Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee, , 6:17:23 to 6:27:56
The NDIA reports on successful fraud prosecutions, jail sentences, and the confiscation of assets from dodgy providers.
Topics: Integrity, Sentencing
Speakers: John Dardo, Senator Pauline Hanson, Louise Glanville, Unknown Speaker
Um last time I was in uh NDIS, I was very concerned about the fraud that was happening. How many prosecution cases have been um for fraud been successful in the in this past um say six Um but every single case that's gone in front of the courts that's come to a resolution in the last six months has had a successful resolution. And what I mean by that is it's been found in our favour. We have not lost a single case. Uh I will just pull up some figures if you give me a moment about the sorts of numbers that we're talking about. 2026. So uh we've had 27 successful prosecutions? 27. That's not that's not within a six-month period, that is in the in the life of the fraud fusion task force. I'll have to break.
I'll have to that's over what period of time?
Um the sentences range up to seven and a half years. Uh a number of those have appeared in front of the courts in the last uh six months. I will have to uh we've got a breakdown of by date by case, um like a schedule of those. I'll have to pull that schedule up to to bring to to do a a manual count of. How many of those were within the last six months?
Just give me an indication of what do you classify as a win. Is it recovery of money? Is it jail time? What's the what's the general Yeah, it's a it's a great question, Senator.
The first thing I would note is what the whole point of the integrity work is, and the whole point of the integrity work is to make sure that the money is getting to the right participants for genuine disability supports and services. So what we're really trying to do with the integrity program is we're trying as as far as possible to prevent the fraud in the beginning, to prevent the chance for somebody, whether it's mischievously or opportunistically or deliberately or in a very serious organized crime way committing fraud. And so overwhelmingly the work that we're doing is on the system prevention at the very beginning of the system. While prosecutions is one of the weapons that's available in the arsenal to tackle fraud, it is it is not the only thing that is being used to try and improve the integrity of the scheme. And so for me, you know, when I look at prosecutions, I I know they're necessary. I know that what we need to do, and they will always be part of the system. Um but frankly, prosecutions themselves will never stop fraud in a system. What we need is better controls at the front about you know the identity of the people that are coming in as individuals, as nominees, as providers, as employees of providers. We need much better systems that control the claiming process so that people are being paid for genuine services delivered by genuine providers that have genuine workforces. We need much better systems to make sure that when we're detecting uh abuse in that system, uh we're able to intervene at an early point in time to safeguard the participants so that we haven't got dodgy providers taking advantage of the system and removing those providers. And so while the prosecution number doesn't sound big, we've removed over 6,000 providers from being able to claim from the system before we remove them. Those providers had claimed over seven and a half billion dollars. Now, some of that claiming might have been for partially delivered services or you know, services that may have been delivered to a certain standard, but these providers on balance were not fit to be in the scheme, and being able to remove 6,000 of those providers is a really big win and needs to be seen alongside the 27 prosecutions as a complementary thing. Uh, and that doesn't include all the providers that we prevented from claiming or entering the scheme just by the hardening of the identity proofing we do at the front of the scheme.
Mr. Dardo. I appreciate that, and it's very good here. But tell me, of these 27 cases that have been prosecuted that you have won. Have you recovered taxpayers' monies? Have their property been confiscated to pay it? Because what I've heard has been thousands, tens of thousands, if not even millions of taxpayers' dollars that have been taken from the from the taxpayer through scams or schemes or crime criminals. So what are we looking at? Please explain to the taxpayer. What have we what have we recovered? Have any of them been facing jail time? I think that's what the people of Australia would like to know.
Absolutely. There's been sixty-three years of imprisonment time up until September 2026.
Yep.
Um, with the longest sentence being seven and a half years. Uh, a number of them have resulted in confiscation of assets. Um that's where and there's different ways that those assets could be confiscated. Uh there's a criminal asset confiscation task force, which is um a commonwealth function, and that task force has confided confiscated assets in cases, including in one case where a provider was producing um well, defrauding the scheme, and uh over five million dollars of assets were confiscated from her estate. Um another mechanism to confiscate assets, Senator, is that we might use a state commission to help us seize or or or freeze the assets. So in another case, uh we froze over 40 million dollars in assets just in that one case. Um and that that case, as you can imagine, you know, there's a there's a mechanism where it goes before the courts for the opportunity for people to challenge, whether the assets should or shouldn't be frozen. But in parallel with that, to make sure that we don't have leakage of those assets, if a challenge is successful, other commonwealth agencies have worked with us to raise debts against those assets, so that regardless of whether those assets are subject to the forfeiture provisions of that state, we are all standing by the sidelines raising debts to grab those assets regardless of the fact that they may or may not go through that state forfeiture process. So we are working with other departments in addition to raising debts ourselves, we are working with other departments to raise debts against these providers to make sure we're recovering money every opportunity we can. In addition to that, in some of our search warrants that we've executed, we have seized assets such as gold bullion, silver bullion, gold coins. Um there are matters in the last three weeks that are not yet public that can't be public yet, where we have executed warrants and seized assets. Um these things are happening every every week, every month, and wherever possible we are seizing assets, um, but we've got to follow the law in a way that we do it.
Can you give me any idea of um if you can tell me?
Um but at the end of the day, the approach that we take with integrity is that we we generally do not care what your country of origin is, what your birth country is, we don't care how you identify at the end of the day, we assess the integrity risk. Um we don't care whether you've been here 10,000 years, 200 years, 20 years or two years or two months. If if we need to take action, we will take action.
I'm pleased to hear that.
Um have you might be stated to at least land just another figure that adds to Mr. Dardo's um explanation of how it works, but um the Commission, of course, takes legal action against providers and uh in civil penalties in 2025-26, we received 5.8 million as a consequence of those actions. Um, and um, if it was of interest to you, we could provide you with further figures for coming years, uh, because there's uh as Mr. Dardo says, very um uh other ways of um uh attending to um practices which are very unsavoury, costing money problematic for people with disability and problematic for the scheme itself. Um, and this is just uh another way, civil penalties are another way, yes, it's court proceedings on very serious cases of fraud, but there's also court proceedings on other methods to um uh be able to enforce uh things and get measures in return in terms of what providers have done.