Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the Labor Party have been using smoke and mirrors, trying to hide their failed management of the NDIS, blaming anyone and anything but themselves.

But the cat was let out of the bag when NDIS management told a parliament hearing on Thursday (23/4/26) that fraud and theft have been growing on Labor’s watch since 2022, with forecasts showing they will hit between $3.6 and $6 billion by 2027 / 2028.

It doesn’t matter how the ALP and its supporters spin it. If fraud and theft are still growing under the Labor Party, which they are, then they have failed badly.

The reason the fraud and theft are still growing under the Labor Party since 2022 is because they have failed to fix basic problems, such as allowing NDIS providers to be paid by just sending in an invoice without any proof of services provided.

The below video I edited from the full video of the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit – Inquiry into the NDIS which was held at Parliament House on Thursday, 23/04/2026.

The key people speaking are ALP MP Josh Burns who is the chair, NDIS Deputy CEO Integrity Transformation and Technology Services John Dardo and the Auditor-General for Australia Caralee McLiesh.

(I will record a reaction video for the above video and publish it on the KCA YouTube channel in a couple of days)

Key video details:

1. 6-minute mark – “Let’s see what it has found and how it is going” – Leakage in 2022 / 2023 for non-compliant, fraudulent or incorrect claims was between $2 and $3.5 billion. The true figure would have been higher says NDIS employee John Dardo.
2. 12.30-minute mark – 2500 ABN holders who are providers, who billed the NDIS $5.5 billion had payment holds put on them until they could verify their work for payment. The vast majority have ceased claiming and will never claim again, a number have been sent to prosecutions. They can’t say it was all fraud, but it certainly sounds like most of it was.
3. 14.10-minute mark – Leakage in 2022 / 2023 of between $2 and $3.5 billion is forecast to increase to $3.6 to $6 billion by 2027 / 2028. “Given the NDIS has done some good work regarding fraud and theft, why is it still getting worse?” They need reform says NDIS employee John Dardo.
4. 15.50-minute mark – NDIS employee John Dardo says the NDIS does not see a single piece of evidence or work done before they pay providers their claims. That is the current system design that has been inherited, and the policy settings have to change he says.
5. 16.35-minute mark – The Auditor Generals Office is asked a question – Findings: Prior to 2024 the NDIS lacked even basic prevention controls for fraud and non-compliance, and they were self-assessed as catastrophically weak, and even basic checks weren’t done. Measures to detect non-compliance were very rarely used, but when they were used, they were successful more than 50% of the time.
6. 19-minute mark – Estimate of 6% to 10% of claims are fraudulent or non-compliant. NDIS says it is 8.2%.
7. 20.15-minute mark – 0.4% of NDIS claims were audited with 53.7% of those claims cancelled because they were non-compliant with the Auditor Generals Office recommending the NDIS expand the audit size.

You can watch the video and draw your own conclusions, but I will make one more point.

Exposing the 2500 ABNs who are providers who billed $5.5 billion and driving them out of the NDIS sounds like good work.

But given how easy it is to rip off the NDIS, I wonder how many of those 2500 ABN providers just rebadged and started ripping off the NDIS again, which might help account to some degree for why fraud and theft is still growing.

In recent days the government has announced some major planned changes to the NDIS but that is all it is, planned changes.

The planned changes might never eventuate, given Labor planned to stop the fraud and theft at the NDIS when they won the federal election in 2022, yet it is forecast to keep increasing until at least 2027 / 2028.

Any private company being run as badly as the NDIS would have its entire board and management sacked and the entire NDIS board need to go and so do the Ministers Mark Butler and Jenny McAllister.

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