Let me begin by acknowledging the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation and pay respect to their elders past and present.
Thank you all for joining us here in Sydney.
Welcome to Australia. I hope as much as you enjoy the summit, you also get some time to enjoy this incredible City.
All the work you do is so important.
And the work of collaboration is critically important itself.
I know that from our work in Australia, where 25 of our agencies through the Fraud Fusion Taskforce have built habits of collaboration over the last 4 years that are making an enormous difference.
In an earlier life I spent almost 6 years on the Australian Parliament’s Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence and Security.
I have seen first-hand how important the collaboration between our countries is as well.
So I’m delighted that this summit is taking place and equally delighted to be able to talk to you.
The truth is this: criminal syndicates increasingly see government as high value target.
This is a shared problem across Government payment systems and across the world.
Now, the vast majority of Australian NDIS service providers are extraordinarily good people.
And the work they do helps change the lives of people with a disability for the better every day.
But Australia’s National Disability Insurance Scheme is not immune.
Today, I can confirm that the NDIS is being targeted by criminal syndicates that are sophisticated and organised.
My number one priority for the NDIS Commission and the enforcement arm of the NDIA is to find and disrupt these organised syndicates.
Today I am going to explain what we are doing to stop criminals exploiting people with a disability.
How we are making it easy to do the right thing and hard to do the wrong thing.
By building in layers of integrity, so we don’t just prosecute fraud – we prevent it.
I’m conscious not everyone here will appreciate the significance of the NDIS, but our National Disability Insurance Scheme is a relatively young part of Australia’s social policy architecture.
But in its second decade, it requires attention.
When we came to Government, a criminal seeking to defraud the NDIS needed no more than the name of an NDIS participant, their NDIS number and a bank account.
Astonishingly, not even an Australian bank account if they were claiming to be a plan manager.
Millions and millions of claims paid, without evidence and without oversight.
And just a handful of staff in the NDIA investigating fraud and wrongdoing, without the teeth to enforce the rules.
And when the NDIA or NDIS Commission received tip-offs about the crooks, they had to work through manual processes to triage the complaints.
We have set about systematically fixing that. In the last Budget, the Government committed more than $800 million in funding.
And multiple pieces of legislation have strengthened integrity by providing clarity on NDIS scope and improving the powers of the NDIA and the Commission.
As these reforms are progressively implemented, a criminal seeking to exploit the NDIS will find it’s not worth their time.
That criminal will find barriers at every point:
- prevention through preventing access to the provider market
- prevention through payment controls
- stronger powers of investigation and enforcement.
We are going about implementing integrity by design.
Firstly, we’re implementing stronger guardrails for who can provide services to people on the scheme.
Our reforms will mean that a provider will have to be registered with the NDIS Commission for categories that cover 90% of the payments – including some of the most lucrative.
And, with the exception of some general retail services, every provider will have to be enrolled through the NDIA.
Before a would be criminal makes a claim, the Government will know their identity and have it connected to an Australian bank account. And for most types of support, they will have to have gone through an approved auditor to become registered.
And the days of just buying a registered shell company are over.
This year we moved to impose new obligations on the sale of NDIS businesses aimed at cracking down on the sale of ‘cleanskin’ registered businesses.
Providers now have to notify as soon as they become aware that a sale will occur and new audits will be required where there are significant changes to governance or operations.
Secondly, we’re going to tighten the guidelines around how providers of NDIS services get paid.
If that committed criminal somehow makes it through into the system, then making false claims will be much harder.
Claims will have to be made within 90 days of service. No more draining of participants plan by making aged unverifiable claims against plans that had been allowed to grow over many years.
All claims will require evidence to be provided to the NDIA.
And the days of marking your own homework or finding a dodgy mate to tick off the receipts will be over.
All plan managers will be directly commissioned by the NDIA and need to be operating with the highest standards of integrity controls.
New whistleblower protections will give people making tip offs in confidence that their own job will be protected.
And when complaints are made to the NDIA or NDIS Commission, new capabilities will mean that the most serious cases will be prioritised for action.
And ongoing funding for the Fraud Fusion Taskforce means that collaboration across Commonwealth agencies builds another layer of operational intelligence.
New analytics capabilities in the NDIA – like the new payment system – will mean this financial information can be processed to identify red flags.
And thirdly, those analytical capabilities will be supplemented with much stronger powers of investigation and enforcement.
We’re mandating record keeping – 7 years for providers.
