Senate estimates in Australia got off to a tense start as the Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme, Jenny McAllister, was questioned over the government's intention to reduce spending on the program. The exchange quickly became one of the sharpest moments of the hearing, centring on how the savings will actually be found.
The government is looking to reduce the cost of the scheme by around 38 billion dollars over four years through a major set of reforms. Much of the public debate has focused on fraud, which has been characterised as one of the central problems that needs to be tackled within the NDIS as the changes are introduced.
Greens Senator Jordan Steele-John accused the government of framing sweeping changes to the scheme as measures to tackle fraud, when in his view the savings are really being achieved by cutting participants' support packages. He said he was following the money set out in documents the government had presented to the Senate.
According to Steele-John, those documents show that far less than five billion dollars of the overall amount bookmarked as going back to the budget from NDIS cuts comes from anti fraud measures. He argued there was a great deal of rhetoric around fraud but little substance in the bill itself when it came to concrete anti fraud steps.
McAllister pushed back, rejecting the claim that the package does not tackle fraud. She explained that when fraud is addressed, the saving goes to the participant rather than to the government, which is why those figures do not appear as budget savings. That is why, she said, the numbers Steele-John was looking for were not in the budget.
Steele-John was not persuaded, telling the hearing the government could have done more to tackle fraud and to hold what he called mongrel providers to account for the abuse and exploitation being perpetrated upon disabled people. He argued that many such providers were no better than criminals and were financially exploiting the very people the scheme is meant to protect.
National Disability Affairs reporter Naz Campanella said the dispute had become a sticking point because Treasury modelling released through estimates showed that, of the roughly 38 billion dollars in savings, less than a billion is explicitly tied to a measure aimed at tackling fraud. The clash leaves the government facing accusations that it has put more focus on cutting support than on holding bad providers to account.