Senate Votes Down One Nation Inquiry Into NDIS Fraud
A reasonable call to investigate waste and fraud was shut down, even as the cost of the NDIS surges and public confidence continues to erode.
Pauline Hanson’s inquiry into the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) fraud was torpedoed in the Australian Senate.
The inquiry would have sent shockwaves through a welfare industry that appears to have become about exploiting both the vulnerable and the well-intentioned.
Every year, NDIS expenditure creeps closer to Australia’s national defence budget and will eventually outspend pensions.
For perspective, the far from “right-wing” Australian Financial Review predict that the cost of the government dependency scheme will reach 100 billion by 2035.
Ask most Aussies, and you’ll hear a collective whisper of frustration at scores of stories where NDIS “carers” charge for a 4-hour shift and only work 3.
That’s at an hourly rate of close to triple digits an hour (more if you factor in a nice paid-for beach walk on Sunday because “the client demands it.”)
One salesman once told me he knew of a person who was taking a cruise because the remaining allocated NDIS funds for the client hadn’t been used up.
An expensive cruise appeared to be easily written off as being “just what the doctor ordered.”
There are even people within the “I Heart NDIS” taxpayer-funded monolith who told me in frustration that the rorting was a widespread and well-known industry secret.
Yet, on March 24, 1 independent, and 33 Labor-Greens senators voted against a Senate investigation into this alleged abuse of taxpayer money.
What Hanson wanted was perfectly reasonable. Her full Hansard remarks can be read here.
The Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee were to look into and deliver a detailed report in September this year.
This inquiry would either validate allegations about free-loading fraudsters or vindicate the debt for disability support NDIS albatross.
Hanson was calling for reform in order “to restore public confidence in NDIS.”
By proving it still had some degree of integrity left, the taxpayer would afford NDIS some protection.
To this, Hanson rightly pushed for a thorough wash and rinse.
She called for the government to take a microscope to the “scale, nature and drivers of waste, fraud and abuse within NDIS.”
This included an investigation into “the adequacy of existing safeguards, compliance, auditing, investigative and enforcement mechanisms to detect, prevent and respond to waste, fraud and abuse.”
Another reasonable addition - and I think essential when it comes to medical care - was a review of the “qualifications of workers under the scheme.”
The reach of the One Nation inquiry would include NDIS processes, financial viability, and whether or not those who actually need support were getting it.
A key factor here was looking at the alleged overcharging for services, simply because NDIS is viewed as “free money.”
NDIS’s impact on housing and construction costs would have also been investigated, which would have had the powers and priorities of a Royal Commission to rule on.
Citing X influencer Drew Pavlou and YouTuber Pete Zogoulas’ 51 minute expose into NDIS fraud, Hanson argued that the Australian public wanted answers.
“People have had a gutful,” she said.
“And this government is looking at increasing the capital gains tax and looking at death duties. You want to hit those people.
“You’re attacking superannuation. You want more and more out of the people.
“You have an opportunity to rein in the NDIS and the fraud that’s going on in this country. You have the opportunity to do it, and you don’t.”
The government, Hanson protested, wants to raise taxes and implement new ones instead.
“It’s disgraceful to allow some of these services to keep going on and on.”
NDIS provider “should not be paid any more than what the average person is paid to provide the same service to any other person in the community who is not on the NDIS.”
“That’s why we need to have an inquiry into this.”
For her trouble, Hanson was accused of being “ableist,” misrepresenting the NDIS, then told she was using disabled people for political profit.
Evidently, the One Nation motion was voted down.
Out of 76 senators, 34 voted no. Those who voted yes didn’t beat that number. What this suggests is that while a good portion of Coalition senators voted yes, some decided to be a no-show.
Torpedoing the Hanons inquiry suggests what I’ve long suspected.
Labor – and Canberra’s champagne socialists - need NDIS to keep their voter base dependent and their election coffers well fed.
NDIS, similar to the NBN, it could be argued, is a form of weaponised welfare. The scheme is an activist’s all-expenses-paid, why-not-retire-early dream.
All the Laborites need to do every election is roll out the dependency scare campaign propaganda, such as Mediscare and SAVE TAFE.
Then rinse and repeat the same subjective manipulation for the NBN and NDIS.
Hit the right “I heart NDIS” buttons with the “our opponents hate disabled people,” and the recipe for perpetual election victory cooks itself.
Coming from a family where generational welfare was what you inherited, I can state with confidence that Government dependency is designed to keep Labor and the Greens in power, not to empower those with a disability.
Voters will trip over themselves to keep the trough full and their sugar daddy government still in power.
To quote Bernie Finn, who took to social media to show support for Hanson’s motion,
“As a father of an adult son with a profound disability, I know how important the NDIS is to families with disabilities.”
This said, “it must be made sustainable.”
Remove the waste and fraud. Clean it out.
 | A guest post by
|