The NDIS has achieved a new low: its Fraud Fusion Taskforce or some other internal “integrity” unit is sabotaging supports for some autistic NDIS participants with high and complex needs.
A4 received evidence that a secret entity in the NDIA is withholding payments for essential supports for NDIS participants with high and complex needs including supports that the NDIS agreed to provide in AAT s42C settlements.
Our understanding is that some NDIA integrity unit suspended all payments for some high and complex needs NDIS participants' supports. The NDIS did not inform the participants or the participants’ support coordinators. Nor did the NDIA inform the participants’ complex needs planners that this was done until the participants contacted their planners with questions. The NDIA integrity unit just stopped payments without telling anyone.
The consequences of the NDIA withholding payments for these participants were that:
- Supports that had not been paid stopped providing support, then
- Trained support workers moved to other employment.
- Supports could not resume until new support staff were recruited and trained (which is especially difficult in regional and remote settings).
Participants were left without essential supports for extended periods.
The clear consequence intended or not, of the NDIS’s actions makes the lives of the targeted autistic people with high and complex support needs, among the most vulnerable Australians, and their Informal Supports as difficult as possible. The NDIA has a habit of targeting this group - see https://a4.org.au/node/2567.
A4 wrote to the NDIA’s CEO (and others) raising these as systemic issues. The NDIA did not respond.
Nothing happened to rectify the situation until the issue was raised at a personal level with the NDIS and DSS Ministers (via. the participant's MP) and requiring that the participants' privacy be fully violated. The NDIA took no notice of systemic issues raised by disability advocates.
The claim (copied below from the NDIS webpage) about the Taskforce’s governance is false.
The Taskforce is governed by an Ethics and Human Oversight Framework. This makes sure participants’ safety, wellbeing and privacy is protected. NDIS participants are at the heart of everything the Taskforce does to combat fraud and serious organised crime.
The NDIS is untrustworthy and deceitful; it makes claims like this, then does the opposite.
The response the Minister’s office provided to A4 was especially unhelpful: it said people in such situations should call the NDIS’s 1800 number, a course of action that would clearly be a total waste of time and resources – an action that would only result in frustration for everyone. It was made clear to the Minister when the issue was raised with him that no NDIS officials took any action before he was contacted. When he was contacted, the matter had already progressed well beyond calling the NDIS’s 1800 number. Taxpayer money must not be used to pay anyone to write such unhelpful suggestions.
Members of the NDIA’s RFO Fraud Codesign Group advised A4 that these actions of the Fraud Fusion Taskforce are not what they suggested/advised to the NDIA in their co-design work.
A4 is highly supportive of the NDIS minimising fraud and illegality in the NDIS. Unfortunately, the NDIA’s approach is ill advised and inappropriate. It seems to be driven by strong anti-autism prejudices rather than targeting service sector scams and profiteering.
The main participant involved here has already been to the AAT three times for NDIS plan reviews. They are advised that the NDIS complex needs planning process cannot provide the plan needed at the next review … which means they now need to prepare to ask the new ART to review their next NDIS plan. It is incredible (literally) that the NDIS Fraud Fusion Taskforce believes that such a participant would engage in fraud when their whole life is subject to such a close level of scrutiny.
It is unbelievable that the scrutiny of such participants follows from advice from “the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission, Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, Australian Federal Police, Australian Tax Office, and other Commonwealth partners” as the NDIS website claims.
Notably, one of the participants affected by the NDIA’s actions has already had to endure six changes in complex needs planners during their latest NDIS plan. This means that they must repeatedly educate NDIS staff and retell their re-traumatising story over and over again to deeply sceptical and disbelieving complex needs planners. The NDIA officials involved show no sign of having relevant training or experience in such matters.
Fundamentally, the NDIA is incapable of acting on advice from disability representative organisations (especially representative organisations from the autism sector). The NDIA is so averse to input from the autism sector that it prefers to do the opposite of suggestions from that source. The failure or refusal to listen to a sector is a proven recipe for governments failing to deliver effective services and supports especially for vulnerable people such as those who are most affected by their autism/ASD.
The NDIA ignores systemic issues. They need access to all personal particulars before they act to address issues. They address the issues at the individual level; they cannot act systemically. This is just more evidence that the NDIA is a severely dysfunctional organisation.
Bob Buckley
8/1/2025