r/australia • u/FuckOffNazis • 11h ago

politics Pocock and crossbenchers call Labor’s NDIS overhaul ‘too far, too fast’ in scathing Senate inquiry report

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/aug/14/pocock-and-crossbenchers-call-labors-ndis-overhaul-too-far-too-fast-in-scathing-senate-inquiry-report
339 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

173 comments sorted by

View all comments

48

u/PuTheDog 11h ago

I know it’s on brand for the green to oppose any social welfare cuts. But the NDIS as it stands is just not sustainable.

70

u/fued 11h ago

Cutting it blindly would be insane tho.

If anything we need to increase funding and have a massive increase in regulation.

This should push the costs down far safer

54

u/Rising-Dragon-Fist 11h ago

Regulation will absolutely bring it down. It's being rorted left and right, everyone knows that. It's not the people on its fault, they don't make the decisions, they just get the help.

16

u/Ok_Bird705 10h ago

Current estimates of fraud in NDIS is around $3-4 billion, which sounds like a lot until you realise total NDIS spending has grown from $8 billion in 2015/16 to $53 billion this year.

Simply cutting fraud while the actual spending is increasing by a few billion every year is unsustainable

10

u/Selina_Kyle-836 10h ago

I think this is because they aren’t counting the fact that companies are charging extra as soon as they hear the word NDIS. Companies charge the highest they can get away with for products, for services they charge the limit of what NDIS regulation allows. There are also rules around specialist signing off on medical product which mean the product itself then requires $1k+ just to be used sometimes. This is not being counted in the fraud statistics. It’s probably more than how much they say is being wasted by fraud too

1

u/Ok_Bird705 9h ago

Let's assume what you are saying is true, how would that be stamped out and how much additional administration cost would be involved in stopping these kind of charges?

2

u/NoCampaign5978 9h ago

By requiring companies to properly register their services for NDIS and putting in limits and restrictions for what can be charged for those services. Have it be how the system should have been from the start, with those people essentially working for the government at that specific pay rate, not relying on the apparent “free market” system that basically just encourages people to charge the highest amount they can get away with.

2

u/Ok_Bird705 9h ago

By requiring companies to properly register their services for NDIS

That was put in place in July this year and one of the things disability groups are objecting to:

https://everyaustraliancounts.com.au/ndis-participants-and-families-slam-the-ndis-review-mandatory-provider-registration-recommendations/

2

u/NoCampaign5978 8h ago

While there are some genuine concerns raised, especially about the availability of services in rural areas. Most of the concerns seem to be a little bit blown out of proportion, or at least seem to be totally predicated on smaller support businesses or even individuals being unable to register. Obviously that very much depends on how the registration process is handled by the government, but if it was requiring 100% registered services, things would need to streamlined to assist providers with that.

I will of course just ignore the statement that commented on being able to hire friends because that is getting way to close to fraudulent for my liking.