's called a supported independent living package. A lot of jargon in the NDIS, but people who get these packages on average, they’re six figure packages, they need a lot of care, 7/24. And there are some very good experiences happening with a lot of the service provision. But there is a long - well, there's a big underbelly which we're uncovering, where what we're seeing is literally, I suspect, millions and millions of dollars being siphoned off inappropriately, illegally I suspect in some cases. So, do I think the scheme is being rorted for millions and millions of dollars? Yes, I do. Can't put a figure on it until we track down these crooks. These crooks have been allowed to grow in the dark. They haven't had the scrutiny. When you hear the stories about individual complaints which haven't been followed up on, a whole underbelly of business, of a business model, has emerged to exploit, I think, loopholes in the system. So, I think it's millions of dollars. I think it affects a lot of very vulnerable people.

JOURNALIST: And is it safe to say, Minister, that the taxpayers are paying for it twice because once they've had their accounts drained, the NDIS then has to top it up again?

SHORTEN: I'd put it slightly differently. The people who are actually paying for it the most are the people with the disabilities. Taxpayers in Australia are very generous when it comes to Medicare and the NDIS. They think that is probably an appropriate use of taxes, but they want to see every dollar get through to the people for whom the scheme was designed. So, I'm sure taxpayers, people with disability, you and I, I think we're furious that there are some are very, very bad actors who are simply siphoning money off for their own greedy purposes and they're damaging people who really need support in the process, which is completely despicable.

JOURNALIST: Hi, Minister. Just in terms of where disabled Australians are ending up, I just wanted to ask about younger disabled Australians in nursing homes. Obviously, they should be in different places, and I wanted to ask, obviously we saw some money in the budget to make sure that they are not ending up in those settings, but there's a call for that to be more clearly laid out in terms of how we're going to achieve the 2025 goal of no more young people in aged care by that time. Can you just respond to the need for more detail being called for by advocates to achieve that goal that your government is committed to?

SHORTEN: The Aged Care Royal Commission made as a finding in the term of the last government a recommendation that people under 65 with a profound disability shouldn't be residing in aged care facilities but more age-appropriate accommodation. The previous government started the process of moving people out of inappropriate or residential aged care. Quite a bit of work was accomplished in that, especially for people under 45. But there's a shortage of housing in this country. So, what's happening is a person might acquire a significant disability and in their country town or in the particular region they live in, there really is only residential aged care. There are some millions of dollars in our budget and also the health budget to help the process of giving people more choices. There's money in the NDIS but we can't get around the issue. There is just a shortage of appropriate housing, which is of course a bigger issue than just this. Thanks Sarah. Ash?

ASHLEY: I’m Ashley, and I'm a health professional. I just wanted to say that we've talked a lot about the providers and SRSs, but I just wanted to just acknowledge that there are some really good providers out there and some SRSs that are doing really good work in conjunction with external NDIS providers and really making a difference to NDIS participants, which is what the scheme is designed for and that is really rewarding and what keeps you going.

JOURNALIST: So yeah, Ashley, when did you first become aware of the exploitation of these really vulnerable NDIS clients?

ASHLEY: Well, I've experienced it for the last seven years visiting different facilities and it's just snowballed ever since the NDIS got rolled out gradually across Melbourne. It's not just me, so I see it face to face, I see it with clients, but I hear from occupational therapists, physios, behaviour support practitioners that all kind of report back to me and say, hey, this isn't right. And so yeah, there's just so much that goes on and over the years I've had to make so many reports. I've even had to go to VCAT with clients to get them guardians to protect their, safeguard their wellbeing and their rights.

JOURNALIST: Have you noticed over those seven years the dodgy providers getting bolder in the way that they're trying to rip people off?

ASHLEY: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. I've actually got clients that external providers will go in and they'll offer them cash cigarettes for their package. Simple as that. And my, the participant will actually call me and say, hey, someone's just offered me this and this. Is that right? You know, because when I'm talking about participants, participants with psychosocial disabilities that have no other advocates, no family members, no one to kind of speak to them and say, that's not right. They'll come to me if, you know, if I'm working with them and they'll report this stuff. Yeah.

JOURNALIST: So, if you can say what would be the most horrific case of this that you've seen in your work?

ASHLEY: I think it's just a - well, I know of a person that basically has been taken out of a facility pretty much overnight and moved to a house and no one knows where they are. And again, this is actually - it was this person, I think another person at the same facility, they actually accepted cash and cigarettes to go and move somewhere, whereas and they weren't participants of mine, but my participant reported that this was happening, and the actual owner of the facility was debriefing to me how scandalous this was. And I suppose the other thing that you really have to consider is like all of us, people with a disability that might not be able to advocate for themselves, there's a lot of health issues that they might have. And so, if someone that doesn't really know what they're doing, takes someone just because they're looking at the dollar sign and takes them to a house, you just wonder what kind of condition they're going to be in if no one's looking out for them. So, yeah.

JOURNALIST: Yeah okay, so I mean, are there any other changes aside from this task force that that you think would benefit, you know, these most vulnerable clients?

ASHLEY: Look, I think if there's some sort of safeguarding within the NDIS because I know that I'm not the only person that's been to VCAT to try and safeguard people's human rights. And, you know, you can't send so many people to VCAT all the time when it's an NDIS matter.

JOURNALIST: Well, it does relate to the NDIS again, Minister, what's your message to NDIS participants who are concerned about their plans being cut to help you get that $15 billion in saving that's been talked about?

SHORTEN: Don't be. Our reforms are aimed at making the participant experience better. The government changed. So, this is not about across the board cuts. The scheme's going to grow every year. It remains demand driven. I genuinely believe and I know talking to a lot of the leaders in the disability world, talking to families, talking to participants, that if we're able to improve the quality of decision making by the NDIA, if we’re able to have longer plans, as a general rule, if we're able to stamp out the sort of unethical conduct which we are talking about this morning, that we'll be able to make sure every dollar gets through to the participant in the scheme.