The Broken Aged Care Complaint System

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I questioned the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission on the severe problems within the aged Home Care Package system, highlighting the specific case of the Smith family (with their permission).

The Smiths had $3,000 taken from their package and paid to a contractor for incomplete tree trimming. The Commission dismissed their complaint without explanation, leaving them out of pocket, which severely impacted their health and forced them to cancel necessary medical appointments.

Despite assurances from the minister’s staff that the issue would be resolved and funds reimbursed within five months, no contact was made with the family. Minister Chisholm and departmental officials agreed to follow up and contact my office regarding this breakdown.

I raised concerns that upcoming co-payment policies, with service costs potentially exceeding $100 an hour, would make essential care unaffordable for aged pensioners.

Departmental representatives responded that co-contributions will be a small percentage for pensioners (5% to 17.5% depending on the service category), and that the government is cracking down on unreasonable pricing while funding major care shifts.

The problem appears to be finally resolving but only after repeated interventions from my officers. This is not how it should work for the thousands of recipients being ripped off.

Transcript

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you for appearing again. It’s good to see you, Mr Comley. My questions are for the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission on problems with the aged Home Care Package, please. Late last year in Senate estimates, before this committee, I raised the case of the Smith family. Under their package, they’re entitled to some assistance in minor property maintenance. They needed some minor trimming of half a tree and a few branches of another on their property, which was not completed, yet they found that $3,000 had been taken out of their package and given to the contractor without discussion between the Smiths and the service administrator of the package. The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission closed off their complaint and refused to even discuss it with the Smiths, with no explanation given. Isn’t this elder abuse by a government agency that is supposed to help older Australians, not abuse them? What’s the cover up, and why was $3,000 paid for next to nothing?  

ACTING CHAIR: I’m not sure about the appropriateness of responding to individual complaints or issues. I think characterising them is one thing, but referring to individual cases is quite different.  

Senator ROBERTS: We have permission from the Smiths.  

ACTING CHAIR: We don’t have that, and the department don’t have that.  

Senator ROBERTS: How typical is this?  

Ms Hefren-Webb: Let me try and respond to you. Sometimes these cases are very complex. There is often miscommunication. There are different versions of events from providers versus older people. I appreciate—  

Senator ROBERTS: I’m sure you’re right.  

Ms Hefren-Webb: Sorry? What did you say?  

ACTING CHAIR: Let the official speak.  

Senator ROBERTS: I’m just backing her up. I’m sure you’re right; it would be complex.  

Ms Hefren-Webb: And so we do our best to understand the circumstances—what’s happened, what’s gone wrong—and look at what we can do to restore people to make up for what’s happened to them and find an equitable solution. We do our best efforts. Obviously, I won’t speak about the individual case, because I don’t have permission from those people to speak. But cases like this, where people are quoted different amounts for different pieces of work and then may misapprehend what was going to be done, what’s happened with their package et cetera, are not unusual cases. And we do try and reach a sensible resolution. All our complaints are subject to review and appeal, so if people aren’t happy with where we’ve resolved a matter, they do have an opportunity to first ask for an internal review and to then seek external review if they’re still not comfortable.  

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. And I’m not pretending some of these cases are simple, but it’s badly affected the health of the two innocent senior citizens, who deserve an answer and for money to be put back into their package. A staff member of the minister contacted my office and assured us that the issue would be resolved and that money would be reimbursed quickly. The result, though, was that nothing happened, not even contact with the family. Five months have passed since the promise was made. Because of the depleted funds, the Smiths had to cancel some medical appointments that they could no longer afford.  

ACTING CHAIR: Again, Senator Roberts, the department is not going to be able to respond to this individual case in this setting.  

Senator ROBERTS: Well, if I’m told by the minister’s staff that they’ve contacted the Smiths and they haven’t—  

Ms Hefren-Webb: I’m not aware of what the minister’s staff may have said, but I’m happy to go away and provide you with what advice I can about what engagement there has been in this particular case.  

Senator Chisholm: Just to add to that, we don’t want to be dismissive of the issue, and I’m happy to follow up with the minister’s office to see what’s gone on there. But I think we’re just uncomfortable responding to a couple’s circumstance in this forum. But I assure you that we’ll do what we can to follow up appropriately and ensure that we can do what we can, where possible, to resolve it. But that’s knowing that some of these cases can be difficult.  

Senator ROBERTS: That’d be great, Minister. Thank you. Could you contact my office?  

Senator Chisholm: Yes.  

Senator ROBERTS: The concept of co-payments is to be instituted into the aged-care packages. That will mean the cancellation of many services needed by package holders, because they’ll become unaffordable. The proposal is that many services will need to be paid for at more than $100 an hour—often more than twice the market labour rate. An aged pensioner cannot afford that. What are you doing about this situation?  

Ms Hefren-Webb: The department might wish to speak about the policy on contributions. But we are undertaking extensive work around unreasonable pricing. We’ve been in contact with a number of providers where we have concerns that their pricing is unreasonable and we’ve asked them to provide us with an explanation for how they’ve reached their prices. In some cases, they’ve agreed to adjust their price and have even provided refunds. So, certainly, we’re dealing with those cases on an individual basis, but the question of contributions is a policy question, so I don’t know—  

Ms Stewart: I’m happy to start. Thank you, Ms Hefren-Webb. In terms of the policy on co-contribution, that was a recommendation that was made by a taskforce to set co-contribution rates at a level where people who could afford to contribute would contribute to their aged care. We work very closely with Ms Hefren-Webb, and under the new legislation providers are required to be transparent in their prices, as well as reasonable. Older people can go and compare prices, and when they feel that they are not reasonable they can come to us. The last thing I’ll say before handing to my other colleagues is that the government has recently made an announcement for about $1 billion of funding to enable a change in the policy settings so that government will now pay for a category of service, which includes showering and assistance with dressing and continence. That’s been a significant announcement. I’ll hand over to Ms Trainor to talk in more detail. 

Ms Trainor: The other observation there is that there is a difference between the service price—so when you talked about the $100 per hour—and the co-contribution, which is the proportion of that service price that the participant rather than the government pays. So, when you talk about a pensioner, for a full-rate pensioner, those rates are five per cent of services that are in the independence service list category, and then 17.5 per cent of everyday living, which are our cleaning- and gardening-type services. So whilst you may have a service price of $100 an hour what a person pays out of pocket is a very small share of that actual amount.  

Senator ROBERTS: I get that. Thank you for your patience. I look forward to you calling our office. 

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Jail, Lies, and Ruined Lives

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I questioned Ms Owen – the Inspector-General of Taxation – about the alarming Supreme Court of Queensland judgment in The King v Clarke, a 2017 case where the ATO pursued a fraudulent criminal prosecution regarding an R & D application.

I pointed out how the court ultimately threw the matter out and found that ATO officers had deliberately altered expense statements, provided misleading affidavits to secure search warrants, lied to the Queensland Bar, withheld emails, and ignored legitimate R&D spending.

I emphasised the sheer imbalance of power in this persecution: an innocent defendant forced to self-represent for over four years against a massive legal team comprising up to 12 people, including multiple barristers, the ATO and the Attorney-General, alongside numerous ATO staff.

I highlighted the fact that the court explicitly ruled the ATO undermined the defendant’s right to silence, engaged in systemic oppression, and brought the administration of justice into disrepute.

When I asked Ms Owen if we could reasonably conclude there is something deeply wrong within the ATO given these lengths of persecution, she admitted that the language in the judgment concerns her greatly and touched on the core integrity of the tax system.

However, she declined to comment further, noting that an appeal is currently underway.

Transcript

Senator ROBERTS: Are you familiar with the judgement of the Supreme Court of Queensland in the case The King v Clarke?  

Ms Owen: Yes.  

Senator ROBERTS: This is a case dating back to 2017, which is well before your time, admittedly, in which the ATO alleged fraud in a research and development application, and the ATO referred the matter for criminal prosecution. The Queensland court found there was no criminal case to answer on the initial allegation, but the ATO persisted. On the recent court decision, the final matter was again thrown out and the court found that the ATO officers concerned deliberately altered expenses statements. The ATO officer concerned was involved in the preparation of false statements, provided misleading information in affidavits to obtain search warrants, lied in a briefing note to the Queensland Bar, failed to disclose emails and ignored the fact that R&D funds were spent on legitimate expenses. The court also found the ATO undermined the fundamental right of the defendant to remain silent, the conduct of the ATO amounted to oppression of the defendant and the conduct of the ATO has brought the administration of justice into disrepute and has the tendency of undermining the integrity of the court. The defendant self-represented for more than four years. I understand that on some days the CDPP, the ATO and the Attorney-General had some 12 people on the combined legal team, including three to four barristers plus numerous ATO staff in attendance. Would you agree, Ms Owen, that, on the basis of this case alone and the court decision, senators could readily form the view that there is something seriously wrong, maybe even sick, within the ATO for it to go to such lengths in persecuting an innocent person?  

Ms Owen: The quote that you’ve just read out from the ruling of that judgement—that language concerns me greatly. The way the conduct of tax officers was described in that judgement is exactly what we need to look at in terms of the integrity of the tax system. I am awaiting the appeal on that case before I consider—  

Senator ROBERTS: The ATO’s going to appeal, is it?  

Ms Owen: I think the Attorney-General’s office, the CDPP, has appealed. So, at the moment, I can’t comment further on that case while that appeal is outstanding.  

Senator ROBERTS: I appreciate that. 

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Empowering Terminal Patients

When someone is facing a life-threatening illness and all standard treatments have been exhausted, waiting shouldn’t be a barrier to hope.

That’s why One Nation will be introducing legislation for the “Right to Try.”

If a patient’s condition is terminal and existing measures have failed, they can request, or a doctor can suggest, an alternative therapy or unlisted drug.

Patients enter voluntarily, creating a safe pathway that expands the market for pharmaceuticals, drives down drug prices and ultimately saves lives.

With nothing to lose and everything to gain, it’s time to give patients and doctors the freedom to choose.

Transcript

One Nation will introduce legislation in the next parliament for the right to try. This means that, if a person is being treated for an illness the outcome of which could be death and all existing measures have failed, the patient has a right to request from their doctor, or a doctor has a right to suggest, a drug not listed for that condition. It may be an alternative therapy or an unlisted drug. To put this simply, the patient has nothing to lose and everything to gain. This may expand the market for existing pharmaceutical products—who knows? That’s the point. It’s a free clinical trial that a patient has voluntarily entered into, reducing drug prices and saving lives.

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Foreign Treaties Don’t Rule Australia

I questioned officials to clarify the implications of UN General Assembly Resolution A/80/L.65, which Australia supported on 20 May 2026, regarding the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) 2025 advisory opinion on state climate obligations.

I noted that the ICJ’s opinion is purely advisory and non-binding. Department official Mr McCarthy confirmed the court cannot take direct action against a nation on its own accord; any dispute must be brought by another state. I raised whether any nation has ever successfully sued another over greenhouse gas emissions due to the impossibility of proving direct economic harm, a point Mr McCarthy took on notice.

I expressed the point that international agreements like the Paris Agreement are not self-executing. Mr McCarthy confirmed that treaty commitments do not automatically take effect in Australia without parliament passing legislation, in other words meaning we retain the sovereign ability to repeal those laws or withdraw, just as the US has.

I questioned whether the resolution, which gained support from 141 of 193 UN member states, is simply a political attempt to maintain the narrative on man-made climate change, which I contend is driven by natural cycles and inherent natural variation.

Of course, Foreign Minister Penny Wong dismissed this, noting that 141 states represent an overwhelming majority and that my views on climate change are not shared by most of the world.

Transcript

Senator ROBERTS: Minister, good morning and thank you for appearing.  

Senator Wong: I have to be here, Senator Roberts, but thank you for thanking me.  

CHAIR: It’s a Senate order.  

Senator ROBERTS: I’d like clarity on the United Nations resolution from last week on climate change, which was General Assembly Resolution A/80/L.65, titled ‘Advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on the obligations of states in respect of climate change’ and adopted 20 May 2026. Australia strongly supported the resolution. The resolution welcomes and gives political weight to the International Court of Justice opinion from 2025 affirming states’ obligations under international law to protect the climate system from greenhouse gases, prevent significant harm, cooperate globally and address consequences, including potential reparation. It emphasises following through on the Paris Agreement commitments. Is that correct so far? Thank you. The International Court of Justice ruling was an advisory, meaning it carried no compulsion. Is that correct? I can see your head nodding. That’s fine. Direct answers are appreciated. Isn’t it true that any action taken by the International Court of Justice against a nation like Australia must be brought by another country and only when that country can prove they have suffered economic harm caused by the respondent country they are seeking restitution from? Is that correct?  

Mr McCarthy: The International Court of Justice is a judicial body. As such, it doesn’t take action against a state. It makes judgements which—in this case, it was an advisory opinion, so it’s not binding—are statements of law. Whether there was an action to be taken would be a decision for one state against another state. It’s not a relevant prerogative of the court itself.  

Senator ROBERTS: Is it true that no nation has ever sued another, and is it true that this is because proving greenhouse gas emissions are causing another country damage is not possible?  

Mr McCarthy: Apologies, the first part of your question was that no nation has ever—  

Senator ROBERTS: Sued another country on this topic, sorry.  

Mr McCarthy: You’re adding the qualifier ‘on this topic’. I’d have to take that on notice. I suspect the answer is no, but I’d have to take it on notice.  

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. The International Court of Justice has never taken action against a country over their greenhouse gas emissions using a proxy such as access to the international settlement bank, which is controlled by the UN, because they are an advisory body only, which you’ve confirmed.  

Mr McCarthy: We’re conflating, I think, two concepts here. They’re a judicial body; they’re not an advisory body. In terms of the question of the international court taking action or not taking action, it’s not in its prerogative or its remit to take action or to not take action. It makes decisions. Sometimes they’re in the resolution of disputes between individual states, and sometimes it is in—as it was in this case—an advisory opinion.  

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you for clarifying. Turning to the Paris Agreement itself, the reason for this resolution from the International Court of Justice—the Paris Agreement is only binding because we passed legislation to implement it, and that can be repealed. The agreement itself is not binding on Australia if we withdraw, as the USA has done. Is that correct?  

Mr McCarthy: Treaties are not—the term is ‘self-executing’ in Australian law. When Australia signs a treaty, it is a binding commitment under international law, but that commitment is only given effect through the passage of legislation through the Australian parliament. In other words, our treaty commitments don’t self-execute. They don’t take effect within Australia without the passage of Australian laws.  

Senator ROBERTS: I was correct—despite not being a diplomat or a lawyer.  

Senator Wong: The parliament has to approve through the JSCOT process, which occurred with the Paris Agreement.  

Senator ROBERTS: I’m not saying it didn’t occur.  

Senator Wong: No, I wasn’t pushing.  

Senator ROBERTS: Can I conclude that UN resolution A/80/L.65 was only supported by 141 out of 193 member states to make it look like the world still believes man-made climate change is real, when it’s nothing more than natural cycles and inherent natural variation?  

Senator Wong: I think that’s a political statement. ‘Only’ meaning the overwhelming majority—that’s the first point I’d made. The second point I’d make is that your views about climate change are well known. They are not shared by most of the world.  

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Delivering Tax Cuts, Not Taxes

This session is with Treasury’s Fiscal Group, the division tasked with delivering federal budgets, analysing fiscal policy, and ensuring efficient public spending. The group’s core duties span three main areas: budget production, managing financial arrangements and payments between the Commonwealth and States and Territories, and providing spending advice.

In this advisory role, the group guides portfolio ministers on government spending regulations and resource allocation across policy areas, including health, education, labour markets, infrastructure, and defence.

Coming from a business background, I always look for ways to streamline and reduce major costs, especially while everyday Australians are facing a cost-of-living crisis. With that in mind, I asked for a complete accounting of the Albanese Labor Government’s net zero policies and measures, including departmental costs, grants, co-investments, spending to date, projections across forward estimates, and contingent or “off-the-books” liabilities (which reports suggest could reach a trillion dollars).

Mr White noted this was a massive query not fully covered by Budget Paper No. 1, so I asked Treasury to take it on notice.

I also asked for the costs since 1 July 2022 (plus forward estimates) of federal agencies or departments duplicating services where constitutional authority rests with the states, particularly in areas like health, education and the environment.

Despite concerns raised by Treasury and Minister Gallagher regarding the scope of the requests and the distinction between federal and state roles, I reiterated that reducing government waste is vital. Given the cost-of-living pressure on Australian households, the focus should be on delivering tax cuts and cutting expenditure rather than raising taxes.

In business, identifying and then cutting unnecessary duplication is a huge opportunity to reduce spending and ease the burden on taxpayers.

Transcript

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you for being here tonight. I asked these questions of the previous group, the Markets Group, and they recommended that I ask you. Could I just check, please, because it seems like you’re perfect for it, that the Fiscal Group is a core division within the Australian Treasury responsible for delivering government budgets, analysing fiscal policy and ensuring efficient public spending.  

Mr White: Yes.  

Senator ROBERTS: It works to achieve sound fiscal outcomes through structural policy advice, coordinating the federal budget and managing financial transfers to states and territories—correct?  

Mr White: Yes.  

Senator ROBERTS: Key responsibilities—three of them—are budget production; Commonwealth-state relations, managing the timely and accurate payments and financial arrangements between the federal government and the states and territories; and spending advice. It advises portfolio ministers on whole-of-economy government spending regulations and resource allocation across policy areas like health, education, labour market, infrastructure and defence—correct?  

Mr White: Yes.  

Senator ROBERTS: I’m used to being in business—companies, small business and large corporations— where we look at our costs, especially our bigger costs, and try to work out ways to improve them, so that’s what I’d like to ask you about. There are two big costs. Could you tell me, please, what are the full costs across the breadth of the Albanese Labor government of net zero measures, net zero policies, including departmental costs, co-investments and grants. Also include a figure for contingent liabilities, including off-the-books matters, which I’ve seen referenced in mainstream media as potentially a trillion-dollar liability. Could you please include spending to date as well as projections across forward estimates. Are you the people?  

Mr White: That’s a very large question.  

Senator ROBERTS: It is a very large cost, in fact.  

Mr White: We don’t have that in front of us. Budget Paper No. 1, page 121, has an appendix B that goes to this, but not in the way you’re asking the question. It has some information about net zero transformation and net zero spending measures, but they’re really new measures, not the whole of the government. Answering that question would take quite some time.  

Senator ROBERTS: Could you take it on notice?  

Mr White: We can.  

Ms P Brown: I might just point you towards paragraph 1 on page 124, which provides similar information that is there for this budget but gives the figures in previous budgets, so you can look at those numbers and see the impact over time.  

Mr White: Yes. If we took it on notice, we’d have to work out what we can do. It might not be an easy thing to pull together in that way, but we could look.  

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. Take it on notice. Second, you’re involved in allocating money to the states. Could you please provide the costs since 1 July 2022 of any Commonwealth department or agency which duplicates agencies existing in the territories and the states and for which the constitutional mandate for that power vests with the states, not the Commonwealth. Could you please include data through forward estimates.  

Mr White: That’s possibly an even bigger question than the first one.  

Ms P Brown: I don’t know how we would do it.  

Senator ROBERTS: It’s a huge opportunity.  

Ms P Brown: What are you specifically after? Is it whether there are similar functions being done at the Commonwealth level as at the state level?  

Senator ROBERTS: The states have responsibility for certain services, and the Commonwealth is duplicating them.  

Mr White: Yes, it’s an interesting question. Essentially, ever since Federation started, there have been certain things where Commonwealth and state governments have done things in similar areas, and we have a lot of that now. We have a whole budget paper, Budget Paper No. 3, federal financial relations, which has $200 billion a year we give to the states. The question of duplication versus cooperation and doing things in different areas for the same sorts of things is an interesting question. Is us giving money to the states to run hospitals duplication or not is kind of a tricky question.  

Senator ROBERTS: I don’t think giving money to the states as part of grants and things like that is a duplication. It’s where you’re doing the same services. It seems to be rife in health, education, environment.  

Senator Gallagher: We have slightly different responsibilities, though. In health, states primarily run the hospital system, but we have responsibility in primary care—GPs, Medicare, aged care, those kinds of things. In education it’s more universities, early education and care; states have public schools. So there are differences. I’m just not sure how we would provide an answer to that on notice in a way that would not take a lot of effort.  

Senator ROBERTS: Well, how much is a lot of effort compared to the benefits once we work them out? Australians are in a cost-of-living crisis. The government’s increasing taxes, so why not look at cutting the need for taxes?  

Senator Gallagher: We’re cutting taxes as well. There’s tax reform, which includes tax cuts. But fundamentally, we probably have a disagreement that the Commonwealth duplicates functions of the states. I think the Federation and its roles and responsibilities are pretty well understood, and the architecture of the Commonwealth Public Service reflects that, just as the states’ reflect theirs.  

Senator ROBERTS: I think it’s a huge opportunity to at least have a look at it and investigate it.  

Senator Gallagher: We’re always looking at ways to streamline. We genuinely are. We have no appetite to be in places that the Commonwealth shouldn’t be involved because we have enough in the areas of our responsibility. But I’ll see if there is anything useful that Treasury can provide.  

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. 

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The Creeping Threat of Socialism

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The Albanese government’s reckless May budget is an anchor on our economy, overtaxing productive Australians to fund a woke, bloated public sector and wasteful infrastructure like Victoria’s Suburban Rail Loop.

Slapping new taxes on small scale investors, such as Crypto, punishing business owners and fuelling inflation through overspending is stifling wealth creation, driving record small business bankruptcies and pricing young Australians out of the housing market.

To fix this mess, One Nation will rebuild Australia’s real productivity through a clear, common-sense model:

➤ Invest $30 billion annually, backed heavily by eager private finance, into cheap, reliable Australian energy, high-speed regional rail, roads, ports, and fuel security.

➤ Slash petty red tape alongside UN-driven green and blue tape to restore the freedom to take risks and keep what you earn.

➤ Respect private enterprise to generate real, non-taxpayer-funded jobs, while expanding funding to the ACCC and the Administrative Review Tribunal to protect worker rights and maintain fair competition.

One Nation will build real wealth and opportunity for every business and worker across Australia.

Polls confirm what we already know: working Australians trust One Nation to deliver.

Transcript

Taxation is an anchor on productivity growth, reducing wealth creation for all Australians. The Treasurer has produced a budget that overtaxes and undersupports productivity. The social alliance—the Labor Party, the Greens and teals—have never seen a dollar they don’t think belongs to the government to finance their woke UN social agenda. The Treasurer learnt, from the weight of public opinion, that his new capital gains tax threatened future productivity within the business sector and the investment market. He fails to understand that when you take too much of people’s wealth, they stop creating new wealth. 

One example is young people using small-dollar investments in things like crypto to grow their home deposit faster and get into the housing market before they get too old to pay off a 30-year loan, which is what most young people said they intend to do with their capital gains. Because of these new taxes, young people will purchase fewer homes. It’s one example of stifling economic growth in favour of short-term tax grabs. 

The government has disincentivised productive risk-takers: investors. Business owners are punished, and overtaxed workers are conditioned to blame their employers for economic hardship. This sets workers against workers—more division from a divisive government. Instead, the true culprit is government’s acute failure to contain inflation and tighten its own belt. In fact, the Treasurer is still spending money he doesn’t have on things this country does not need, such as $3.8 billion for Victoria’s Suburban Rail Loop—billions that, like the billions before, will disappear into the pockets of organised crime and eventually produce a railway from nowhere to nowhere that nobody wants, and, according to Victoria’s Parliamentary Budget Office, will cost over $200 billion. That cost is in addition to the fraud and corruption in Big Build projects. The Commonwealth government is just getting started shovelling money into the Allan government’s black hole. 

Meanwhile, businesses are collapsing at record rates, and small business bankruptcies are at record levels. The public sector is bloating; two thirds of full-time equivalent jobs that the Albanese government conjured since 2022 are taxpayer funded through some arm of government, notably the NDIS. For years I’ve said that for every job created in solar and wind—so-called renewables—two jobs are lost in the productive economy. Data now verifies this. That’s not sustainable. No wonder the government refused to support my motion to implement indexation of tax brackets to stop bracket creep. This government needs higher taxes to pay for this level of public service growth. Private enterprise can no longer provide the jobs needed to grow the economy and create new wealth for our huge number of new arrivals. 

At some point, this Ponzi scheme will come crashing down and a One Nation government will have to clean up the mess. This is how we’ll do it. Real productivity comes from cheap, reliable, Australian sourced energy. It’s good roads connecting regions with cities. It’s high-speed rail lines and Australian controlled ports. It’s fuel refineries guaranteeing supply when the world is in crisis. It’s a competitive construction industry. It’s cutting petty, unnecessary red tape, and green and blue tape from the UN and foreign agencies. It’s high-speed, reliable internet everywhere, including along highways and in regional areas. It’s the freedom to take risks and earn a reward. It’s a reliable nation of stable economic rules to encourage investment. This will be life under a One Nation government; real, breadwinner jobs and the freedom to keep more of your own money to enjoy life. 

Our policies detail how One Nation will invest $30 billion a year in Australia’s infrastructure to drive productivity and increase wealth for everyday Australians without having to work harder. Everyday Australians are working hard enough. Polls show One Nation is the most popular party amongst working Australians. We will fulfil your faith in us. A lot of this infrastructure is private finance, not taxpayers. In working with companies promoting new infrastructure projects, I’m amazed to see how much finance is available for these projects. Merchant banks and investors are jack of so-called solar and wind renewables. They want bricks and mortar investments again. We’ll give it to them. 

One Nation knows private sector productivity requires placing trust and respect in businesses, freeing them of unnecessary cost burdens to hire staff, reward the hardest workers and voluntarily pay above the minimum wage. To ensure this does not turn into a corporate free-for-all, we have a system of industrial relations tribunals and competition protections. Our policy is to grow the economy, to create wealth and opportunity for all—businesses and workers. This is why our policy is to expand funding for the ACCC and the Administrative Review Tribunal, to protect workers rights. Polls show, as I said, One Nation is the most popular party among working Australians. We will fulfil your faith in us. 

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Seven Years On: The Battle for Miners’ Entitlements

Seven years. That’s how long we’ve been fighting Australia’s largest wage theft case for thousands of underpaid casual coal miners.

Some workers are owed up to $211,000. Others have been stripped of more than $40,000 a year.

When we first exposed the broken governance and dodgy practices surrounding Coal Long Service Leave (Coal LSL), they told us we were wrong. Now? We stand completely vindicated.

A new bill is moving through parliament and we have serious concerns. It actually gives delinquent employers a 20% discount on entitlements they should have paid in full.

The system has been a mess for so long that miners simply want certainty now rather than letting this drag on in court for years.

Our 3 core goals since 2019 have been to:

🡪 Get Central Queensland and Hunter Valley miners every dollar of their just, moral, and legal entitlements.

🡪 Stop the use of unlawfully processed enterprise agreements once and for all.

🡪 Deliver justice against the employers, union bosses, and agencies who colluded to rip off these hard-working Australians.

I’m not backing down. We’ve been chasing this for seven years, and we will keep chasing it until our miners get the justice they deserve.

Transcript

One Nation has a second reading amendment to the Coal Mining Industry (Long Service Leave) Legislation Amendment Bill 2026. I move: 

At the end of the motion, add “, but the Senate calls on the Government to immediately pursue backpay for workers who were underpaid as a result of the use of casual labour hire contracts in the coal mining industry”. 

The ‘workers’ are the casual coalmine workers. 

There are thousands of casual miners who have been underpaid in Australia’s largest wage theft case. I’ve been chasing this up on their behalf for seven years. We are chasing this and we will continue to chase it. They have been underpaid for many years. Some are owed up to $211,000. Others are owed more than $40,000 a year. 

We have some concerns with this bill but it’s going through as a noncontroversial bill—I’ll explain why in a minute—because we have listened to the miners. Long service leave in the coalmining industry has exhibited poor governance and broken government contracts. This has now been exposed. We exposed it. We were told, ‘No, you’re wrong.’ Then they found out that we were correct. We were vindicated. 

This bill is rewarding delinquent employers by giving them a discount when they pay. They get a discount for being delinquent and underpaying their levy. There has been such a mess made in coal long service leave for so long, and such shoddy governance, but we’re informed that the miners would rather have some certainty on this being resolved hence giving the company the 20 per cent discount on entitlements that they must pay in order to have this resolved—otherwise it could drag on for years. We are listening to miners. 

We’ve had three aims for our work on this since 2019: (1) to get Central Queensland and Hunter Valley miners their just, moral and legal entitlements; (2) to stop the practice of using unlawfully processed enterprise agreements—we’re pursuing that; (3) to bring justice for the miners against those employers, union bosses and agencies that have been colluding against and ripping off these miners. 

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We Stand Against Extremism on Both Sides


If you love Australia, walk away from radicalisation…

Immigration is the question of our generation. How we, as legislators and citizens, answer it will determine what sort of nation moves forward into the next era.

The majority of Australians believe we are headed for disaster. At least half want to see immigration paused entirely until we work out what’s going wrong.

Will we continue to be a Western democracy with European roots, an Indigenous heritage, and a robust dedication to the principles of freedom, faith, enterprise, fairness, and equality?

Are we to retain the echo of Christian values in our laws and culture?

Young people are the ones preparing to live in the Australia we leave behind.

They want to know if we’ll be an English-speaking nation with the inheritance of the Enlightenment, offering safe harbour to minds and souls from all corners of the world.

Many of us fear the character of Australia is being lost under the rapid entrance of too many people from hostile cultures determined to bring with them complex religious and regional conflicts – the very things they are meant to be escaping.

There is a sense of betrayal that vote-desperate politicians have recklessly traded sovereignty for short-term electoral power.

I understand many older Australians remain insulated from the roughest edges of the Big Australia project. Some may have even benefited financially from rapid globalisation before the negative side-effects were felt. For those with wealth created during the good times of a small, culturally coherent, low-taxing, economic utopia, it can be difficult to empathise with the crushing reality that owning a home may never be achievable.

Young people are not suffering from laziness, rather, they are confronted with a government-made STOP! sign. They are being told to wait while Albanese waves in streams of people from other countries who are put ahead of them in the queue.

This creates resentment and anger.

To be put last in your own country is a crime.

Telling Australians to put up and shut up, through ever-increasing censorship laws, is an assault on democracy.

And the steady itch to brand our party, One Nation, as radical or fringe is evidently a self-defence reflex from major parties who have no idea how to stop their rapid decline in popularity. (Why else would they brand us Populists if it weren’t for the unpopularity of their own parties?)

It’s necessary to ask the questions:

When was the last time Anthony Albanese and Angus Taylor spent the week on public transport?

Have they ever feared for their safety coming home at night or sitting on a packed bus without a single word of English passing in their home city?

Albanese purchased a cliff-top mansion. Does he know what it’s like to stand in line behind 50 people for a rental, knowing the process is hopeless?

Young people’s lives are getting smaller. Poorer. Lonelier. And more foreign.

This is not integration. It’s abandonment.

Additionally, it’s tragic how many industrious Australians feel they were misled into debt for a degree that has been under-cut by Labor’s mass migration of debt-free migrants who are prepared to work for less.

What sort of life lesson is the government imparting?

Work hard. Invest in your future. Do the right thing. Pay your way. We’ll trade your future for votes. And here’s a tax rise to pay for those we brought in to take your job…

How do Australians escape the economic spiral?

The emergence of lost, angry, and disillusioned young people is not a surprise. It’s inevitable.

Many have been swooped up out of their malaise and radicalised into communist, socialist, and Islamist-aligned movements.

From cradle to degree, they are fed a lie that protesting is the same thing as productivity.

These are social ‘activist’ groups reinforced with government messaging.

Ministers with an interest in climate change policy, for instance, don’t mind when kids are indoctrinated with existential terror about the planet. After all, it helps pencil-pushers in Canberra sign-off on public grants to big business. Green hysteria pads out future careers in the private sector when their Parliamentary terms are over.

Politicians wrote their green election pitch with the tears of children.

Young people at these radical protests are not trying to achieve policy change. They don’t want communism or socialism. Not if they understood it. Nor do they want Islamism to hold cultural sway over their lives.

They achieve spiritual purpose from being part of something grand.

Students are told they are warriors and saviours in an existential struggle against evil.

A pseudo religion.

Whether that is saving the planet, saving children from genocide, or saving Australia from fascism… The history and truth of these underlying movements is unknown and irrelevant to those holding the banners.

Activist ringleaders use the emotional vulnerability of disaffected and futureless young people to manipulate them into being ideological soldiers.

And they are not the only extremists employing this abuse. We’ll speak of the neo-Nazis in a moment.

Firstly, left-wing activism is not harmless.

It has been escalating for decades and has transitioned from destroying Australia’s energy security, to the physical and chemical abuse of gender-confused children, to the empowerment of Islamist theology, to the scourge of communism, and now it has metastasised into threats of political violence.

Worse, this sort of radicalism is a majority force that will hold real electoral power in the future.

Children have been fed such an extensive diet of lies and hate that they openly call for the imprisonment of conservatives and murder of One Nation Leader, Pauline Hanson.

That is extremism.

If they are allowed to reach adulthood with these views, would they vote for a version of real fascism against those they disagree with? It has happened before.

Violence is spreading from the political sphere and, as with Mao’s Cultural Revolution, those with property, farms, wealth, businesses, or even contradictory knowledge are becoming the target of violent words.

To this, our leaders on both sides of the political fence shrug.

We have seen ministers of the Labor government ignore threats of murder against conservatives or insinuate that perhaps those threats might be deserved.

Here is the truth.

One Nation is the only party offering a path toward a restored Australia.

This is an intense and difficult project that takes time. Multiple election cycles. In every state. One seat at a time. For a minor party to cross into a major electoral force and win enough seats to form government or hold a considerable lever of power, is a once-a-century achievement in the Westminster system.

And we are determined to do so.

If we fail, the nation fails.

Labor’s greed and the Coalition’s generational indifference cannot be the last word on the Australian story.

The presence of a malignant ideology is making the process of restoration infinitely more difficult.

Neo-Nazis and white supremacists (some of whom have re-branded themselves as nationalists, ethno-nationalists, and patriots in the wake of hate speech legislation) exist in this country. This is not the same thing as the slur media direct at anyone of the right. The neo-Nazis are Hitler fans with HH, 88, or lightning iconography along with all the usual subversive branding in their usernames and ideology. They self-declare as such. They are even starting to corrupt Nordic and Anglo-Saxon imagery along with Christian phrasing.

Their existence is a gut punch to the story of Australia. No one killed more of our boys than Hitler and his regime. He is the ultimate reason we were involved in the war, which spread to encapsulate the Pacific, and all the deaths that followed on from there.

It’s evident most of these indoctrinated fools know little, if anything, about world war two and have instead peddled a false narrative that Hitler saved the white race and that, somehow, this is what Australian men were fighting for. The leaders of this group have the gall to align themselves with our Diggers. It’s a depraved re-writing of history made possible thanks to the same failure of education that allows kids to think communism equals free stuff.

In order to expand a vile movement which they know Australians will never accept, the neo-Nazis changed their name and attached themselves to the widespread public rejection of mass migration. They changed the language of their movement from National Socialism to Nationalism and Patriotism, wiped their social media history, and quietened down their Hitler speeches to focus on rhetoric already rampant within mainstream left-wing protest movements: antisemitism.

Yes, thanks to the normalisation of antisemitism, the neo-Nazis are merely repeating things already said by their peers on the left. The taboo has been lifted.

This is not a right-wing movement. Neo-Nazis have nothing to do with conservatism.

Their conversations online and printed ideology, before it was deleted, often rambled about their desire for an all-powerful state, with deeply misogynistic features that feed into the troubled minds of the handful of people in control of the movement. They described themselves as race-obsessed socialists, hostile to free markets.

So far, they have used deceit to conscript new members.

Their only lure is to attach themselves to mainstream issues: opposing mass migration, supporting freedom of speech, and celebrating the Australian flag.

When conservatives figure out what these individuals really stand for, many shun them. Rightly so.

It’s well known the neo-Nazi movement makes a point of infiltrating mainstream politics. They don’t hide this. They feed off the media attention that follows. Every handshake, photo, and interview is seen as a victory toward normalisation.

One Nation wants nothing to do with this far-left ideology that takes advantage of disaffected and vulnerable young people.

Neo-Nazis (Nationalists) are predators, ruining young men’s lives, and stealing any hope they might have to build successful careers and stable families.

Young people join feeling this is their only way to ‘save Australia’, because that’s what they’re told by other young men who feel similarly lost.

To those young people, I say this: you are on a path that could damage the only chance Australia has to rescue itself.

The Left, media, and shamefully the Coalition are using the presence of a neo-Nazi movement in this country as a political tool. Some appear to think that by smearing One Nation with a false association, there’s a chance our party might end up banned or defeated. Here’s our warning to the Coalition – you will face the same fate as One Nation. There are already reports of these groups infiltrating Liberal and National supporter bases and events.

And to those moving closer to this movement, we say this: you are being used to destroy Populism. You are being used by those who crave attention and money and who are happy to throw your lives away for their cause.

You’re smarter than the left.

If you love Australia, walk away from radicalisation.

Honour your heritage. Serve your future. And turn your back on extremists.

Do not be like the radicalised children, shouting in the streets for foreign ideologies they do not understand.

Nazism is foreign, too. It does not belong here. It’s not Australian.

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Infected Blood Scandal Inquiry – CONFIRMED

One Nation’s motion to seek justice for the victims of the Infected Blood Scandal has been passed

Good news! The Senate has passed One Nation’s motion to hold a Senate Inquiry into Australia’s Infected Blood Scandal.

During the 70s, 80s and 90s, up to 20,000 people were caught up in a scandal that resulted in serious injury and death.

Hundreds of people died.

Others have endured life-long severe illness.

This terrible chapter in Australia’s medical history is attributed to the Australian Red Cross blood banks and the CSL.

Blood contaminated with Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, and HIV was collected and then knowingly and recklessly given to healthy individuals via blood transfusions and blood products.

Those who received tainted blood, and contracted these diseases as a result, have been seeking compensation for decades.

And been ignored.

Similar situations in Canada and the United Kingdom have led to official investigations and appropriate compensation.

Commonwealth bodies have been avoiding responsibility for too long.

One Nation has been pursuing justice for the victims of Australia’s infected blood scandal for many years, and last week, we have finally unlocked the opportunity to put right this horrific chapter.

Our motion was passed on the voices, with support from the Liberals and Greens.

What will happen next?

This issue has gone to the Community Affairs Committee. They will start the process of opening up submissions. When this closes, public hearings will be organised and individuals will be called to give their testimony.

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Restoring the NDIS to Its Core Purpose

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During Estimates in June I questioned the government on its proposed $38 billion cuts to the NDIS.

Officials admitted the savings come from tightening eligibility, slashing participant budgets, and reducing key supports like community participation by 50% and capacity-building activities by 10%. They also confirmed a new “objective test” that will narrow who can access the scheme in the first place.

Minister McAllister clarified that disrupting fraud does not translate into government savings because recovered funds are returned to participants’ plans to secure legitimate services. She noted that while tackling fraud is a key priority, reducing total expenditure requires separate structural measures.

Department officials outlined the specific areas targeting budget reductions:

✅ Cutting social, community, and civic participation budgets by 50%, and capacity-building daily activity budgets by 10% ($13.2 billion).

✅ Replacing general disability-type lists with an objective test for “substantially reduced functional capacity” to restrict who enters the scheme ($9.3 billion).

✅ Restricting unscheduled reassessment requests and stopping plan roll-overs ($3.1 billion).

✅ Applying stricter guidelines on the level of support granted to existing participants ($2.9 billion).

✅ Commissioning changes to plan management and support coordination ($1.4 billion).

✅ Requiring registration for providers of high-risk supports such as intimate personal care or respite settings ($200 million).

The government’s target of slowing NDIS growth to roughly 5% annually relies on tightening eligibility thresholds, restricting core participant budgets, and narrowing the scope of “reasonable and necessary” supports.

Although it’s good to hear that steps are being taken to keep the NDIS sustainable, it’s vital that the priority remains stopping fraud, not cutting legitimate services.

Transcript

ACTING CHAIR: Welcome back, everybody. We are on outcome 4, and we will start our questioning with Senator Roberts.  

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you for appearing again today. What is the amount forecast to be saved by the proposed cuts to the NDIS program?  

Mr Comley: The number in the budget is $37.8 billion over the forward estimates.  

Senator ROBERTS: Is that for four years?  

Mr Comley: Yes.  

Senator ROBERTS: Shouldn’t the priority be to stop wasting money and stop the criminals defrauding the service?  

Senator McAllister: We had quite a long conversation about this earlier in the day. To put it briefly, our priority is to stop the criminals defrauding the NDIS. The budget contains very significant investments in the capability of the agency to disrupt fraud, including continuing funding for the Fraud Fusion Taskforce that we’ve spoken about before. The point I was making earlier is that we see some savings to government when we disrupt fraud, but, historically, we’ve seen the vast majority of the money that we identify as going to bad actors returned to people with disability. So, yes, our priority, absolutely, is intervening to stop fraud—non-compliant claiming and other integrity leakage—but whether that is a source of savings to government is a different question.  

Senator ROBERTS: What is the answer to that one?  

Senator McAllister: The answer is that historically, when we have disrupted providers who are defrauding the NDIS, they are taking money from disabled people. We disrupt it. The money goes back to that person who acquires the services that they need from a legitimate provider. So it’s not a source of savings to government, but it does improve the functioning of the scheme. I’ve said it on many occasions: this scheme has to operate with integrity. Over the period that we have been in government, we have made very substantial investments to lift the capacity of the NDIA and the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission to make sure that that is so. There is still more to do, and it’s why there is significant investment—further investment in the budget—that we’ve just brought through.  

Senator ROBERTS: So rather than cutting services, you’re cutting fraud?  

Senator McAllister: The reform package as a whole seeks to make sure that the scheme is sustainable. Minister Butler has talked about stopping runaway cost growth. He has talked about tackling fraud. He’s talking about reshaping markets so that they deliver good value services and quality services to people with disability. The whole package is about making the NDIS stronger and better so it is here for the long term. It’s not a choice between dealing with runaway cost growth or tackling fraud. We actually have to do both.  

Senator ROBERTS: Who are the people whose services will be cut then, if it’s not just fraud?  

Senator McAllister: I’ll ask officials to talk you through some of our expectations in terms of the approach that we are taking.  

Mr Comley: Perhaps the easiest place to draw from is the public disclosure of information and the lines there where it runs through the composition of the reductions across the forward estimates. I also note in reply to your earlier comment, Senator, that that production of documents includes—as does the budget—the savings measure on both a fiscal balance and underlying cash balance basis. I gave you the underlying cash balance. The equivalent number on fiscal balance is $38.1 billion, so they’re both around $38 billion. There are 10 aspects outlined in that production of documents.  

Ms Long: That’s correct.  

Mr Comley: I’ll hand over to Ms Long.  

Ms Long: The reforms cover a range of areas. That includes addressing fraud, compliance and integrity, but it also includes measures around eligibility and participants’ budgets. Would you like me to go across—  

Senator ROBERTS: Yes, please.  

Ms Long: As Secretary Comley said, the total impact of the reforms is $38.1 billion over the forward estimates. That can be broken down into a number of components. The first component is around strengthening guidance on what is reasonable and necessary, and that has an impact of $2.9 billion over the forward estimates.  

Senator ROBERTS: Is that tightening up on who should get it? I’m using that word ‘tightening’ constructively.  

Ms Long: It’s around what is considered reasonable and necessary and how that is applied in terms of the determination of budgets.  

Mr Comley: To be clear, that measure is for people that are in the scheme, once they’re in the scheme, on what is considered the right level of support. There are other measures Ms Long will come to that go to the question of who should be in the scheme in the first place.  

Ms Long: There’s another element around resetting social, community and civic participation and capacity building budgets, which has an impact of $13.2 billion over the forward estimates.  

Senator ROBERTS: What do you mean by that?  

Ms Long: There are two particular budget categories. The first one is the social, community and civic participation budget. That’s a type of support that is provided. Another type of support is capacity-building daily activities. Those two types of supports, through a ministerial determination, will have budgets reduced. The social and community budgets will be reduced by 50 per cent. The capacity-building daily activity budgets will be reduced by 10 per cent.  

Senator ROBERTS: What do you mean by community activity? What is the scope of that?  

Ms Long: It’s quite a broad support category. It provides supports to participants to go out and engage in the community. It might involve having a support worker take them out to engage in some form of community activity, for example.  

Mr Comley: It could be as simple as going to a park, maybe having a walk around or feeding the ducks, or it could be a sporting event. It could be a whole range of things. That’s community participation.  

Ms Long: Another element of the reforms is around commissioning plan management and support coordination, which would deliver an improvement of around $1.4 billion over the forward estimates. Also, there has been quite a lot of plan inflation that has been observed, so there are a series of reforms that are aimed at addressing that plan inflation. That includes tightening the criteria around unscheduled reassessment requests and ending plans rolling over and funds being rolled over alongside. The total impact of those reforms is $3.1 billion over the forward estimates. There are also a range of access changes, as Secretary Comley referred to. In particular, in introducing an objective test of substantially reduced functional capacity, that would look to tighten eligibility for the scheme in order to focus that back on significant and permanent disability but also to have a focus on substantially reduced functional capacity rather than disability type. That change would have an impact of $9.3 billion over the forward estimates.  

Senator ROBERTS: So it’s going to tighten and be more specific?  

Ms Long: That’s correct. There will need to be a range of consultation and engagement on how that’s applied in terms of the threshold, the definition and how that’s done in practice, but, yes, the intent is to focus in eligibility on significantly reduced functional capacity. To date, access to the scheme has commonly been done through access lists that relate to your disability type. This would mean that we would no longer need to use those access lists and instead eligibility would be focused on a substantial reduction in functional capacity. If you’d like, I could keep going through a number of the other elements of the reform package, if that’s helpful.  

Senator ROBERTS: How many more are there?  

Ms Long: There are probably a couple more that I could mention if you like. Another one that might be worth highlighting is there’s a measure for mandatory registration for high-risk providers, which is around, obviously, having registration. That would deliver savings of $0.2 billion over the forward estimates.  

Senator ROBERTS: High-risk providers?  

Ms Long: That’s correct.  

Senator ROBERTS: How do you identify high risk?  

Ms Long: I might need one of my colleagues to talk to the detail of how that will be applied.  

Ms Alisa Chambers: High-risk supports as imagined through the budget is an extension of mandatory registration that we’re moving through at the moment with supported independent living and platform providers, in the new category of advanced registration. Those high-risk supports relate to daily activities—things like catheter care or really intimate personal care—and closed settings, like respite settings, where we see really significant risk to people with disability, particularly people with significant support needs.  

Ms Long: Overall, as a result of the reforms, it’s projected that average growth in the NDIS will be 1.7 per cent over the forward estimates and five per cent over the medium term. Five per cent per annum growth for the NDIS is broadly in line with Medicare and aged-care growth rates. It also means that the scheme will remain steady at around 1.6 per cent of GDP over the medium term on the current projections that we have.  

Senator ROBERTS: I had a question about how those people whose services will be cut will be identified. It’s basically through tightening up the eligibility criteria, which is something that we’ve been talking about for a while. That’s good to see, Minister.  

ACTING CHAIR: You’ve got about another two minutes, Senator Roberts.  

Senator ROBERTS: I’ve got questions for quality and safeguards. We’ve identified several fraudsters who need to be investigated and moneys chased down. Is this where most effort should be used to seek restitution?  

Mr Comley: I think the Quality and Safeguards Commission is dealing more with participant safety. The NDIA and Mr Dardo’s area are more in the area of fraud and misuse of funds. Mr Dardo might want to comment.  

Mr Dardo: Overwhelmingly, our focus is on preventing the money going out in the first place so we can prevent the money leaving the system when it shouldn’t be. The beauty of that is you’re not trying to chase a debt. You’re not trying to chase the money after it’s gone. That’s our overwhelming focus, and we’ve done a really, really good job in identifying problematic providers and stopping the funds leaving before they should. When the money has gone, there are different ways that we might recover it. Raising a debt might be one way. Asking the courts for reparation, like an order to repay, might be another. Another way that we’ve done it is we’ve worked with state or federal policing authorities to seize assets or freeze assets. In one recent case, we froze $5 million in assets and had them confiscated by the Commonwealth. In another case, we’ve frozen $40 million in assets. In a recent case, we’ve frozen another $4½ million to $5 million. It’s really important that we send the message that, even if the money has gone and somebody thinks they’ve gotten away with it, we will actually pursue the assets. There is another avenue that we’ve been using, which is to get the tax office to go after them from a tax perspective and raise taxes and attack the problem from that direction. Overwhelmingly, designing a system to stop the money going out in the first place is our mission, but we do have avenues to try to recover money when it gets to the serious end of fraud.  

Ms Wade: Secretary Comley mentioned that the commission’s focus with respect to fraud is firmly on the behaviour of providers in the market. In addressing that, in addition to penalty frameworks for providers, we have the registration scheme, and we’ve strengthened our approach to the registration scheme to ensure that it detects fraud in more sophisticated ways through recent reforms. As those registration groups grow, which we just spoke about, that strengthened response for fraud detection continues to be enhanced as well.  

Senator ROBERTS: It’s multipronged.  

Ms Wade: Yes, absolutely.  

Senator ROBERTS: I’ll ask my last question for this bracket. I’ve still got more when we come back. How many cases of fraud are being reported? You said that, if you took them all to court, they’d be clogged.  

Mr Dardo: The way we look at it is that it’s about stopping the integrity leakage whether it’s accidental, it’s sharp, it’s malicious or it’s organised crime. We’ve got to stop it all because any one of those vulnerabilities that are open allows money to leak out of the scheme. We get a significant number of tip-offs every year. We get 29,000 tip-offs every year. They are not all fraud. We’ve got to be really careful in assuming. They’re not all fraud. As you go up the spectrum, there are several thousand ABNs that we’ve already got some controls on through manual payment reviews, and we have been building more systems in the last few weeks that are now turning on. We will put a couple thousand more ABNs into those reviews in the next few weeks. Then you go up the spectrum a bit more, where we’ve got Fraud Fusion Taskforce investigations. There are about 660 investigations, but 400 of those related to the NDIS are either with the commission or with us—or both. Then you get to the ones that are in the prosecution phase. There are a few dozen in the prosecution phase, so they’re in front of the courts or we’ve got briefs of evidence with the CDPP to prepare them for the courts. That’s the spectrum. And it’s really important to note that there is no regulatory system in the world that thinks that every single non-compliant thing is going to end up as a prosecution. That is not the way the world works.  

Senator ROBERTS: How many convictions have there been?  

Mr Dardo: There have been 25 convictions since the Fraud Fusion Taskforce started, and those sentences have resulted, in some cases, in custodial sentences up to six years. There are more cases where there has been a guilty outcome—either pled guilty or found guilty—but they’re awaiting sentencing. We don’t control the dates of the court, so some of those have been sitting there awaiting sentencing for six months or a year. There are cases that are currently scheduled for sentencing in July. They may happen in July; they may happen in December—we don’t know. But there are more cases sitting there right now where they’ve been found guilty awaiting sentencing. 

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