NDIA Accountability Project

Concerns regarding fraud accountability and Administrative Review Tribunal (ART) processes within NDIS

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Federal Inquiry into National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Getting the NDIS Back on Track No. 1) Bill 2024

It is my assertion that unless the Government’s Bill to reduce the costs of NDIS & improve Plan flexibility addresses the following points then the Bill should not proceed or must contain Recommendations to fix NDIS as it will not address the fundamental flaws in NDIS. If the Bill doesn’t adequately address fraud losses, proper & fair & flexible processes for decisions and acceptable transparent accountability processes then NDIS will continue to suffer losses & failures and the needs of people with a disability will be significantly compromised.

For the purpose of this submission I refer to the funded service as NDIS. It is frequently unclear why there are two seperate departments to manage one service. State & Federal departments such as Health, Housing, Transport, Defence do not have a seperate department to decide policy & budget frameworks & completey different department to administer it. It should be ONE department with a division to set Policy & Budget frameworks and the rest of the same department deals with the delivery of services.

How much money is wasted on an NOIA & an NDIS?

  • Review of Reviews followed by Administrative Review Tribunal (ART) are a significant waste of money often caused by NDIS staff with no Health or Disability training or degree to properly assess or negotiate Plans & often currently based on a panic to reduce the NDIS budget & not on the basis of a particular participants genuine needs

  • Why is ART for NDIS based on expensive use of lawyers when there are no points of Law even being discussed let alone tested? It doesn’t require Lawyers to act as Advocates on Disability health issues.

  • What has been the cost of the ART process for NDIS? How does that cost stack up with NDIS attempts at cost savings?

  • Why is ART limited to decisions only spanning directions for 12 months when participants are being asked by NDIS to agreeing to 5 year Plans?

    ART decisions need to be within the parameters of NDIS common length dates of Plans (e.g. 5 yrs)

  • What percentage of NDIS Plan cutbacks are going before ART?

  • How many participants cut back are not accessing ART? How many are missing out on a fair review because they don’t have the skills or access to support to challenge questionable cutbacks?

  • What is the actual NNDIS budget percentage of Fraud?

  • Why are fraudulent complaints on NDIS funding not being significantly prosecuted & compensation sought? NDIS not putting proper protective accountability systems to address fraud is no excuse for NDIS as it claimed to a Senate Committee unable to pursue the high number of NDIS fraud cases!

  • What is the total cost of fraud not being prosecuted?

*Participants should not be losing out on services because of fraud by others! NDIS/NDIA has failed in its Duty of Care for accountability systems to prevent widespread fraud!

  • Why is their no federal correlation between NDIS & ATO. They are both divisions of the Australian Government & should have a working link.

  • How many NDIS funded services have paid Taxation & Superannuation contributions for their employees funded by NDIS? How many services have not paid Tax or Super or underpaid these areas?

  • Why is there no requirement of NDIS funded services to provide any annual or audited financial statements on expenses yet every other Federal or State funded services are required to submit satisfactory annual Financial Reports on funding?

Financial Planners are not set up to closely monitor services paid from NDIS funds & do not in any way check how funds paid to services are used by funded services. If you want Financial Planners to undertake that role then they need to be set up & funded to do so.

  • why are funded services not bound to paying Award rates to staff & they can charge what they like for so-called administrative costs?

  • How many services are gaining a profit from NDIS funding by reducing costs to employees to below the rates quoted by NDIS?

  • What percentage of funding is deemed fair & reasonable profit by funded services through NDIS?

  • How many Group Homes are claiming support funding for a Support Worker for each participant but then only employing 1 or 2 staff for a house funded for 5 or 6+ & claiming the rest of the funds as profit? *this needs close scrutiny

  • The emphasis has been on high costing Registration yet that process not only doesn’t prevent fraud but it gives an extremely low return for the high registration costs.

  • What services is NDIS providing to Registered Services? What training is provided & what resources are provided to a registered service, particularly many small businesses that is received for the high cost of registration. Is the training & resources offered basically nil?

I put it to you that a number of services have exited NDIS because of high registration costs & little or no value for Registration. This creates a vacuum of services needed.

  • Al & algorithms are extremely unreliable systems to advise Disabled participants needs. Every disabled person even with similar disability categories have different needs. There are currently too many inconsistencies in the levels of funding to participants and no actual stated tools to guage needs.

  • On what basis are NDIS staff making decisions on Plans?

  • What percentage of NDIS staff have Health or Disability training or degree to properly assess or negotiate Plans?

  • *Plans need to have greatly flexibility including budget allocations to properly address participants needs as they arise without creating whole new (unecessary & costly time consuming) Reviews & Plan processes & changes of Plan dates.

  • the NDIS Participant Feedback system rarely addresses actual shortfalls in NDIS, doesn’t want to know about such deficiencies, has no accountability links to the so-called National NDIS Advisory Committee, & bombards participants with too many alleged consultancies as a strategy to weaken feedback.

  • they have rarely provided effective feedback & positive change to NDIS hence the need for this Government Inquiry.

Regards,

Steven Warren

  • address NFP, suburb ok for publish

Riverwood NSW 2210

In Summary;

  • Every disabled person has different needs that can not be assessed by AI or algorithms
  • There is not enough flexibility in addressing needs as they arise
  • there is a lack of accountability in many areas that opens the door to fraud, misuse, lack of Taxation & Superannuation by Providers
  • Registration provides little actual benefit to Providers & doesn’t prevent fraud
  • There’s no proper accountability systems on reporting expenditure
  • a lack of real action on fraud & recovery