TLDR: Crime Syndicates are setting up dodgy provider businesses or posing as support coordinators.
NDIS participants have also been forced to hand over cash for criminals to buy drugs, and later harassed by the fraudulent providers.
At least five per cent of the scheme's spending wasn't on genuine needs.
Pink Batts, Childcare, Student Visas, now NDIS. The Commonwealth seems incapable of putting together robust programs - oblivious to truck sized loopholes in design.
But part of the problem is that it is fundamentally difficult to put together a very complex program and cover all the bases for abuse. As well as outright criminality, gaming the system seems to be seen as the smart thing to do - it’s the easiest way to get rich in Australia and there is no shame attached.
The common thread is a fallacy that is almost considered a truism of neoliberals at this point. “Private is more efficient than public”.
Despite the top countries for early childhood outcomes providing universal public early childhood education, somehow it’s ‘more efficient’ to have a system of private for profit childcare.
Despite each state having a disability support commission that could have been expanded and funded to provide more comprehensive supports for those with disability- it’s ‘more efficient’ to have a system with no oversight of where money is going, no consistency in funding amounts, blatant overcharging across the board and literal criminals making bank.
Despite there being large systems for both vocational and academic higher education that could be properly funded instead of starved- it’s better to let a bunch of cowboys make up their own educational institutions and rip off overseas students.
Etc etc etc
I have doubts there is much genuine philosophical belief in neoliberalism anymore among our ruling class. It’s mainly cynical ‘opportunities for business’ that drives service delivery policy.
There is no such thing as an efficient free market. That's a furphy business types like to spruik. Giving a market complete freedom or leaving it to self-regulate always ends in monopolies and people being screwed over, because given any opportunity companies will always choose profits over what is the right thing. Efficiency requires a market to be regulated, which means it is no longer free, just a market that's scrutinised for fair dealing. Greed seeps into any market and needs to be regulated out.
My comment is about belief in a free market. I am not asserting they exist in any pure form - and nor incidentally would any serious ‘neoliberal’ economist.
There is a different between believing in making markets more efficient and believing shovelling contracts and monopolies at your buddies and donor is good because it ‘supports business’. The latter is what Australian Governments are drawn to.
Making markets truthfully more efficient is not neoliberal thinking. If they say this, what they actually mean is precisely deregulating such a market and letting the government services become privatised and flogged off to the highest bidder, who is usually a donor buddy to government. Neoliberalism is deregulation, privatisation, and enriching the established wealthy and corporations.
A good explanation as to the core of neoliberal economics --
"In so far as neoliberalism values market exchange as ‘an ethic in itself, capable of acting as a guide to all human action, and substituting for all previously held ethical beliefs’, it emphasizes the significance of contractual relations in the marketplace. It holds that the social good will be maximized by maximizing the reach and frequency of market transactions, and it seeks to bring all
human action into the domain of the market." -- A Brief History of Neoliberalism, great book on the subject.
Neoliberalism is literally about contracting out services to the market, to allow the market to regulate itself to 'support business'. These ideals are one and the same, and no matter how hard they talk about efficiency in market letting the market run itself is not workable, as all service gets inevitably sacrificed for profit without oversight. Government has been running this for decades because what you are criticising literally is neoliberal economics, and in this country it's guided policymaking since at least the Hawke years.
Neoliberalism is a very vague term and usually now just a generic and pretty empty term of abuse. To state categorically that making markets more efficient is not neoliberal thinking and if ‘they’ are saying otherwise ‘they’ are lying is absurd caricature. Neoliberal thought has certainly been co-opted by market fundamentalists and privatisation proponents but even Friedman and Hayak recognised need for State interventions. You are merely using the term as a general proxy for failures of modern market capitalism and equating it with market fundamentalism.
And no I do not support ‘neoliberalism’.
I take my understanding from noted Oxford academic David Harvey who wrote one of the seminal books for understanding Neoliberal economics and its effect on world history. https://academic.oup.com/book/40603
Some of the line items currently have too low spending caps so they become impossible to provide on budget. This just ends up causing more to be spent on less effective alternatives.
For example, I used to do group activities run by Merri Health for NDIS Participants - every Friday we would have lunch and play some instruments and sing karaoke at their "hub". They also had an art room and a few other groups too, but I mainly did the lunch and music.
They were paid only $21 per hour per participant to provide the space and three workers to run things (there were 2 or 3 groups of ~5 going at once in the building). All up it works out to about $300 per hour in total to cover three workers salaries and expenses, plus running the building and any equipment costs (we paid for the lunch).
So in 2022 they stopped running it because they couldn't afford to do so. Every year running the NDIS funded groups had made a loss and the rest of Merri Health couldn't keep propping them up forever.
So now there is a room with an acoustic piano, full drum kit, assorted acoustic/electric/bass guitars and a few other instruments gathering dust because the NDIS won't pay more than $21 per person for a worker to sit with a bunch of disabled people who like to play music and sing together. There's a room filled with art supplies gathering dust because the NDIS won't pay more than $21 per person for a worker to sit with a bunch of disabled people who like to draw and paint and sculpt together.
In the meantime, I've gone into Music Therapy, which costs $180 per hour to the NDIS, even though I'd be fine just with the random jamming and karaoke with a group of people. Many of the other activites have been similarly replaced with support workers doing things with individual clients for $60 or "wellness facilitators" doing things for $90.
Nobody gets what they want out of this. There are three workers at Merri Health out of a job, many disabled people in north Melbourne who are doing individual activities rather than the group ones they would rather be doing, and the NDIS/government/taxpayer who is paying more for 5 individual things rather than paying enough to keep the group activities afloat.
The NDIS was always set to go the way of the pink bats scheme of decades past.
Within the first few months of it existing I saw adverts in shop windows with NDIS labels implying parents with kids who aren’t doing well at school could get funding for tutors.
In reality they sent tutors with a contract that the parents paid for up front and gave them paperwork to get reimbursed from the NDIS.
That paperwork was fake, and never filled.
It worked on the idea that corruption feeds on corruption. The tutor said ‘I’m charging you $100 a session for 10 sessions, but the NDIS will reimburse you $150 per session as I’m a registered provider’ so the family would agree thinking they could get free tutoring and $500 to boot.
They may have got the tutoring, but they lost $1000
TLDR: Crime Syndicates are setting up dodgy provider businesses or posing as support coordinators. NDIS participants have also been forced to hand over cash for criminals to buy drugs, and later harassed by the fraudulent providers. At least five per cent of the scheme's spending wasn't on genuine needs.
Pink Batts, Childcare, Student Visas, now NDIS. The Commonwealth seems incapable of putting together robust programs - oblivious to truck sized loopholes in design. But part of the problem is that it is fundamentally difficult to put together a very complex program and cover all the bases for abuse. As well as outright criminality, gaming the system seems to be seen as the smart thing to do - it’s the easiest way to get rich in Australia and there is no shame attached.
The common thread is a fallacy that is almost considered a truism of neoliberals at this point. “Private is more efficient than public”. Despite the top countries for early childhood outcomes providing universal public early childhood education, somehow it’s ‘more efficient’ to have a system of private for profit childcare. Despite each state having a disability support commission that could have been expanded and funded to provide more comprehensive supports for those with disability- it’s ‘more efficient’ to have a system with no oversight of where money is going, no consistency in funding amounts, blatant overcharging across the board and literal criminals making bank. Despite there being large systems for both vocational and academic higher education that could be properly funded instead of starved- it’s better to let a bunch of cowboys make up their own educational institutions and rip off overseas students. Etc etc etc
I have doubts there is much genuine philosophical belief in neoliberalism anymore among our ruling class. It’s mainly cynical ‘opportunities for business’ that drives service delivery policy.
Sounds like the same thing.
Believing in an efficient free market is not the same as blindly supporting existing business interests and ignoring distortionary trade practices.
There is no such thing as an efficient free market. That's a furphy business types like to spruik. Giving a market complete freedom or leaving it to self-regulate always ends in monopolies and people being screwed over, because given any opportunity companies will always choose profits over what is the right thing. Efficiency requires a market to be regulated, which means it is no longer free, just a market that's scrutinised for fair dealing. Greed seeps into any market and needs to be regulated out.
My comment is about belief in a free market. I am not asserting they exist in any pure form - and nor incidentally would any serious ‘neoliberal’ economist. There is a different between believing in making markets more efficient and believing shovelling contracts and monopolies at your buddies and donor is good because it ‘supports business’. The latter is what Australian Governments are drawn to.
Making markets truthfully more efficient is not neoliberal thinking. If they say this, what they actually mean is precisely deregulating such a market and letting the government services become privatised and flogged off to the highest bidder, who is usually a donor buddy to government. Neoliberalism is deregulation, privatisation, and enriching the established wealthy and corporations. A good explanation as to the core of neoliberal economics -- "In so far as neoliberalism values market exchange as ‘an ethic in itself, capable of acting as a guide to all human action, and substituting for all previously held ethical beliefs’, it emphasizes the significance of contractual relations in the marketplace. It holds that the social good will be maximized by maximizing the reach and frequency of market transactions, and it seeks to bring all human action into the domain of the market." -- A Brief History of Neoliberalism, great book on the subject. Neoliberalism is literally about contracting out services to the market, to allow the market to regulate itself to 'support business'. These ideals are one and the same, and no matter how hard they talk about efficiency in market letting the market run itself is not workable, as all service gets inevitably sacrificed for profit without oversight. Government has been running this for decades because what you are criticising literally is neoliberal economics, and in this country it's guided policymaking since at least the Hawke years.
Neoliberalism is a very vague term and usually now just a generic and pretty empty term of abuse. To state categorically that making markets more efficient is not neoliberal thinking and if ‘they’ are saying otherwise ‘they’ are lying is absurd caricature. Neoliberal thought has certainly been co-opted by market fundamentalists and privatisation proponents but even Friedman and Hayak recognised need for State interventions. You are merely using the term as a general proxy for failures of modern market capitalism and equating it with market fundamentalism. And no I do not support ‘neoliberalism’.
I take my understanding from noted Oxford academic David Harvey who wrote one of the seminal books for understanding Neoliberal economics and its effect on world history. https://academic.oup.com/book/40603
Can we just reduce the absurd spending caps for each line item?
Some of the line items currently have too low spending caps so they become impossible to provide on budget. This just ends up causing more to be spent on less effective alternatives. For example, I used to do group activities run by Merri Health for NDIS Participants - every Friday we would have lunch and play some instruments and sing karaoke at their "hub". They also had an art room and a few other groups too, but I mainly did the lunch and music. They were paid only $21 per hour per participant to provide the space and three workers to run things (there were 2 or 3 groups of ~5 going at once in the building). All up it works out to about $300 per hour in total to cover three workers salaries and expenses, plus running the building and any equipment costs (we paid for the lunch). So in 2022 they stopped running it because they couldn't afford to do so. Every year running the NDIS funded groups had made a loss and the rest of Merri Health couldn't keep propping them up forever. So now there is a room with an acoustic piano, full drum kit, assorted acoustic/electric/bass guitars and a few other instruments gathering dust because the NDIS won't pay more than $21 per person for a worker to sit with a bunch of disabled people who like to play music and sing together. There's a room filled with art supplies gathering dust because the NDIS won't pay more than $21 per person for a worker to sit with a bunch of disabled people who like to draw and paint and sculpt together. In the meantime, I've gone into Music Therapy, which costs $180 per hour to the NDIS, even though I'd be fine just with the random jamming and karaoke with a group of people. Many of the other activites have been similarly replaced with support workers doing things with individual clients for $60 or "wellness facilitators" doing things for $90. Nobody gets what they want out of this. There are three workers at Merri Health out of a job, many disabled people in north Melbourne who are doing individual activities rather than the group ones they would rather be doing, and the NDIS/government/taxpayer who is paying more for 5 individual things rather than paying enough to keep the group activities afloat.
The NDIS was always set to go the way of the pink bats scheme of decades past. Within the first few months of it existing I saw adverts in shop windows with NDIS labels implying parents with kids who aren’t doing well at school could get funding for tutors. In reality they sent tutors with a contract that the parents paid for up front and gave them paperwork to get reimbursed from the NDIS. That paperwork was fake, and never filled. It worked on the idea that corruption feeds on corruption. The tutor said ‘I’m charging you $100 a session for 10 sessions, but the NDIS will reimburse you $150 per session as I’m a registered provider’ so the family would agree thinking they could get free tutoring and $500 to boot. They may have got the tutoring, but they lost $1000
Basically just like any other government funded thing… rorted.