NDIS Minister Bill Shorten slams rorters and warns of a crackdown

Bill Shorten has sent a warning to criminals still targeting the disability sector as he reveals how the government is cracking down on rorters.

The Minister in charge of the National Disability Insurance Scheme has given a blunt warning to criminals who are continuing to rort the system.

“Just rack off, you’re not welcome, get off my scheme,” a tough talking Bill Shorten said on Friday morning.

Mr Shorten said the Crime Commission believes the scheme has become a honey pot for businesses making billions of dollars a year through inflated invoices, as well as other rorts.

Mr Shorten revealed he will be making changes to the invoice system to stop people from issuing inflated invoices to those on the NDIS scheme.

“We are right now upgrading the invoices so you can’t just simply put in the invoice without scrutiny and that’s on the government for the invoice checking,” he said.

“There is a lot of inappropriate and undesirable conduct happening. We need to make sure that every dollar gets through to the people or in the scheme was designed,” Mr Shorten told 2GB.

Bill Shorten warned the government is cracking down on rorters of the NDIS scheme. Picture: Liam Kidston

“I know that there’s many investigations underway and there’s many payments being investigated. There’s been references to the public prosecutor, but we’ve got to do more of that.

“I want the criminals to understand that just because this is a government scheme and you’re dealing with vulnerable people, your times are over, we’re going to solve this crime.,” Mr Shorten said.

“But can I just talk about the ordinary person. Just because someone has an NDIS package you shouldn’t triple the price charge.

“Those charging triple the inflated price because they’re dealing with a disabled person, just don’t do it. You know it‘s very uncool to park in a disabled car park if you’re not disabled.

“I want to make it just as uncool to do this to people.”

The NDIS scheme has attracted many criminals rorting vulnerable people.

A compliance crackdown by the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) found that of the Plan Management Agents under review, 66 per cent subsequently cancelled one or more payments.

The compliance team’s work uncovered more than 38,700 incorrect or non-compliant payments and resulted in $44.8 million of taxpayers money clawed back since July 2021.

Criticism of the system has been highlighted in numerous court cases.

In one case, Melbourne man Mohamed Osman Omar, 39, managed to rort $370,000 in just five weeks after setting up an NDIS-registered company and charging people for services he did not provide.

That security flaw which allowed him to make up numbers for clients and steal from disabled people has now been fixed by the fraud team.