E&OE TRANSCRIPT
SUBJECTS: Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability, Four Corners Investigation
SCOTT LEVI, HOST: Minister for Government Services and the NDIS, Bill Shorten joins us on ABC Central Coast. Good morning.
BILL SHORTEN, MINISTER FOR THE NDIS AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES: Good morning.
LEVI: Will you be giving the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission some real power? That response is unacceptable, isn't it?
SHORTEN: Yeah. This terrible incident happened, to be honest, about three years ago, so before we were here. But it is, in my opinion, unacceptable. Just say, educate the staff and a slap over the wrist. We're talking about real people, real people who get hurt, people who are vulnerable. My view is that people running organisations like this, where this happens, shouldn't be able to keep working in the NDIS. So, what we've done since we've got in 15/16 months ago is that the safeguards regulator was chronically underfunded. They had about 350 people full time trying to look after a system covering hundreds of thousands of people on the NDIS. We've more than doubled the workforce. We've got them an extra $140 million to do their job properly. But it's not just bodies and it's not just resources. It's a mindset. And enough of the education. It's got to be compliance now. Some people are making a lot of money out of NDIS, but others are getting hurt and not being properly safeguarded. The latter is what really upsets me.
LEVI: Yes, I think we have to stress as well that there are people who have had very good experiences too. That's something that we do hear from many of our listeners, and I'm not painting a picture that it's all broken.
SHORTEN: No, you're 100% right. The scheme, when it's working, is changing lives, and for the bulk of people, it's changing lives positively. For the vast bulk of service providers, they're very motivated, but it can't be a lottery where sometimes you just get unlucky and get a crap provider or an unsafe situation. We have to improve the consistency of the experience. Now, Rome wasn't built in the day every person gets an individualised package. Many of the people have pretty complex circumstances. We're trying to do this at scale, but I just want to eliminate the bad actors and the poor performers from the scheme.
LEVI: Now, fraud and crime is rife in the sector, too. According to the Royal Commission, some were caught by the ABC running group homes like slum lords. We also saw evidence of people with severe mental illness locked in squalid conditions. They'd be better off in jail, really. What's being done there?
SHORTEN: Well, again, since we've come in, I've been working with whistleblowers. Some of the people you saw in the Four Corners report I met some time ago. And we funded the Community Mental Health Legal Service, who spoke on that show to help give them the resources and the teeth to actually expose what you saw. So, I've met out of hours with whistleblower nurses who've seen vulnerable people effectively kidnapped by service providers, where they're cut off from all other links, they're given cash inducements, this is people with intellectual disabilities just so that the service provider can mine their package and no one else gets to see what's going on. So, we have significantly increased what we call the policing or the Fraud Fusion Task Force. We've created a new police force. It's actually not new, but it's getting the state police, federal police, crime commission, tax office, NDIS together to start looking at the footprints that crooks are leaving. Again, it's not the whole scheme, it's just a small percentage, but any percentage is unacceptable. And I'll be blunt, I do not know why for nine years, my predecessors didn't focus on payment integrity and just making sure that what's being paid for is real and what's being invoiced is actually delivering better outcomes for people. So, we've significantly beefed up that. I can tell listeners that, say, between 2021 and now, we've doubled the number of criminal investigations. Before I got in, there was about $100 million of the scheme payments under investigation. Now it's north of $400 million. This is a $35 billion scheme, but we're going to keep expanding our remit. Our challenge is you can't just play Whack A Mole and where you get a complaint, deal with it that way. We need to improve the oversight of the scheme that what people are putting invoices in is actually real. And you might think that should have happened at the outset, that hasn't. So, we're just, I think, reconfiguring the scheme so that the money's getting through to the people for whom the scheme was designed and the rent seekers, the crooks, the poor performers are made clear that the welcome mat is gone. You're not welcome in the scheme.
LEVI: We're speaking with Bill Shorten, who is the Minister for Government Services and the NDIS. It's 07:21 ABC Central Coast. Tracy Mackey, the NDIS commissioner, was saying some of the things weren't investigated because they were worried about privacy matters. Surely, if someone is providing a taxpayer funded service, the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission can check it out. Landlords check their properties on a regular basis without impinging on the privacy rights of their tenants. Surely that's a very weak excuse for not keeping tabs on providers and their standards. And as you say, they were woefully underfunded, according to what you've said there, and they didn't have the resources. But can there be legislative change to give them the powers to do snap checks on all of these providers, without impinging on the privacy rights of their tenants?
SHORTEN: Yes. Short answer to your question, yes, there can be. We've done a root and branch review of the scheme. It's due to report the end of this month, so we won't be waiting much longer. I think there needs to be a cultural change in compliance as well as if we need more legal powers. Well, then I'm just going to go and get them from the Parliament. I'm not sugar coating anything. I think we do need some more legal powers to make sure we're keeping people safe. But beyond that, this is not just about changing attitudes. That's important, but it's just about the rule of the law and it's about compliance. And I don't believe that. If you've plotted your copy book and you've failed to keep people safe, then you shouldn't automatic have a renewal of your licence to ride in the scheme. As simple as that. We've got to move just from education to compliance. Compliance. Compliance. Yes. The short answer to question is yes. I want stronger compliance. You mentioned in one of your earlier questions about people saying the complaints process is opaque. I think that's a legitimate criticism. I think if you make a complaint, you should be able to see how that complaint is progressing. Again, this is all basic stuff, probably for listeners, and I feel it's basic, but it hasn't happened in the past.
LEVI: All right, well, it certainly play plenty of work in this space. We'll be watching it closely and we'll be chatting with you down the track, hopefully. Thank you so much, Mr Shorten.
SHORTEN: No, thanks for your interest. It's such an important area. Thank you.
LEVI: It is indeed. Bill Shorten there.