WhatsUp

Back in August 2022, Australia’s Criminal Intelligence Commission’s (ASIC) Chief Michael Phelan went on 60 Minutes to talk about fraud – specifically, NDIS fraud.

Phelan estimated that 15% to 20% of NDIS funding was lost to fraud. This was calculated to be $6bn a year.

These figures have been picked up and repeated in both progressive and conservative newspapers. The Courier Mail just last week rather magically smooshed together this estimate with rising Scheme costs to predict $12bn could be lost to fraud each year.

These are alarming figures, but according to information released in two FOIs, we should have some serious questions about their accuracy.

The accuracy of these figures matters a lot right now. Significant policy has been developed on their basis, with the Albanese government committing $126 million to fund a Fraud Fusion Taskforce. Calls for additional drastic policies have intensified – fraud figures have also been deployed to support mandatory registration for providers.

In an FOI, we asked ASIC for:

• any document modelling or informing Michael Phelan’s statement that 15%–20% of the NDIS or $6 billion is being lost to fraud;

• the total dollar amount of alleged NDIS fraud being investigated, or investigations coordinated, by ASIC.

The FOI response was heavily redacted, and the 15%–20% and $6bn figures were certainly nowhere to be found. Unless, of course, those figures were hiding under all the black text, which we can only assume was put there to stop the government leaking transparency everywhere.

Cheekiness to one side, two pieces of relevant data were helpful:

A statement found in the 2019 Organised Crime Risk Assessment that fraud in Commonwealth-funded programs “almost certainly totals well over a billion dollars a year”.