Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee, , 6:27:56 to 6:33:47
Discussion on the role of citizen-based investigations versus official NDIA integrity processes and the handling of fraud tip-offs.
Topics: Integrity, Whistleblower protections
Speakers: John Dardo, Senator Pauline Hanson, Unknown Speaker
Tato, are you aware of the the names Peter Zagulas? Um and Drew Pavlot?
I I am Senator.
Have you ever had the opportunity to sit down and talk with them and see what they've been able to achieve or do? Because it's quite evident that their research has proven that there are cases out there of fraud. Have you have you actually sat down? Have they had the opportunity to speak to you or the department? I don't know whether they come directly to you. Um to speak to you with regard to the fraud that they're picking up on.
Yeah. I think I I'd make a couple of notes. I think the first note I'd make is that um any person in Australia or anywhere in the world can um lodge a tip off with us. Um so any single person can jump on our website or call the call centre and lodge a tip-off that says I've got concerns about this issue, and here's my concerns and provide whether in whether in text or whether with an upload, any evidence that they want to provide in relation to any fraud that they think is happening in the scheme. Um and and we do get uh tens of thousands of those tip-offs from people that have genuine concerns about fraud in the scheme. Um so if those individuals have an interest in lodging tip-offs, they're very welcome to lodge those tip-offs. Those tip-offs can either be anonymous or named. Um I have not sat down with those individuals uh to discuss what they believe they see or believe is out there. But what I what I would flag is we strongly discourage citizen-based investigations for a whole raft of reasons. Um the people that do this work are highly qualified individuals. The people in my space that do this work, you know, must must meet qualification standards under the Australian Government Investigation Service standard. Um, you know, the the access they have to data. Allows them to very quickly quickly work out whether a suspicion is a valid suspicion or a misguided suspicion. It means that my investigators or our staff are actioning information or intelligence with confidence. And behaving in a way that for an innocent person or a person that is not doing anything wrong could be misconduct, you know, could be quite quite daunting and quite confronting. What we do quite often has, you know, unless unless there's immediate safeguarding requirements, in which case we engage with the Commission immediately and we act immediately. But what we do quite often has lead-in time. It requires us to do an enormous amount of work behind the scenes. We might be doing forensic audits, we might be engaging financial data from the banking systems and doing tracing of that data. We might be tracing interactions between individuals and providers. And it's done in a way that actually increases the chance of getting a prosecution outcome because we've locked in the evidence. We haven't given them a heads up that allows them to destroy evidence or to flee the country or to do something else that reduces the chance of us having a successful outcome. So what I would say is that you know when people sometimes think they might be doing the right thing, what they may not know is what we've done or are doing in the background. They may be stumbling or cross crossing over things that have already happened or will happen. It is not not particularly useful or helpful and in some cases quite problematic.
I actually sat down with them. I went through all the documentation. I'm not a legal person and by no means. I don't, I'm not a former police officer or detective or anything like that. But actually, looking at their what they presented me, I thought, well, that's very legitimate what I saw. But you know, possibly may help to see what they have uncovered that you're not aware of with your department, because once they've spoken about it is you know very crucial because what one of them hearing from people, they're fed up with the scamming that's going on in this country and the fraud that's going on. And a lot of people out there know it's happening. And there I just can't believe that you're saying, well, they don't they're not investigators or the rest of it. They've put a lot of work and effort into this. They have investigated, and I'd be saying, well, look, I really but I would really be interested in what you've got to present to see if if there's some legitimacy in this that we can follow it up from where you've left off instead of disregarding it. But that's just my opinion. You will assess it. Use it. It's not helpful. But anyway, that's your opinion. Just um I will move on from there. What is the um what's your budget estimate for NDIS say in the next budget year? This budget year. What are we looking at? At the moment, it what's it about 52 billion, Minister?