Government accused of misleading public on NDIS cuts in heated Senate hearing
NDIS Minister Jenny McAllister repeatedly rejected the accusation. (ABC News: Ian Cutmore)
In short:
The Greens and Labor have repeatedly clashed over the government's upcoming NDIS cuts in a Senate hearing this morning.
Greens senator Jordon Steele-John accused the government of misrepresenting the target of its cuts, which minister Jenny McAllister repeatedly rejected.
What's next?
Three days of public hearing into the NDIS bill will take place from Tuesday.
The federal government has been accused of selling its cuts to the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) as a crackdown on fraud, while instead pursuing billions of dollars of dramatic savings by slashing participant packages.
Greens Senator Jordon Steele-John and NDIS minister Jenny McAllister clashed repeatedly in Senate estimates sitting this morning, just days before public hearings into legislation that paves the way for the biggest ever cuts to the scheme.
Treasury modelling tabled in the Senate last week shows that, of the $38.1 billion predicted to be saved from the cuts over the next four years, just $0.9 billion (2 .4 per cent) was expected to come from "making the minister the decision maker on pricing and related fraud measures".
The same document shows that almost 60 per cent of those overall savings would come from the cutting of participant community participation and therapy budgets ($13.2 billion over four years) and tightening access to the scheme through a new functional capacity test ($9.3 billion).
Alongside overall sustainability, the government has repeatedly referenced fraud as one justification for its generational overhaul of the now-$50 billion scheme, with a separate Senate inquiry hearing last month that about $3.7 billion of NDIS funding was lost to "integrity leakage" last financial year.
Senator Steele-John asked Senator McAllister about the Treasury modelling this morning, saying it appeared the government's changes to the scheme had more of a focus on "cutting people's support" than holding the "mongrel" providers who were exploiting participants to account.
"Many people will look at the dollar figures and wonder why they themselves, as participants in the scheme, are bearing the overwhelming weight of the cuts that you are making in a piece of legislation that you've overwhelmingly framed as an anti-fraud measure," he said.
"I think there is a fundamental disconnect here between the government's language, which is often around tackling fraud, and what the numbers say here in the budget papers."
Jordon Steele-John says there is a "fundamental disconnect" between how the government is selling its changes versus what it is actually doing. (ABC News: Matt Roberts)
Senator McAllister repeatedly pushed back in a series of tense exchanges, saying it was misleading to pick one line item from the ten in total contained in the Treasury modelling as the only one that was anti-fraud.
"The package as a whole will have a very significant impact on fraud," she said.
She accused Senator Steele-John of conflating the fiscal impact of the overhaul to the "overall policy impact", and that all savings from stopping fraud could not be truly captured on a balance sheet.
"You are correct that for the most part, there are not significant savings to government," she said.
"There are some savings to government when we intervene [on fraud], but mostly what occurs is … it generally returns money to people with disability who need it, not to consolidated revenue."
Senator McAlliser said the government's overhaul of the scheme first and foremost sought to ensure the scheme was sustainable.
"The whole package is about making the NDIS stronger and better so it is here for the long term. It's not a choice between runaway cost growth or dealing with fraud — we actually have to do both."
The government was also questioned about a new power in legislation before parliament that would enable the minister to cut funding across categories of supports, a device independent senator David Pocock labelled a "blunt instrument".
Senator Pocock said he worried a forecast 50 per cent cut to participants' social and community participation budgets would leave them isolated and without alternative services.
"We actually need more of a scalpel here rather than a sledgehammer," he said.
Senator McAllister acknowledged the measure would affect participants on the scheme but said the rapid growth of the NDIS jeopardised overall confidence in the scheme.
Royal commission taskforce quietly disbanded
Officials also confirmed that a taskforce set up to help oversee the implementation of the disability royal commission's 222 recommendations was quietly disbanded in June last year.
The Department of Health's Jodi Cassar said the taskforce was always supposed to be "time-limited", something Senator Steele-John said had not been made public.
Ms Cassar said some of the staff from the taskforce had been moved to work under the Australian Disability Strategy, where they were still tracking the recommendations.
"The function [of the taskforce] hasn't ceased. The department is still tracking and working to implement the recommendations,"Senator McAllister said.
Disability advocates have been frustrated by the slow pace of reform following the $600 million inquiry, which began in 2019 and heard shocking evidence from almost 10,000 people over almost five years.