Speech from Minister McAllister, International Public Sector Fraud Forum – 22 September 2026

Media event date: 22 September 2026 Date published: 23 September 2026 Media type: General public **CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY** Let me begin by acknowledging the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation and pay respect to their elders past and present. Thank you all for joining us here in Sydney. Welcome to Australia.

I hope as much as you enjoy the summit, you also get some time to enjoy this incredible City. All the work you do is so important. And the work of collaboration is critically important itself.

I know that from our work in Australia, where 25 of our agencies through the Fraud Fusion Taskforce have built habits of collaboration over the last 4 years that are making an enormous difference. In an earlier life I spent almost 6 years on the Australian Parliament’s Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence and Security. I have seen first-hand how important the collaboration between our countries is as well.

So I’m delighted that this summit is taking place and equally delighted to be able to talk to you. The truth is this: criminal syndicates increasingly see government as high value target. This is a shared problem across Government payment systems and across the world.

Now, the vast majority of Australian NDIS service providers are extraordinarily good people. And the work they do helps change the lives of people with a disability for the better every day. But Australia’s National Disability Insurance Scheme is not immune.

Today, I can confirm that the NDIS is being targeted by criminal syndicates that are sophisticated and organised. My number one priority for the NDIS Commission and the enforcement arm of the NDIA is to find and disrupt these organised syndicates. Today I am going to explain what we are doing to stop criminals exploiting people with a disability.

How we are making it easy to do the right thing and hard to do the wrong thing. By building in layers of integrity, so we don’t just prosecute fraud – we prevent it. I'm conscious not everyone here will appreciate the significance of the NDIS, but our National Disability Insurance Scheme is a relatively young part of Australia's social policy architecture.

But in its second decade, it requires attention. When we came to Government, a criminal seeking to defraud the NDIS needed no more than the name of an NDIS participant, their NDIS number and a bank account. Astonishingly, not even an Australian bank account if they were claiming to be a plan manager.

Millions and millions of claims paid, without evidence and without oversight. And just a handful of staff in the NDIA investigating fraud and wrongdoing, without the teeth to enforce the rules. And when the NDIA or NDIS Commission received tip-offs about the crooks, they had to work through manual processes to triage the complaints.

We have set about systematically fixing that. In the last Budget, the Government committed more than $800 million in funding. And multiple pieces of legislation have strengthened integrity by providing clarity on NDIS scope and improving the powers of the NDIA and the Commission.

As these reforms are progressively implemented, a criminal seeking to exploit the NDIS will find it’s not worth their time. That criminal will find barriers at every point: prevention through preventing access to the provider market prevention through payment controls stronger powers of investigation and enforcement. We are going about implementing integrity by design.

Firstly, we're implementing stronger guardrails for who can provide services to people on the scheme. Our reforms will mean that a provider will have to be registered with the NDIS Commission for categories that cover 90% of the payments – including some of the most lucrative. And, with the exception of some general retail services, every provider will have to be enrolled through the NDIA.

Before a would be criminal makes a claim, the Government will know their identity and have it connected to an Australian bank account. And for most types of support, they will have to have gone through an approved auditor to become registered. And the days of just buying a registered shell company are over.

This year we moved to impose new obligations on the sale of NDIS businesses aimed at cracking down on the sale of ‘cleanskin’ registered businesses. Providers now have to notify as soon as they become aware that a sale will occur and new audits will be required where there are significant changes to governance or operations. Secondly, we're going to tighten the guidelines around how providers of NDIS services get paid.

If that committed criminal somehow makes it through into the system, then making false claims will be much harder. Claims will have to be made within 90 days of service. No more draining of participants plan by making aged unverifiable claims against plans that had been allowed to grow over many years.

All claims will require evidence to be provided to the NDIA. And the days of marking your own homework or finding a dodgy mate to tick off the receipts will be over. All plan managers will be directly commissioned by the NDIA and need to be operating with the highest standards of integrity controls.

New whistleblower protections will give people making tip offs in confidence that their own job will be protected. And when complaints are made to the NDIA or NDIS Commission, new capabilities will mean that the most serious cases will be prioritised for action. And ongoing funding for the Fraud Fusion Taskforce means that collaboration across Commonwealth agencies builds another layer of operational intelligence.

New analytics capabilities in the NDIA – like the new payment system – will mean this financial information can be processed to identify red flags. And thirdly, those analytical capabilities will be supplemented with much stronger powers of investigation and enforcement. We’re mandating record keeping – 7 years for providers.

And new powers means that when red flags are raised, the NDIA will have the power to request more information, and require providers to answer reasonable questions. Powers to ban providers will be expanded to more junior officials. Banning orders have been expanded to consultants and auditors.

New powers will be available to stop false advertising of NDIS supports. Evidentiary certificates will take administrative enforcement burden off agencies. All this means more tools in the toolbox to take on those who seek to do the wrong thing.

The likelihood of getting caught is higher. And the penalty for getting caught is higher too. We are raising the stakes.

Maximum penalties for the most serious fraud offences in the NDIS Act are now 10 years in prison. We have introduced new crimes for paying kickbacks or operating while banned or unregistered. And massive new financial penalties for serious contraventions that could led to a fine of over $16 million.

There are some who say all you need is tougher penalties. As if that is enough. We don’t do these things to look tough or get a grab.

We do it because we want a criminal looking at defrauding the NDIS to wake up every day and conclude that it’s not worth the risk. That it’s too hard. That it’s too likely that they will get caught.

That the consequences for getting caught are not worth it. Every single reform of this Government tips the scales in favour of integrity. But I know we cannot prosecute our way out of this problem.

I don’t want to prosecute a fraudster after they’ve stolen from the scheme; I want to stop them from becoming a provider in the first place. I don’t want to recoup a dodgy claim after it’s made, I want to stop it from being paid in the first place. I don’t want that crook to even be allowed to make a claim, because they weren’t allowed anywhere near disability supports in the first place.

This is something of a work in progress. But we are making progress, nonetheless. Since coming to Government, we have made significant investments to strengthen the integrity of the scheme.

We have invested more than $1.8 billion. Our efforts to disrupt are working. The Fraud Fusion Taskforce has disrupted over 5,900 providers identified as high risk or associated with incorrect or non-compliant claiming practices.

In the 12 months prior to disruption, these providers claimed approximately $1.1 billion from the NDIS. Prosecutions and other enforcement action have risen dramatically. The Taskforce has launched more than 600 investigations, has close to 100 operations underway, and has referred 50 people to court Almost 400 individuals and providers (395) have been banned from the NDIS over the past 3 years (From October 2022 to June 2025).

And since 2022 our stronger integrity framework has delivered $2.1 billion in savings and benefits through stopping non-compliant payments and protecting participant funding from misuse. Broken down, that means that between November 2022 and June 2026 stronger protections have prevented $1.2 billion in fraudulent and non-compliant payments. And they’ve redirected $900 million in participant funding away from bad actors and towards legitimate supports and services.

We’re also making more and more interventions to protect participants such as manual payment reviews and pre-payment checks of individual claims that have been identified as potentially high risk. Over the past 2 financial years, more than 265,000 high-risk claims worth more than $420 million were reviewed before payment with over 135,000 of these claims rejected.

This stopped more than $255 million worth of suspicious claims from leaving participants’ plans. In the last financial year, 75% of high-risk entities subject to manual payment reviews stopped claiming against participants’ plans within 6 months. And major upgrades like the NDIS Integrity Portal – the NDIA’s first dedicated online channel for collecting and scrutinising evidence for claims before payment – launched in June of this year, are strengthening the integrity of the scheme.

The Integrity Portal lays the foundation for broader digital evidence assessment across NDIS systems including the new provider enrolment and digital payments system. Early results have been strong, with 2,500 claims worth almost $1 million reviewed and 1,794 claims worth $656,000 rejected. The Integrity Portal lays the foundation for broader digital evidence assessment across NDIS systems including the new provider enrolment and digital payments system.

And this is what placing integrity into the design of the scheme’s framework looks like. We do these things because we believe in integrity for its own sake. To protect public finances.

To make sure funds don’t end up supporting criminal syndicates and much much worse. To reinforce the links between trusted systems and a cohesive society, between social security and a secure Australia. But more importantly, we do this because we want the scheme to deliver for the people who need it.

As we harden the system, we don’t intend to burden participants In fact, we have baked safeguards for participants into the legislation. Nor do we want to punish providers doing the right thing. We know most providers doing the right thing.

We need to make sure they aren’t punished by having to compete with bad actors cutting corners. We know they are on the front lines of ensuring that the scheme operates with integrity – providing our investigators with the intelligence they need to act. For both participants and providers: doing the wrong thing should be hard, but doing the right thing should be easy.

When our reforms are finished the systems for making a claim, for managing your plan – will be more accessible than ever before. Ultimately, a system that operates with integrity is one that supports participants. Every dollar that goes to fraud, is a dollar taken from someone who needs it.

And we know where we see fraud, we too often see violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation. And fraud left unchecked undermines the community’s faith not just in this scheme, but in the capacity and commitment of Government more broadly. That is why this work is so important.

And that is why this conference is so important. Thank you again for all your service. Best of luck for the rest of the week.

Senator the Hon Jenny McAllister Disability and carers Accessibility We acknowledge the Traditional Owners and Custodians of Country throughout Australia, and their continuing connection to land, sea and community. We pay our respects to them and their cultures, and to Elders both past and present. © Commonwealth of Australia