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Fraud is Overwhelming in the NDIS Sector

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At the recent estimates in June, the head of the Fraud Investigations Unit revealed that the volume of fraud cases reaching the courts is so high that the country’s judiciary is overwhelmed. This significant issue is driving up the cost of services. 

I then enquired about the services provided to individuals with autism and was told that there are 200,000 people on the program with autism as their primary diagnosis. 

No commitment was made to increase allowances for care providers.

Transcripts | Part 1

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you, Chair. Thank you to witnesses for being here today. We have been receiving a lot of phone calls and emails from constituents about the NDIA and the NDIS. What’s the fundamental need for having an NDIA and an NDIS as separate agencies? While they have different functions, the functions of NDIA and NDIS could be combined, doing away with a whole department and host of bureaucracies currently costing the taxpayer millions of dollars. It’s confusing to people. Could you please explain them?  

Ms Falkingham: Yes, Senator. We have a scheme that’s set out under the act. There is only one agency, which is the National Disability Insurance Agency. We also have a commission. That might be what you’re referring to—the National Quality and Safeguards Commission. But the NDIS is not an agency, it’s not an entity of any type; it’s a scheme.  

Senator ROBERTS: Why are people so confused about it?  

Ms Falkingham: I think that over the course of the last 11 years we haven’t necessarily done the greatest job of explaining and communicating about the scheme—who it’s for, who it’s not for, what type of supports you can get on the NDIS and what supports you can get from outside the NDIS. Some of the confusion you might be speaking about goes to whether people have got an issue with their provider. If they have an issue with their provider, often it’s the National Quality and Safeguards Commission that they can make a complaint to, if it’s a registered provider. But, obviously, we also have things called local area coordinators. That’s a partnership we have with the community sector, which is often when people go in the first instance to speak to someone about getting onto the scheme. There are a lot of people involved in this scheme. One of the review’s recommendations is to really streamline that and have this concept of a navigator, and so we can start to have one person walk with a person with disability in an end-to-end kind of way along the planning process.  

Senator ROBERTS: What’s being done in relation to auditing agency service providers who are sucking the scheme dry through fraudulent claims for services overcharged or not actually even provided?  

Ms Falkingham: It’s an excellent question. I might ask John Dardo to come to the table. He can take you through all the work we’re doing on our crackdown on fraud.  

Mr Dardo: I’m the deputy CEO and I look after contact centres and the integrity functions as well.  

Senator ROBERTS: Sorry, what are the functions?  

Mr Dardo: The Integrity functions—things like compliance, fraud and integrity checks.  

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you.  

Mr Dardo: Before I give a bit of a summary about the work that we’re doing, there are a couple of things that are really important to note. The No. 1 priority we have when we do integrity work is to make sure that participants’ safety is looked after. As we talk about the stuff today, it’ll be easy for some people to assume that participant safety is not the No. 1 thing we do, but participant safety is actually the most critical thing we do as we do our integrity work. As we do that integrity work, obviously we also look at things like sustainability of the scheme and making sure that the community can have confidence that people are getting the right services from the right providers. If we do it well, we get a level playing field for the providers, because the good providers can compete on a level playing field; they don’t have to compete against dodgy providers. The work we’re doing has lots of layers. There is a lot of work that we doing to identify, with intelligence, the providers or the things that are bad for the scheme. As we do that work, we’re working with other agencies to build layers of defence. That is because there is no silver bullet to getting integrity right within the scheme. One thing that we have is the Fraud Fusion Taskforce. It’s now 19 agencies.  

Senator ROBERTS: The what taskforce?  

Mr Dardo: It’s the Fraud Fusion Taskforce. There are 19 government agencies. It includes us, Services Australia—we co-chair it—the tax office, Attorney-General’s, the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, and a raft of other delivery agencies that do government payments and programs, such as Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, ASQA, who look after registered training organisations, professional standards that look after the quality of the medical professionals, Health and Ageing—there are a lot of agencies involved. The reason we partner with those agencies is that the people that are doing the worst things against the scheme and the worst things against participants don’t just work against the NDIS; they rort other systems as well. They rort the tax system, the Medicare system or the VET, vocational education and training, system. The patterns they use to defraud the scheme are similar across those systems. So, when we work with the other agencies, we’re more likely to detect those people, and we’re building a preventive architecture that doesn’t just stop fraud against the NDIS; it is also reusable to stop fraud against Medicare, vocational education and training, family day care or child care. So that taskforce is going brilliantly. It has a regular rhythm. We do a lot of work together to develop intelligence. We have intelligence alerts that come out to all the relevant agencies about providers or schemes that seek to defraud. We then act on those to stop payments or we work with the commission, who are also on the taskforce, to prevent bad players from being registered providers. In some cases, we do operations together. ASQA, the guys that look after registered training organisations, only came on board in the last month or so. Within a week or two of coming on board, we worked with them, and the tax office provided some support and the commission provided support, and warrants were executed on a provider that was problematic. So we work together really well. 

Senator ROBERTS: How many service providers have been charged for falsely claiming fees for services not provided?  

Mr Dardo: There are many, many dozens. Right now, there are approximately 20 prosecutions in progress, as in right in front of the courts right now.  

Senator ROBERTS: That’s across Australia?  

Mr Dardo: Yes. There are also several that are imminent. The affidavits have been produced. The work has been done with law enforcement. It’s been done with CDPP to result in either search warrants or charges. So there are more in the pipeline that are imminent. In addition to that, we’ve got to keep in mind that prosecution is the last resort. What we want to do is build a scheme where they can’t even get to the point of doing dodgy claims.  

Senator ROBERTS: What I have seen and what I’ve concluded is that the NDIS was started as an election promise, it was cobbled together and flung out there—it wasn’t ready to go—and as a result there have been two things. Initially, there was a lot of corruption because the systems were loose, which is understandable, and then, as they tightened up, some people were missing out on services. Could you give me on notice, please, since the inception of the NDIS, the number of people charged for falsely claiming fees for services not provided, on an annual basis. I’d like to see if there’s a trend—if there’s a pick-up or a decrease. I mentioned the fact that, when you have a trend, it may be due to better enforcement or due to more—  

Mr Dardo: Keep in mind the charges that are laid aren’t phrased exactly the way you described them, but certainly we can give you, on notice, the trend. What I will say is we are detecting now more than we could ever detect before, because the systems were not mature. They have been matured as we invest more in building more mature systems. For example, certainly in the last six to eight years, payments would be going out the door, and there were some periods through the day or through a weekend where payments were being processed with no NDIA eyes, or human eyes, looking at those payments. So payments were walking out the door without any system knowing that the payments were going out the door, because the systems were not mature enough or built in a way to prevent those payments.  

Senator ROBERTS: We all know that the minister has been talking a lot about tightening up because ultimately the cost is getting out of control. What that means is that people who deserve good care don’t get it. So, by holding back the fraudsters, we’re protecting people to ensure they get their care in the future.  

Mr Dardo: Absolutely. To give you examples, there are the prosecutions, but, even more important than that, in terms of the volume of the response that we’re implementing at the moment, there are the stoppers. There’s the stopping of payments where the providers are problematic or the claims are problematic.  

Senator ROBERTS: So you’re making them jump through more hoops?  

Mr Dardo: We’re stopping the claims, and we’re saying, ‘We’re not confident that this claim is legitimate; you need to provide evidence that it’s legitimate.’ In some of our stopper work, we’re hitting 50 to 87 per cent stop rates on claims. We have providers that have put claims in. We’re saying, ‘Sorry; that doesn’t look quite right,’ and they’re either withdrawing or cancelling their claims, or not responding at all—they’re walking away completely, and in some cases they’re shutting down their businesses and walking away because they’ve realised the game is up. And we’re not talking at the margins for these claims. Some of these claims are in the hundreds of thousands of dollars—  

Senator ROBERTS: We’ve heard about them.  

Mr Dardo: or in the millions of dollars. Our ability to now detect it is allowing us to stop it before it goes out. If we can stop it before it goes out, we then don’t have to try and recover the money or raise a debt to recover the money. We need to get better at stopping it. Before they even exist to make the claim, we need to get better at bringing that further forward in the supply chain. As we look at many of these claims and many of these providers, what we’re seeing is that the behaviours have been going on for years. It’s just that we’re better now at seeing them and preventing or stopping them. It is generating some angst, and I’ll describe that in more detail. There are providers that have been really bad in setting up their business model to take funds out of the system, with an understanding with participants or nominees that they would provide a certain set of services which maybe should not have been provided by the NDIS, whether it be rent subsidies, alcohol or other lifestyle expenses, gift vouchers or gift cards. The participants or their nominees have grown accustomed to a standard of living—they may have signed leases on the understanding that that was the lifestyle they would enjoy—and we’re now identifying that those providers are problematic, and we’re saying, ‘Sorry; you can’t keep claiming that money to subsidise that type of spend.’ You can imagine that some of our participants are having their standard of living disrupted. 

Senator ROBERTS: That is a recurring theme in some of the questions constituents put to us—that genuine care is not being considered but lifestyle choices are, and so money is going on that. This is another one that’s recurring: when will families or friends supporting a person with high-level needs be appropriately supported? They’re not adequately supported, but care providers are being overly supported.  

Mr Dardo: There are certainly some really black-and-white spaces. There are providers that are just providers—they’re brilliant and they’re awesome, and what they do is fantastic. There are some providers that have a mixed business model—they do some good work, but they do a whole bunch of dodgy stuff to supplement their income, their lifestyle or their business. There are some providers that are really just fraudsters, criminals or criminal syndicates, and they’re using the NDIS for cash flow. There are some participants and providers that are the same thing. We have participants who have set up businesses to pay themselves to look after themselves, or nominees who have set up businesses to look after their kids. We have examples of cases where it’s not clear that it’s a provider or a participant or a nominee, because it’s all intermingled. The family group has set up three entities, and they’re paying each other to look after each other, or a mother has drawn down $100,000 a year as an income to pay herself for looking after her child with disability. There are some things there that are very intermingled between a provider and a participant. The conflicts of interest are pretty extreme. Then you have participants who have not understood what they can and can’t agree to with a provider, so they’re accepting things that they shouldn’t be. Examples just in the last week: a $20,000 holiday, a $10,000 holiday. There are participants who are claiming things that they shouldn’t and in the past would probably not have been detected. We had a participant that bought a car, brand new, for $73,000. The money was processed overnight. Fortunately, when we were able to approach them, they understood that they shouldn’t have done that and they were willing to repay the money. We have other participants who haven’t understood what they should be claiming and when we approach them they cease contact and refuse to engage. Then there are the vast majority of participants that are trying to do the right thing, and we have to figure out how we get the balance right so that we help the people who are trying to do the right thing get it right more often. For the providers that are doing an awesome job, we need to help them survive and flourish. For the ones that are running mixed businesses, we need to exit them from the scheme, and, for the providers that are dodgy, we need to exit them from all government services, not just the scheme—we need to exit them from Medicare, AHPRA and everything else that they’re involved with.  

CHAIR: Senator, this will need to be the last question.  

Senator ROBERTS: Can you give us the number of providers per year, for the last five years, who have been exited from the system please.  

Mr Dardo: We can. There are some different metrics there, but we can see what we can get for you.  

Senator ROBERTS: It sounds like the agency is waking up to what’s happening, so thank you.

Transcript | Part 2

Senator ROBERTS: Before I continue with my questions—I think they will be to Ms Falkingham—Mr Dardo, I want to say I appreciate your candid nature and your openness. I’ve rarely seen someone in your position who, when confronted with a senator telling them about a problem, says: ‘That’s not the end of it. It’s worse than that, actually.’ It’s only by us understanding it and what you’re doing that we can help you. Thank you. I appreciate that. Ms Falkingham, why have many persons with autism or on the spectrum had their services cut, often with little explanation provided?  

Ms Falkingham: I am not aware of any evidence to support that claim. I will get the scheme actuary up and he can talk about the amount of money we invest in participants with autism.  

Mr Gifford: I don’t have the precise figure with me but I believe it would be more than 200,000 participants in the scheme who have autism as their primary disability. There’s no data that would suggest that people with autism are having their services cut. The growth in plans of participants with autism is different to the scheme population more broadly.  

Senator ROBERTS: What’s the plan to support older people currently receiving a support package that far exceeds the age pension yet their package will cease when they reach retirement age? Their needs will not diminish and may become more acute yet their support will be slashed.  

Ms Falkingham: It might be a question for our colleagues in DSS. The NDIS review has made a number of recommendations in relation to the interface between aged care and NDIS, so we can absolutely do better for ensuring that people are receiving that continuity of support if they have been on the NDIS, which we do now for people under 65. The NDIS review has made a recommendation around the interface and how we can improve upon that, but I will check if my colleague wants to add to that. 

 Mr Griggs: If you qualify before you’re 65, you don’t come off the scheme at 65.  

Senator ROBERTS: What happens? When they go on the pension, don’t they come off the scheme?  

Mr Griggs: No.  

Senator ROBERTS: Not at all?  

Mr Griggs: No, not if you qualified before 65.  

Senator ROBERTS: Remember, these are coming from a lot of our constituents via emails and personal calls. Are you aware of clients who own their own home being pressured to sell their own home by the service providers to move to group care?  

Ms Falkingham: I will check whether Deputy CEO Penelope McKay has any evidence. I do hear that anecdotally, but I’m not aware of whether we have any current cases. We can take that on notice for you.  

Senator ROBERTS: Why is the focus seemingly moving away from providing support based on practical needs like assistance with cooking, cleaning, showering and hygiene to non-essential services that are routinely overcharged? We’ve heard stories of fishing and so on. Is there a switch there from genuine need to—  

Ms Falkingham: Every decision we make is based on reasonable and necessary. The things you have outlined are absolutely the core of the scheme in terms of daily living and supporting daily living expenses, so I’m not sure. We can follow up for you, but some people will have goals in their plans that go to recreational goals and achievements, so obviously we will try to support a participant to achieve that goal by providing appropriate disability supports to enable them to do that. But things like building capacity, that’s what you’re speaking about in relation to cooking and cleaning and supporting people to live a good life. They are the core of our scheme and that’s predominantly what we fund now.  

Senator ROBERTS: We’ve heard from constituents saying they have someone who will take them fishing but he comes in, does a quick look around—that’s a welfare check—and leaves. Is that the kind of thing some people are paying for?  

Ms Falkingham: If you have evidence of that, I’m really happy to follow that up.  

Senator ROBERTS: Why do agency service providers apparently get priority to receive payment over actual care givers who do massive amounts of unpaid work? In other words, personal care givers, family, do a massive amount of work and don’t get paid but agency service providers do. 

Ms Falkingham: Obviously informal supports are a critical part of someone’s life and it is one of the things we discuss as part of the planning process. We fund paid supports under the scheme, but informal supports will always be a critical part of our community, and having family to be able to support loved ones is a really critical part of that. We obviously always provide respite services for families as well, who do provide a lot of informal supports, but that is the nature of our scheme. It is what we are funding under the NDIS.  

Senator ROBERTS: Why is the carers allowance so pitifully small relative to paid agencies when many carers provide ongoing personal support 24 hours per day all year?  

Ms Falkingham: I think that might be a question for DSS.  

Mr Griggs: Carers allowance is part of the social security system. It’s not part of the NDIS. We can talk about that tomorrow in outcome 1 of DSS, when my team will be here, and they can take you through that.  

Senator ROBERTS: When will care providers be remunerated appropriately because they put in more needed work hours than agency service providers? We’ll talk about that tomorrow. 

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Rampant NDIS Fraud Leaves Vulnerable Recipients in Need

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My questions to the NDIS Quality & Safeguards Commissioner was primarily about the quality and safety issues that render the system inefficient and hazardous. 

It became evident that fraud was rampant, leading to significant financial waste and leaving many recipients’ needs unmet. 

While some recipients received excessively extravagant packages with overvalued components, such as massages, fishing trips and cruises, others remained in dire need of basic assistance for eating, washing, toileting and dressing. 

Initially, the system functioned fairly well, but it has now expanded excessively, resulting in waste, unmet needs, and dangerous conditions for vulnerable recipients.

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The Cost of Clawing Back NDIS Fraud

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At the February Senate Estimates I asked the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) how much money has the NDIA been able to claw back through identified National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) fraud? Funding across 16 agencies, including the NDIA, of $140 million over four years was provided in 2022 to tackle fraud. Those agencies are working together. It seems reasonable that we should know what return on this investment we’re getting since we’re paying for it.

There are major concerns with the NDIS. It was hastily brought to life and hastily implemented. There are concerns with both over and under-servicing. That’s not necessarily a reflection on the people in the NDIA, but that’s the reality.

I also asked what is being done in relation to auditing service providers who are sucking the scheme dry through fraudulent claims for services that are overcharged or actually not even provided? My questions regarding the amount actually clawed back was taken on notice, however John Dardo, Deputy CEO of Integrity Transformation and Fraud Fusion Taskforce, freely admits to having layers of concern about NDIS fraud. There are over 600,000 participants in the scheme and Mr Dardo says the system is extraordinarily immature for a scheme paying out over $100 million each day, with 400,000 claims a day. Among the risks they’re managing is whether they can be confident that a participant is a real human being, is in the scheme knowingly and actually exists.

Transcript

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you for appearing today. On the topic of fraud, how much money has the NDIA been able to claw back through identified NDI fraud? 

Ms Falkingham: I’ll ask Deputy CEO John Dardo, who leads that program, to come forward to the table. 

Mr Dardo: Thanks for the question. There are different ways to measure that. One of the ways to measure it is to think about how much we’ve prevented from going out the door by implementing systems or detecting the integrity leak before the money has left the door. Another way to measure it is to look at whether we’ve asked the participant or provider to pay the money back. Another way to measure it is by the amount of money that is subject to a prosecution activity—so where it has gone to the courts. Not all of that is recoverable, because unless there’s criminal asset confiscation, or unless there are penalties being charged, that money may not be recoverable. So there are lots of different ways to measure it. 

What I would say is that, as my colleague mentioned earlier in relation to detecting the anomalies, there are a range of things that we’ve been building up over the last 18 months to allow us to identify where there are integrity leaks, and what I would emphasise is that integrity leaks are very, very strongly correlated to participant risk. The safety of participants is put at risk when money is leaking to the wrong places. It’s because the participants aren’t receiving the services they need, or because we’ve got providers that are dodgy and are actually growing their businesses at the expense of good providers—so they’re wiping out the good providers—or because that money is actually funding activity for participants that is putting them at further risk, whether it be drug abuse, alcohol abuse, risky behaviours or other behaviours. So the money’s important, but the reason we look at the money is the participant safety impact that it has. 

What I would also say is that there’s a level of detail that I can’t share in this forum—I’m happy to do it in a private setting—because we do not want to run a 101 session on how to commit fraud against the NDIA. But I’m on the public record in previous hearings talking about the layers of concern that we have. We have, in round figures, over 600,000 participants in the scheme. The system is extraordinary immature for a system that pays out over $100 million a day, with 400,000 claims a day. It is an extraordinarily immature system. Certainly it’s one of the most immature I’ve seen. If I think about the sorts of risks that we’re managing and investing in, being confident that a participant is a real human being, is in the scheme knowingly and— 

Senator ROBERTS: Actually exists. 

Mr Dardo: actually exists is an area of risk that we’re certainly unpacking and understanding, and we’re identifying things that need to be addressed. 

Senator ROBERTS: Excuse me. Out of respect for the chair wanting to conclude pretty soon, could you take it on notice to provide the figures around the categories of fraud that you mentioned earlier on, please? What money has been saved? 

Mr Dardo: We can do that. 

Senator ROBERTS: There are concerns with the NDIS. It was hastily brought to life. It was hastily implemented. There are concerns with overservicing, as you know. There are concerns with underservicing and there are concerns with fraud. That’s not necessarily a reflection on the people in the NDIA at the moment, but that’s the reality. Please also take it on notice to answer: what is being done in relation to auditing service providers who are sucking the scheme dry through fraudulent claims for services that are overcharged or actually not even provided? 

Mr Dardo: An enormous amount of activity. Some of that activity is some randomised integrity checks. We’ve done tens of thousands of those to try and understand, at a randomised level, what we’re seeing. The sorts of common things we’re seeing include overclaiming, duplicate claims, claiming for services that were never provided and claiming for services that are not consistent with the plan. If I think about some other risk points, we have some particular cohorts where we have very significant concerns about the behaviour of the cohorts, and, when we cross-reference our data with other data such as tax data, for example, we see that some of our providers are non-compliant with basic obligations to the Commonwealth. If they’re non-compliant with their basic obligations to the Commonwealth but they’re managing money on behalf of participants or managing services on behalf of participants, we’ve got concerns. We have several hundred providers where they’re managing money or services on behalf of participants or managing other providers on behalf of participants and yet they’re not compliant with their most basic tax obligations. We’re cross-referencing data with other agencies. 

A taskforce commenced in November 2022. At the most egregious end of the offending, that taskforce has 16 Commonwealth agencies working together to identify networks of providers or syndicates that are targeting the scheme. You may have seen some media coverage about the search warrants being executed, the prosecutions being conducted and passports being seized or surrendered as part of bail conditions. That work is continuing to ramp up. We have over 100 investigations in the pipeline, and some of those cases are very significant both in dollar value and participant numbers being affected and also in the egregious behaviour of those providers. 

Senator ROBERTS: There are a lot of costs involved. Some of the costs are from the 16 agencies that are working with you and they’ll be hidden from the total cost. 

Mr Dardo: No, those agencies were funded as part of that announcement. That funding was $140 million over four years. Those agencies, as well as the NDIA, were funded as part of that Fraud Fusion Taskforce and they’re working in partnership with us. 

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. 

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Fraud Investigation of Aboriginal Funding in the Northern Territory

In mid-September of this year, a Matter of Urgency was referred to Mr Grant Hehir, the Commonwealth Auditor General, Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) by Senator Michaela Cash.

The issue was allegations that millions of taxpayer dollars had been the subject of fraud and corruption amongst senior staff of the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency and that a decision was made by ANAO not to investigate these allegations. I wanted to know why.

During senate estimates, Mr Hehir informed me that it was true that a decision had been made by ANAO not to investigate the allegations and that this decision was made purely because a review into this is already being undertaken by the Attorney-General’s office. Mr Hehir said that ANAO is not an investigatory body and therefore any fraud investigation is not within its remit.

In the case of suspicion of fraud, ANAO could refer it to the appropriate body. ANAO’s role in this case would be to undertake a performance audit and an audit of the government programme that funded this entity. The North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency receives government funding of $20 million to provide legal services in the area. I think an audit is long overdue.

Transcript

Senator ROBERTS: Thank you for being here again. In mid-September this year a matter of urgency was referred to the Commonwealth Auditor-General, Mr Hehir, and the Australian National Audit Office by the
shadow legal affairs spokesperson, Michaelia Cash. The issue was the allegation that millions of taxpayer dollars had been the subject of fraud and corruption amongst senior staff of the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency. Allegations were made of extensive criminal conduct by some members of the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency’s leadership. Is it true that a decision was made by ANAO not to investigate the allegations?

Mr Hehir: We made a decision not to undertake an audit in that area after making inquiries into the space and identifying that a review in the area was being undertaken by—

Ms Mellor: Attorneys-general—around the jurisdictions.

Mr Hehir: Attorneys-general. We felt that it was best for that process to play out before we did anything, noting that we’re not an investigatory body, so we wouldn’t go in and undertake a fraud investigation. We would go in and do a performance audit of, effectively, the control framework of the entity, not a—

Ms Mellor: Corruption investigation.

Mr Hehir: corruption or a fraud investigation. That’s not within our mandate. That’s not what we do.

Senator ROBERTS: Correct me if I’m wrong here—I’m jumping ahead—but, if you went in and found evidence of fraud, someone else would come in and investigate it.

Mr Hehir: We would give it off to an investigative body, whether it be the AFP, the NACC or someone like that, to do it.

Senator ROBERTS: So there was already an investigation of that kind going on.

Mr Hehir: I understand there’s a review being—

Ms Mellor: The jurisdictional attorneys-general agreed to conduct a joint review.

Senator ROBERTS: So it had nothing to do with the referendum that was upcoming or anything like that. It was just purely—

Mr Hehir: No.

Senator ROBERTS: Okay, that’s good.

Senator Colbeck: Do you conduct their annual audits?

Mr Hehir: It’s not a government entity.

Senator ROBERTS: So when will you review that decision and conduct an audit?

Mr Hehir: As I said, it’s not a government entity. So, if we were to audit, we would be auditing the government program that funded it. That’s the space that we would go in on. If there were information subsequent
to the review that the program looked like something that was worthwhile auditing, we would consider it in that context.

Senator ROBERTS: You may have to correct me if I’m wrong here, but is it possible that millions of dollars may have been misused when almost $20 million is provided to the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency each year to provide legal services? If that were your suspicion, you wouldn’t be doing it—you would hand it over to an investigative body.

Mr Hehir: If there were a suspicion of fraud, we wouldn’t investigate it—we would give it to an investigatory body. As I said, fraud investigation isn’t our purpose. When we do financial audits, we do control works to get assurance around whether fraud has been undertaken or not, but, again, if we suspect there’s fraud, we pass it onto someone else to do that sort of criminal-type investigation.

Senator ROBERTS: My further questions have to do with the corrupt use of money, so that’s not you—I mean, that’s not on you to investigate.

Chair: It’s maybe the agency that gives out the money. I might give the remaining time to Senator Nampijinpa Price.

Senator ROBERTS: I’d be happy with that.

Senator Colbeck: So, Mr Hehir, you would investigate the conduct of the program, not the operation of the organisation, because it’s not a government organisation.

Chair: No, you’d hand it over for criminal investigation.

Mr Hehir: We can follow the dollar into government funded entities and audit the entity. We do have the capacity to do that under our act.

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Greens live in a parallel universe

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Transcript

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I need to say clearly that the climate change agenda seeks to mislead well-meaning Australians with pseudoscience to introduce and hide an economic and social agenda that Australians would otherwise reject. Senator Rice’s motion does mischief. Australia does not have a carbon budget. The Senate has not voted for a carbon budget. The coalition’s supposed climate action plan cap that underpins government policy does not include a carbon budget.

Our international agreements do not include a carbon budget. The only place one can find a climate budget is in the Greens’ own little parallel universe, where the aspiring elites in the Greens are in control of an economy that is not only green but rancid. The devastation that will be caused to our economy by the measures the Greens propose in order to limit carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will destroy our economy, destroy jobs and steal opportunity from our children.

The insult to real scientists is that Senator Rice calls climate change a science based agenda. No, it’s not—definitely not. The argument in favour of a looming climate disaster is based on unvalidated computer models—nothing else. These are the same models that have failed repeatedly and miserably to predict temperature movement.

The largest single driver of climate is the sun, which has moved into a solar minimum that is tracking the Dalton minimum, when the Thames froze over and crops around the world failed. In fact, crops are failing now. Northern China is experiencing widespread hunger, as exceptional cold destroyed the winter cereal crop. Australia, on the other hand, has moved from a dry cycle to a wet cycle. This is not climate change; it’s a natural cycle.

I have challenged the Greens on many occasions to prove their position with empirical scientific evidence—data—and they have repeatedly been unable to. Indeed, today is day No. 502 of my challenge in the Senate to the Greens to simply provide the scientific evidence for their claims and for their alarm and to debate me on the science. Look at them all, looking at their phones; they won’t look at me. I challenged the current Greens Senate leader 10¼ years ago, and nothing.

That is more than a decade, and nothing. I notice that world-renowned scientist Tony Heller, who relies on solid data, has today challenged the Greens to a debate on social media. That’s not going to happen either. And now we see the Nats. Well, that’s another joke. So the Greens have no carbon budget and they have no idea.

Subject MPI: https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Hansard/Hansard_Display?bid=chamber/hansards/0cd97387-e8a2-46f1-92cb-16f6be35aee2/&sid=0148

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People suffer when political whims dictate policy

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When policy development is at the mercy of the political whims of which ever party is in government, it cripples industry and Australia’s future economic prosperity.

Instead of reputable evidence, policy makers defer to political beliefs and vested interests, resulting in a policy failure that wastes an eye-watering amount of taxpayers’ money.

Senator Roberts said, “We must have an Office of Scientific Integrity (OSI) to scrutinise science, protect scientists from politicisation, and give all industry players the confidence that the policy is warranted and just.”

Politicians often ignore the vast uncertainties in many areas of science used for policy development, and true scientific oversight will enhance public debate and transparency.

“Australia’s climate policies are a stunning example of policy determining the scientific “evidence”, rather than science informing policy,” added Senator Roberts.

The diminishing trust in government’s use of data for policy development is being felt across a range of industries.

In the area of science governing Queensland’s reef regulations and farming, Dr Peter Ridd says, “It’s not until we can get our scientific institutions to be trustworthy that we will finally be able to trust science again.

Evidence-based policy making is not a new concept, though it needs more prominence in Australian political debate.  The design of good policy depends on a solid foundation of reputable science.

“I am committed to more transparency in justifying policy, and welcome contributions to the development of an oversight body, such as the Office of Scientific Integrity,” concluded Senator Roberts.

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CSIRO’s conceit stands by discredited science

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This week Senator Malcolm Roberts revealed CSIRO’s complete lack of scientific justification for climate policies and CSIRO’s only response was to state their world ranking.

Senator Roberts said, “CSIRO’s response to my findings came before my report was even released, which reinforces the academic arrogance that comes from believing they are above questioning. 

 “We all know CSIRO is an iconic and esteemed Australian institution in many areas of research, which is why its track record on climate science is so worrying; it’s not up to standard.”

Three levels of government base expensive and far reaching climate policies on CSIRO’s advice, which largely comes from inadequate and unvalidated climate models.

“Rather than address the obvious flaws in their climate research, CSIRO chose instead to deflect to a lame appeal to authority, instead of citing credible science.”

The absence of a scientific response from CSIRO can only mean that they stand by the discredited and contradictory papers they cited and later withdrew, because the papers failed to prove their claim.

“Let me make this very clear, all politicians need to be seriously questioning the science that they glibly use to make climate policies, and Parliament must scrutinise the quality of this science.

“The CSIRO’s flawed climate models have not been validated, they contradict real world measurements and should not be used as the basis for spending billions of dollars of taxpayers money on damaging policies,” added Senator Roberts.

A team of 17 acclaimed climate scientists reviewed CSIRO’s evidence and were sadly disappointed with CSIRO’S lack of scientific rigour.

Senator Roberts will travel to Queensland’s major regional centres next week listening to people across many industries that poor science and damaging policy have ravaged.

“We must have an Office of Scientific Integrity that will scrutinise the science, protect scientists from politicisation and give all industry players the confidence that the policy is warranted and just,” concluded Senator Roberts.

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Willie Soon claims CSIRO committed scientific malpractice

Willie Soon claims CSIRO committed scientific malpractice. Willie Soon is an astrophysicist and Geoscientist and researcher at the Solar and Stellar Physics (SSP) Division of the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

I spoke with Willie Soon about the CSIRO’s reliance on a paper called Marcott el al (2013) to prove that the Earth’s temperature today is unprecedented.

Willie Soon was scathing in his assessment of CSIRO’s use of Marcott (2013) by saying “Two weeks after publication this paper was completely destroyed and yet, someone as high up as CSIRO trying to say this paper is legitimate and can be used as a supporting scientific evidence, is scientific malpractice”.

It’s hard to fathom that the CSIRO presented a paper that has been discredited and discarded by the scientific community and yet are relying on their supposed stellar reputation as a defence. This is shameful, and I call am calling on the CSIRO Chief Executive, Dr Larry Marshall, and executive Dr Peter Mayfield, to resign.

Both have been complicit in the economically destructive policies based on CSIRO’s misplaced climate research.

Press conference – https://youtu.be/QIWZSjQ18CY

Media Release – https://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/senator-roberts-calls-on-csiro-head-to-resign/

Report – Restoring Scientific Integrity – https://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/restoring-scientific-integrity/

Question time on CSIRO – https://youtu.be/5l31VlPoXvM

Transcript

[Malcolm Roberts]

Willie Soon is an astrophysicist, a geoscientist and aerospace engineer and researcher at the Solar and Stellar Physics Division of the Harvard Smithsonian Centre for astrophysics based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

He has co-authored the Maunder Minimum and the Variable Sun-Earth Connection with Steven Yaskell. He contends that most global warming is caused by solar variation and not human activity. Professor Soon is outspoken and clear. We’re going to have some fun and we’re going to have some really strong points raised, I’m sure of that.

[Willie Soon]

Yes. I have read your report and in it, I think you mentioned something that really puzzles me of course, in the sense that when you look for, you ask for evidence, they actually were trying to essentially, I will say it out loud and be fair, they were actually trying to bully you by let’s say, offering the evidence from a paper published in science magazine, supposedly prestigious journal.

And authored by a person named Sean Marcott with four or five authors, I mean the senior author’s a distinguished professor of course at Oregon State University in America. But Sean Marcott, well, during that time was actually doing his PhD thesis. And I was very, very shocked in the sense that you were talking to them during the time period of 2016 to 2017.

And this paper by Sean Marcott was published in 2013 roughly March. And if the average citizen do not know about some of these facts, I think they can be excused, but more so the professional scientists, knew that this piece of work who attempted to claim that over 10,000 years, okay, you have basically temperature from high warming from 10,000 years ago to roughly about 6,000 years, very, very warm.

This is called the mid Holocene warm optimum, and then cool a little bit down to let’s say, 20th century, and then they have this one line that they patch, what do you call the indirect data, hit the instrumental thermometer data to look like there’s a sharp hockey stick jumping up. Okay? And that is scientific malpractice.

There was no such thing in the actual paper, there was no such thing in Sean Marcott’s PhD thesis, in fact, the paper was completely fallen apart. Thanks to science and technology. Thanks to internet. It was completely fallen apart, two weeks after the publication. Because the authors, two of the senior authors, okay? Right?

One of the person is Shakun, Jeremy Shakun was at the Harvard postdoc at that time, and then Marcott was still a student. They both came out and said, “oh no, no, no. Our people didn’t say that, oh, our time resolution of our Holocene that was 300 years at best, which mean we dunno anything from every 300 years. So how can you talk about 100 years attaching to this, to show this crazy warming?”

What I’m trying to say is that it is a form of bullying because two weeks after publication, this whole paper was completely destroyed. And yet you have somebody as high as CSIRO and chief scientists of Australia, trying to say that this paper is legitimate and can be used as a supporting scientific evidence, by the way that paper was cited. They came out in March.

They were somehow mentioned in the fifth assessment report-

[Malcolm Roberts]

On the United nations.

[Willie Soon]

which came out Yeah, United Nations report. The last report which… And used that to support that, an even more famous hockey stick, which is done by professor Michael Mann for the last 1000 years.

And this is the kind of a scientific malpractice that I felt very sorry for them because I do not know what gave them the audacity, but these are the facts. And then I felt very sorry for the average Australian, especially the taxpayer. Why are you paying for this kind of nonsense? It’s actually nonsense.

And these people just because they have some PhD degree under their name, it doesn’t mean that they are very sensible. In my humble opinion, these people are highly misguided and they are very, very wrong in doing that. They should not ought to be doing that. And I really thank you enormously because I have met many politicians myself, I mean, most of them do not have the courage or conviction.

In fact, I think they’re a bit lazy because they don’t want to learn science, science seems to be a bit too hard sometimes. People are all scared of science, but for us, science is a wonderful tool, is one of those tools to enhance and improve our knowledge, to find that kind of understanding about our natural world and our human world. It’s a wonderful thing.

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CSIRO has misled Parliament

CSIRO has misled parliament. Last night in the Senate I laid out my argument that the CSIRO has misled parliament by allowing the government to base climate policies on CSIRO’s advice which includes discredited scientific papers and unvalidated models.

The onus is now on parliament to provide the empirical scientific evidence proving that carbon dioxide from human activity needs to be cut. Until that is provided, the government must immediately halt all climate policies which are a multi-billion drag on our economy.

Press conference – https://youtu.be/QIWZSjQ18CY

Media Release – https://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/senator-roberts-calls-on-csiro-head-to-resign/

Report – Restoring Scientific Integrity – https://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/restoring-scientific-integrity/

Question time on CSIRO – https://youtu.be/5l31VlPoXvM

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