A National Disability Insurance Scheme service provider was allowed to pocket more than $1 million by incorrectly billing for personal training services, while at least 4,000 other providers also incorrectly charged Australians with disability, the federal government says. The provider charged disabled Australians $193.99 an hour, nearly three times the government's recommended price. That's the machinery of hierarchy in plain sight: money meant for support gets siphoned upward, and the people who need it most are left to absorb the damage.
Who Pays for the Rort
The rort centres on a category of service called "other professionals", which was intended for services provided by a qualified therapist to deliver evidence-based supports. Instead, unscrupulous providers submitted a range of other claims under that item, including payments for decluttering, personal training, golf lessons, float tanks and horse therapy. The category became a catch-all for whatever could be pushed through the system, and the bill landed on disabled Australians.
NDIS minister Jenny McAllister said the government wanted every dollar spent on the NDIS to go to quality supports that genuinely improved the lives of NDIS participants. "Every dollar that goes somewhere else is a dollar wasted," she said. The line sounds tidy. The reality is messier. The scheme already supports more than 774,000 participants, and spending has surpassed $50 billion a year, yet the people at the bottom are still the ones expected to trust the apparatus after it has been gamed.
In 2024, the National Disability Insurance Agency explicitly banned billing for items such as general fitness, recreational activities or animal therapy. But 40 per cent of a sample of 10,000 providers that billed under the "other professional" item had been paid for services not allowed by NDIS rules, according to analysis conducted by the NDIA. The agency wrote the rule. Providers ignored it. Participants paid anyway.
What the Agency Says It’s Doing
Ms McAllister said the agency had raised debts against some providers and referred others to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. In a briefing document, the government noted three measures already in place to address incorrect billing. The language is all oversight and correction, but the facts show a system that needed the fraud to become visible before it moved.
In July, categories for services were split up to be smaller and more specific, giving the agency easier oversight over what was being claimed. It also reduced the price cap for the "other professional" category from $194 to $156 as part of the annual pricing review, which the government says will reduce the incentive for rorters to exploit the category. The government also pointed to a $350m investment made in this year's budget to implement a new digital payment system to improve integrity, and proposed amendments to the NDIS Act creating new investigative and enforcement powers. More controls. More software. More law. The same old promise that tighter management will fix what the structure keeps producing.
Acting CEO of People with Disability Australia, Megan Spindler-Smith, said the additional oversight was positive. "It's a good thing if providers are being held to account for what they're charging," she said. She said the examples of fraud revealed by the government showed the agency's administrative practices still needed fixing. "This shouldn't be happening in the first place," she said. That’s the part the polished language can’t hide. People with disability are the ones living with the consequences while the administrators debate process.
Cuts, Control and the Reform Trap
In a bill proposed in May, the government outlined plans for new powers for disability ministers, tightened eligibility requirements, automated decision making and anti-fraud measures. The amendments would result in an overhaul of the NDIS, aimed at saving $36 billion over four years. One measure, which would make the minister the decision-maker on pricing and fraud measures, was expected to save $900 million over that period, or 2.4 per cent of the total projected savings. The state calls it reform. The numbers say control.
The government has cited fraud, alongside overall scheme sustainability, as justification for its proposed cuts. Spending on the NDIS has become the target, not because the need disappeared, but because the budget logic of the system demands discipline from below. The people receiving support are treated as a cost to be managed, while the people gaming the rules and the institutions failing to stop them keep the conversation centered on “sustainability.”
The NDIA commissioned RedBridge to conduct focus groups in 2023 and found people were more "amenable" to support cuts if "rorts, fraud and unreasonable pricing" were posed as an existential threat to the scheme. The report said focus group participants had "strong resistance to any discussion of costs alone as a driver of reforms". Manufactured consent doesn’t always look like a slogan. Sometimes it looks like a focus group.
Director of the Centre for Disability Research and Policy at the University of Sydney, Shane Clifton, said fraud was a problem that needed to be tackled but it was not unique to the NDIS. He said successive governments had not done enough to monitor what was going on within the scheme and the focus on fraud had undermined it. "That disparagement has then bounced on to people with disability themselves," he said. That’s the hierarchy at work again: failures at the top, blame at the bottom, and a whole apparatus built to call it governance.