One Nation Pushes for Senate Inquiry Into NDIS Waste and Fraud

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson says she will push for a Senate inquiry into alleged waste and fraud in Australia’s taxpayer-funded National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS).

The NDIS is a multi-billion-dollar scheme that covers the cost of a broad array of services and products for Australians with disabilities.

The scheme’s budget, however, has ballooned dramatically, and despite starting in 2013, its cost now eclipses the much older Medicare scheme and is catching up to the country’s defence budget.

In a statement online, Hanson said she would push the Senate to allow the Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee to examine the “scale, nature, and drivers” of waste and fraud in the NDIS.

The senator also wants it to consider a Royal Commission into the program, and look at how resources are being diverted from Aussies with a genuine need.

Hanson also says there needs to be an examination into the “distortionary impacts” of NDIS wage rates—which can often be quite generous—on the labour market, and its broader impact on the housing and construction market. NDIS can be used to cover modifications for existing homes for people with disability.

Hanson will be put forward the motion when Parliament returns on March 23.

NDIS, By the Numbers

The NDIS covers a broad array of services from basic carers who assist with day to day needs, health professional visits, remodifying homes for accessibility, and even mundane tasks like mowing the lawn or taking a participant bowling.

This approach has largely contributed to the spiralling cost of the program, which has outstripped initial 2011 estimates by the Gillard Labor government that it would cover 411,000 participants and cost $13.6 billion.

Now in 2025-26, the NDIS costs about $49.8 billion (US$33.4 billion) covering about 761,000 people. This is expected to increase to $53.7 billion in 2026-2027, according to the NDIS Corporate Plan (pdf).

The Grattan Institute, a public policy think tank, says the NDIS is projected to exceed $58 billion (US$38.9 billion) in costs by 2028 if current growth trends continue.

“Only support to seniors and revenue assistance to the states and territories costing the federal budget more,” said Sam Bennett, disability program director at the Grattan Institute, in a statement.

The annual parliamentary report of 2022-2023 estimates that payment errors, whether deliberate fraud or not, constituted around $1.4 billion ($940 million USD) in losses.

Figures by the auditor general, published in November 2025 (pdf), estimate payment errors to account for 6 to 10 percent, and is forecasted to increase to $3.6 billion to $6.0 billion by 2027-28.

Grassroots Interest in NDIS Spending Irregularities

The move comes amid renewed grassroots scrutiny of NDIS spending.

Motivated by alleged childcare fraud in Minnesota in the United States, Australian duo Drew Pavlou, an online activist, and YouTuber Pete Zogoulas have recorded numerous visits to NDIS providers in Sydney’s multicultural west to uncover perceived fraud.

Further, website NDIS.WTF has also compiled an interactive map to highlight the “density of NDIS providers relative to the local population.”

The number of providers in a suburb does not directly indicate fraud as area.

The NDIS’s Provider Finder webpage reveals that the suburb of Lakemba has 1,318 providers. Of these registered providers, 828 of these providers are considered “active,” meaning they have received payments from the NDIS in the last three months.

Casula in Sydney’s south-west, identified by NDIS.WTF, as having the highest density number of NDIS providers.

The visualisations from NDIS provider datasets are compiled from September 2025 to cover active providers (received payment in the past three months), and 2021 Census data. The site noted that its visualisations represent a “historical snapshot” which may differ from current-day patterns.

Registered NDIS providers comprise 6 percent of all providers, with 94 percent of providers being unregistered, according to the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) report from September 2025.

Government Attempts to Rein in Cost

Limiting the growth of the program has been politically difficult given the financial and emotional dependence voters have on the program.

So successive governments have attempted other measures to rein in costs without withholding services entirely.

The current Labor government has tried to cap annual growth to eight percent, diversify treatments to move patients off NDIS onto other programs, and also target fraud.

The Fraud Fusion Taskforce (FFT) was established in 2022 by Bill Shorten, NDIS minister at the time, and involves 23 government agencies like the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA), Australian Federal Police (AFP), and the Australian Tax Office (ATO).

In a Senate hearing in 2024, NDIA Integrity Chief John Dardo revealed “90 percent of plan managers that manage between 0 and 100 participants have found significant indicators of fraud.”

A statement marking the two-year milestone of the FFT states the task force has launched over 630 investigations and has prevented over $60 million in estimated fraud, with billions in payments under investigation.

In May 2025, two former Sydney-based providers were convicted for submitting $1.2 million in fraudulent claims. A woman who operated a cleaning business in Sydney’s north-west was found guilty of claiming money for cleaning services that were never delivered. The woman has been ordered to repay $443,000 to the Commonwealth.

More recently, in February, a Darwin man who was an NDIA employee was arrested on suspicion of fraudulent claims, where he referred NDIS participants to a provider business he co-owned.

According to reports by the NDIA and AFP, the business has claimed $28 million since 2019, with fraudulent claims allegedly valued at $5 million.