NDIA paid ‘special adviser’ $300,000 more than the boss

A ‘special adviser’ to the National Disability Insurance Scheme was paid more than $800,000 in a year.

NDIA CEO Rob de Luca.

An individual was paid more than $800,000 in one year to act as a “special adviser” to the chief operating officer of the $22 billion National Disability Insurance Scheme, $300,000 more than the boss of the agency earns.

The money was paid to Canberra-based Aquasora Pty Ltd in 2016-17 for consultancy services for what the National Disability Insurance Agency describes as work “primarily undertaken by an individual consultant”.

The NDIA declined to say precisely what work the person did but the contract was authorised by then chief executive David Bowen.

The NDIA chief, now Rob De Luca, earns $523,000 a year while the Prime Minister earns about the same, $527,852.

There is no “chief operating officer” listed on the agency’s website, despite its contract stating the advisory services of its hired consultant were for the “COO”.

Aquasora, which specialises in providing personnel management and computer systems advice, is consistently awarded contracts by other government departments. Among them especially is the Department of Human Services, which was largely responsible for a calamitous IT-system meltdown when the NDIS began the transition to full rollout from July 2016.

Despite this, the agency paid the Department of Human Services almost $85 million in one year for “provision of shared services”.

The Australian last year revealed the agency spent more than $180m on consultancy and contractor services in the 15 months to October and plans to spend another $155m before June.

The NDIS now has 120,000 people with disabilities on its books and must reach 460,000 by the middle of 2020. The cost of the NDIS in 2016-17 was about $5bn.

At a Senate estimates hearing in September, agency executives said the NDIA employed 2127 staff, 1012 contractors and 2203 local-area co-ordinators, and was “about 500-ish” full-time-equivalent ­positions below a public service cap of 2460 places.

Internal emails obtained by The Australian revealed legal advice sought by the agency in June.

Australian Government Solicitor senior general counsel Mark Molloy provided that advice, warning the agency it could be in breach of the Fair Work Act.

“If the agency purports to engage an individual as an independent contractor who is, as a matter of law, properly characterised as an employee who should be engaged under the Public Service Act, this may constitute a breach of … the Fair Work Act,” he wrote.

“Furthermore, in our view, if the agency head (or delegate) purports to engage independent contractors who are not ‘consultants’, this may constitute a breach of the APS code of conduct which, among other things, requires compliance with Australian laws, including the NDIS Act.”

The agency also paid $1.3m to Boston Consulting Group for advice on developing specialist disability accommodation and a market for assistive technology. Crucially, however, consultants in this space have been paid about half the total $2.7m in actual support to people with disability under NDIS housing provisions.

Specialist disability accommodation providers have experienced long waits for payment for services from the NDIA.

“NDIA expenditure on specialist services is a matter of public record; however, details of the arrangements are subject to commercial-in-confidence,” an NDIA spokeswoman said yesterday.