SUBMISSION TO THE JOINT STANDING COMMITTEE ON THE NATIONAL DISABILITY INSURANCE SCHEME
INTEGRITY OF THE NDIS
April 16 2026 I hope that in proposing this inquiry Minister McAllister is genuinely committed to actively creating change to more adequately protect people with disability and to provide hope for those of us who are exhausted and hurt by how the NDIS is failing to live up to expectation and protect us from harm.
NON-COMPLIANCE AND LACK OF INTEGRITY WITHIN THE NDIS
I have psychosocial disability and autism and have been a participant since 2018. I am in my late 60’s and live alone without family support. If by “integrity” you mean the quality of being honest, ethical and having strong moral principles characterised by consistency in actions, values and methods, entailing doing the right thing, then the NDIS has rarely demonstrated integrity with their words or actions during interactions with me. I have contributed to this committee’s inquiries over a number of years. My recurring theme has been the NDIS’s failure to follow their own processes and timeframes and the misconduct of employees. Based on my experiences as a participant, the NDIS has consistently demonstrated a pervasive and systemic non-compliance and lack of integrity within its structure. I have no idea how that can be fixed or improved as it seems too far out of control to be reined in and they NDIS seem very comfortable behaving like this.
I need the support the NDIS provides to live any sort of a life but interactions with the NDIS are always distressing and have contributed significantly to my already considerable trauma base. It is difficult to write submissions because it dredges up things I’d rather forget but if government don’t know, they can’t change anything. I am the person with disability yet that fact is rarely registered or factored into how NDIS employees interact with me. I have only dealt with two employees who were obviously trauma informed. How these public servants conduct themselves during interactions with me has often amounted to gross misconduct and abuse. The impact is devastating, damaging my health and well-being for months. To my knowledge, despite formal written complaints, no employee has ever been held accountable for their misconduct. They appear untouchable and unaccountable. Someone should have oversight and be responsible for addressing misconduct in the public service but I don’t know who it is. The standard response from the NDIS is that a senior manager would speak to the employee. Whoopee! It probably never happened. What about keeping track of their performance, identifying systemic issues during participant interactions, demotion, official warnings, re-training, unemployment! The strategies every other workforce does to manage employees who do not understand the responsibilities of their positions. There is no effective internal or external oversight over the performance or conduct of NDIS employees. Call it whatever you like – lack of training or empathy, inexperience, limited knowledge of disability, understaffing, overwork, stress – the bottom line is I am the person with disability and that should be considered during every interaction with the agency directly responsible for my support.
Information on the NDIS website and in their computer-generated emails is not reflected in how they operate in real life with participants. That demonstrates noncompliance and zero integrity. It doesn’t matter what I look up, the NDIS never do what their words say they will. I can read how a plan review will be conducted but planners fail to follow any of that during the actual plan review. Emails stating how a complaint will be handled has never been followed. Timeframes are clear but the NDIS exceed them by months and months and sometimes forever with immunity. If I ring the national call centre requesting a call back, no-one calls. If I email, all I get is automatic responses that lead nowhere. It’s unacceptable and unfixable because it has been allowed to go on too long.
Due to the short timeframe from referral to closure date for this inquiry I will concentrate on systemic issues with the NDIS complaints process because that is the most recent example of a lack of integrity and non-compliance for me. The NDIS complaints process has always been an enabled travesty and their lack of adherence to their own process causes harm to people with disability. Despite the pretence on their website, the NDIS mainly deals with complaints by unilaterally closing them without any investigation or discussion with the complainant. Instead of being a fully operational safeguarding process that actively protects participants and highlights and reduces systemic issues, the NDIS merely closes complaints unseen. I believe their complaint resolution statistics are false and complaints are not resolved but “disappeared.” Every complaint I have submitted has been closed without speaking with me or simply disappeared off the system. It has only been my doggedness that has forced the NDIS to handle a complaint. A lack of diligent independent external oversight over how the NDIA handle complaints has led to unsafe processes that violate procedural fairness.
After Robodebt, the Labour government said they would push for labour to be more “in-house” but an article in The Guardian by Jonathan Barrett (26 January 2026) highlighted that outsourced national call centre staff are not NDIS trained employees or even public servants. Most people ringing the NCC would have the reasonable expectation, belief and trust that they are speaking with a public servant who is trained in NDIS policy. The NCC as it is will never be able to deliver what they pretend to. It’s the only contact number we are given and yet the NDIS know that the staff answering the call are never going to be able to help us. It was set up this way. It’s a national disgrace and clearly an abuse of people with disability who need to speak with the agency managing their support. Now I know NCC staff are hired call centre workers, I will never ring again. No integrity!
Complaints About the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS)
In 2021 and 2024 I had written complaints closed by call centre staff without referral to the NDIS complaints branch. Complaints about the NDIS itself deserve the respect of being correctly addressed by their complaints process as it is written. It is not acceptable that a for profit national call centre answering my call seeking information about the status of a complaint are allowed to make decisions they are not trained, qualified or accountable for. All decisions about participant experiences should only be made by core government public service employees not people doing casual call centre work. That’s what most Australians expect of a government agency.
My 2024 complaint concerned a plan review where the planner/delegate never spoke to me. She cut my plan, deleted my supports and inserted supports I did not request or want. The NDIS revised the plan quickly but it took months of stress and many phone calls to try to get my complaint about the conduct of the planner/delegate even acknowledged. When I finally spoke with the NDIS complaints officer, she confirmed that it appeared my complaint had been closed unseen and there was no record of it on their system. How is that even possible or legal? I had all their emails confirming it was received and notes taken from NCC staff also confirming it had been received but by the time I got to speak to the complaints officer, it had disappeared. The complaints officer told me a call centre staffer probably closed it. She agreed that whoever closed my complaint should have recorded who they were and why my complaint was closed. If you look at the integrity of this – my complaint should not have been closed unseen, the complaint and notes should have been on my file and it was not a call centre staffer’s job to close complaints. The complaints officer seemed completely fine with that like it was a common occurrence. I was and am not!
I reported this systemic issue to the Commonwealth Ombudsman’s Office. The CO had my complaint for over a year, apologising a few times by email for the delay and encouraging me to withdraw my complaint because they were very “busy.” Code for we are not interested! After finally speaking with the NDIS, the CO was convinced of their now changed version of events instead of mine. Case closed! No action taken! I was so distressed I have never read past the initial sentence of the CO’s report refuting the facts I’d presented. There has been widespread reporting of complaints to the NDIS being closed unseen yet we are all lying are we? The CO’s staff do not comprehend that all participants have significant disability. There is an unrealistic and unfair expectation that participants have the capacity, stamina, time and technological skill to present complaints and arguments with the same expertise as NDIS barristers. We have no hope! The CO’s slogan, “Helping people, improving government” cannot be applied to my experiences over many years. They may help people in other jurisdictions but I do not believe they assist participants with complaints about the NDIS or maybe it’s just me they won’t help.
I only have two recommendations.
- That a new ombudsman is established solely for the NDIS and that they are committed to genuinely helping people improve the agency. If the NCC are stopped from closing complaints there will be plenty of work for a dedicated ombudsman to handle.
- That only core government public service employees are permitted to make decisions involving participants.
FRAUD
I have not experienced any fraud until the last two years. I’ve still only experienced low-level fraud but even that accounts for a lot of money as cheating on hours worked is a constant, indicating the practice is rife. Dishonest people become emboldened if they are not captured so even small fraud should be stamped out. It takes so long to access support workers, cleaners, gardeners etc. that I am reluctant to sack them because then I have the stress of replacing them. I am capable of handling issues that arise but find confrontations highly distressing. Each time I have to act to protect myself I need to weigh up the toll it will have on my mental health and wellbeing. I often withdraw and am reluctant to re-engage as the trust I should be able to have in providers is eroded. I am anxious knowing I have to be constantly on my guard. I feel complicit and powerless because all can really do is sack dodgy providers, leaving them free to continue their behaviour with someone else who is less capable of defending themselves.
The fraud I’ve experienced is providers who fail to do the work they claim for. The minimum shift I have to employ workers is two hours. This rule that only benefits workers and is a waste of tax payer money. Lots of jobs only take an hour. Workers’ rights exceed mine as they benefit at the expense of my precious NDIS funding. Where else do you get paid for hours you do not work. This year I have needed support with cleaning and have had two cleaners from two different providers. Neither of them has ever cleaned for the whole two hours. Sometimes they come an hour or more late but still leave on time. On average they work for about an hour. They rarely ask if there is anything else they can do and just leave when they consider they’re finished. I assume they realise what they are doing is dishonest. They probably do this with every client they see whether it’s for My Aged Care or the NDIS. Often the client is not home while they clean. I need their help but what am I supposed to do. The issue is entrenched. I have a gardener now too. His work rarely lasts more than 30 minutes but when he completes the work, he asks what else he can do including helpful handyman jobs like changing smoke alarm batteries. He spends the rest of his two-hour shift chatting to me which also benefits me. I am very grateful for his honesty but he is the exception not the rule.
SHARP PRACTICES
The NDIS clearly describes what is expected of service providers - Participants deserve to be supported by providers who are ethical, honest and compliant and who ensure safe, high-quality services that respect participant rights and promote well-being. Services providers should meet the necessary standards for quality, safety and risk management and who produce truthful and accurate claims. These words are hollow because so many providers are not reaching these expectations and nothing is done about it.
Up until last year I had terrific support workers who genuinely cared about me and I experienced little non-compliance or sharp practices. Since 2025 this has changed and I presume the deterioration in the quality of support workers is due to the explosion of unregulated service providers. Anyone with an ABN can be a support worker and that lack of safeguarding shows in the quality of workers participants are exposed to. I have had several support workers who have failed to reach even a minimum standard being unskilled and unsuited to disability work. They were disinterested, lazy and disrespectful of me as a person which made me feel worthless.
The process of finding and getting to know a new support worker is stressful. I often go months without support because I cannot cope with trying someone new again. In order to have a sound working relationship with workers I have to be vulnerable and spend a lot of mental and physical energy getting to know and trust them. I have to let them into my life and my home. It’s very hard work and devastating when they turn out to be unsuitable. The more negative experiences I have with support workers the less I want to engage and the more difficult it is to force myself to. Although I often sense right from the beginning that something doesn’t feel right, I often give them a chance because I understand they may be nervous and it takes time to build a relationship. Invariably my gut instincts prove correct and they turn out to be dishonest, manipulative or lazy. This leaves me feeling used, abused, exploited and stupid for being fooled again. My life is difficult enough without having to be ready to protect myself from the people who have been employed to support me. My co-ordinator is experienced and I rely on her diligence in checking workers out and weeding out those she feels aren’t suitable. We usually interview applicants together but despite our best efforts some have fooled us.
Travel
If I am in the car with a support worker, they claim travel as well as their hourly rate. This is a lucrative way for them to make more money. Workers often go the long way or drive around pretending they can’t see or get into a park. I casually point it out to them but it never stops them trying. I’ve had offers to drive me to a, “lovely little café and nursery” and agree without realising it’s a 90-minute round trip leaving less than half an hour to actually do something there. I’ve had offers to drive me to large regional or capital cities for “a day out” to shop, visit an art gallery or market. They try to persuade me by telling me lots of their other clients do and it will be good for me. One offered to take me back to my home town over 700 kilometres away, staying for a week’s holiday all at the expense of my NDIS plan and tax payers’ money. I refuse but it is very draining when they are so persistent in thinking of ways to get me to travel further just to make more money out of me.
Oversharing and downloading
All workers overshare and download their life stories, past traumas and personal problems. They all seem to forget that they are employed to support me and I am not their support worker. As a participant with PTSD, their constant need to share their problems is entirely inappropriate as it poses a significant risk to my safety. What to do about it? They should know better. It should not be up to me to set professional boundaries. The temporary worker I have at the moment has many good qualities but she overshares during every session so I cannot continue working with her. This week she asked me how to help one of her other clients who is being threatened in shared accommodation. The police, a welfare check - she hadn’t thought of that. The NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission - she’d never heard of it but noted it down. She began sharing information about past trauma experienced by the same client. ALL wrong on every level! I interrupted and quite bluntly stated that I did not want to hear about it as I had enough of my own trauma to deal with. She was teary and upset with me for the rest of the session.
Emotional Manipulation
NDIS support workers are not supposed to leave before the rostered shift ends because they have a duty of care to me but they do. They use emotional manipulation to get me to agree to them leaving early which covers them. They tell me they’re tired, reciting all the things they have to do after work etc. I worked full time for forty years. I know all about that. The whingeing and blatant manipulation annoys me so much I sometimes let them go. If I insist they stay I have to put up with a sullen worker who thinks I’m being vindictive or pedantic. I really struggle with this situation.
I’ve had workers excitedly suggest a particular place they think I’ll love to visit. When we get there, they pull out their shopping list or tell me all the things they’re hoping to buy that day. They have the gall to brazenly use me, my NDIS time and funds to meet their own needs. It makes me feel angry and used. If a worker does this regularly, I bring up in conversation about workers I’ve sacked in the past because their behaviour has been unethical. Naively I hope they’ll will take the hint and mend their ways but few take this opportunity. Even knowing how I feel and realising I am on to them, they don’t stop. They are greedy and only in the business to make easy money. Invariably the relationship sours because of their manipulative behaviour and my unwillingness to be used.
I have had a couple of workers who were very emotionally manipulative. I never believed a word they said but sadly many less astute participants do and become easy prey. This type of worker pretends they’re my friend, tells me I’m special, they like me and that they’d
Failing to follow the NDIS code of conduct
love to spend more time with me. They offer to catch up on weekends, after hours or public holidays to attend markets, go to concerts or special community events etc. pretending they are worried about me spending so much time alone. I know they’re lying and simply want to work less hours for a higher rate of pay. Even though I am aware they are deceitful it still hurts. I am incredulous that their lack of ethics, conscience and morals allows them to feel justified lying and preying on my loneliness and isolation for money. They are to be pitied … and avoided!
Failing to follow the NDS code of conduct
My coordinator tells me support workers see me as an easy participant because I am polite, interesting company and like simple things that require little effort on their part. However, the longer I’ve been a participant the tougher I’ve had to become. I have no tolerance for deception, lying, manipulation, dishonesty, disrespect or condescension. If a worker is not interested in me, does not enjoy my company or care about my well-being then I don’t want them in my life. If workers cross a certain number of lines and I am pushed to my limits I will fight for myself. My latest support worker X worked with me for nearly a year and has been my worst worker ever. She is a sole operator. My coordinator sacked her a month ago. X is a master manipulator and liar and although I recognised this, she was interesting and we enjoyed similar interests. I thought I could ignore her less attractive traits but of course I was wrong. The first red flag was when X asked my coordinator if I would speak up and kick off if she said or did something I didn’t like. I viewed this as scoping to ascertain how far she could go. Hideously calculating!
It is still too raw to talk about the detail of what I experienced with X immediately prior to sacking her but she’d already done all of the things I’ve already described and gradually but relentlessly kept crossing more and more professional boundaries. The longer X worked with me the more her confidence grew and the less she could control her behaviour. It began with talking on the phone in my time to her partner, texting friends to arrange play dates for her son, googling things she wanted to buy, checking social media and reading texts from other clients then relaying what they’d said to me. My coordinator and X swapped roles and X failed to process the change and the drop in income. X criticised and undermined my coordinator both professionally and personally to me. X called my coordinator a bogan, mocking what she considered was my coordinator’s lack of “culture” regarding food, history, art, politics etc. and was disparaging about my coordinator’s family. I pulled X up every time but it was water off a duck’s back. X also made “jokes” about my autistic traits which she may have thought was banter but it was offensive given how often it happened.
I was in a tricky position. I did not like X but I was due to have major surgery that would impact my mobility, ability to care for myself and to drive and she was rostered to be my main support worker. Two days post-surgery and still in hospital X kept texting, hassling me about my discharge time from hospital even though I had explained several times I had no control over that. X told me if discharge didn’t fit into the two-hour timeslot booked, she would have to leave me at the hospital. Remember she gets paid for the two hours anyway whether she’s with me or not because I have to provide 48 hours’ notice to cancel a shift! X turned up despite me not being discharged and was arrogant and impatient with nursing staff, physio and pharmacist. She dropped me at home and left. I felt abandoned and alone and could barely get myself to bed.
Within a few days of discharge, X lost the plot! She disrespected my rights and failed to act in a safe and competent manner with care, skill and integrity. X is thirty years my junior and held all the power because I was in a vulnerable position physically and mentally. I was not coping with the pain and needed to rest which despite claiming to have been a nurse, X seemed unable to comprehend or respect. She wanted to play board games, complained about cooking me an egg for dinner and spoke condescendingly. I said I was in pain, needed to take medication and sleep but she wouldn’t listen. I felt unsafe with her and yelled telling her to leave my home. I got into bed and put a pillow over my head. X sat in my living room for a while then without being invited, came into my bedroom and stood beside my bed telling me how upset she was because I’d yelled at her and told her to leave. As I felt yelling at her was entirely appropriate, I refused to engage. Eventually she left but I was very upset and frightened because I didn’t know what she’d do and I was physically incapable of protecting myself.
In the following days X cancelled a few shifts at the last minute (the 48 hours’ notice doesn’t apply to me!) leaving me alone, unsupported and incapacitated. She ignored my well-being and safety although there was a clear risk to my safety living alone with my only support being her. My coordinator was forced to quickly engage another service provider who provided a roster of workers to cover as many shifts as possible. I limited X’s shifts to a minimum to avoid having to engage with her very much felt scared and anxious as it was obvious she was angry. Unexpectedly X came to a shift with a new service agreement for me to sign. I said the arrangement was not working for me and I did not want to continue. Once again X refused to listen or accept my decision. She started talking at me telling me she was a great worker, popular with her clients and her waiting list was long - demonstrating no insight into her own behaviour or the fact that it is my right to terminate a service agreement. My coordinator arrived by which time I was distraught but clearly saying over and over that I needed to go to bed and I wanted X to leave. My coordinator insisted X leave.
The number one rule for anyone experiencing overwhelm and distress is to not keep talking to them. For all X’s glossed up training she claimed to have she must have “forgotten” this. Her insistence on discussing something that I had been exceptionally clear about – leave my house and I don’t want to work with you any more - tipped me over the edge and caused a psychological crisis. My coordinator stayed with me for two hours using her genuine mental health training and considerable lived experience of autism to help me recover enough to
be left at home alone. She sacked X later that day but wanting to have the last say, X texted me that night wishing me the best and that she’d check in on me in a few weeks. Delusional, unprofessional, self-centred and intimidatory!
This experience had a serious impact on me. My practitioners were all shocked but reassured me that the worker’s behaviour was unacceptable and I’d done the right thing but that hasn’t really helped. They agreed that by refusing to leave my home, failing to listen or respect what I was saying and invading the privacy of my bedroom, X caused my trauma response to activate. I manage my PTSD well so this has not happened for many years. Simultaneously, overwhelm from the experience of major surgery, a hospital stay and considerable pain caused an autistic meltdown, sensory overload, dissociation and memory loss. I am slowly remembering what happened and attempting to process and understand how I could have handled the situation better but logically and intellectually, I know that the minute I asked her to leave my home she should have.
Would I bother reporting any of these matters to the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission? Never! Their track record is as bad as the complaints branch and I could not put myself through the stress of yet another completely pointless exercise that does nothing practical to protect me. They would not care what happened to me and would see it as a minor incident. The media describes providers who are guilty of serious fraud and misconduct who only get a slap on the wrist leaving them free to move interstate or set up under a different name and continue business as usual. For all the smart technology we have in Australia no-one is making the slightest dent on the providers causing harm to participants and the NDIS. Until someone treats them for exactly what they are - criminals and abusers - they just smirk! I have slowly realised over the years there are no safeguards protecting me and nothing workable that protects me from corrupt and abusive service providers except my own capacity to save myself and sack them. There are absolutely no safeguards protecting me from the NDIS itself. Every process that is supposed to safeguard me as a person with disability is too hard, stressful and demanding for me to access alone and there is no-one to assist me. The safeguarding processes that exist now are useless. Don’t ask me how to fix it but please read what I have said and consider what you’d like to see happen if I was your older relative.