2CC with Stephen Cenatiempo - 23 April 2026

Melissa McIntosh MP 

Shadow Minister for Families and Social Services

Shadow Minister for the NDIS

Shadow Minister for Women

Federal Member for Lindsay 

 

23 April 2026

 

Transcript 

 

2CC with Stephen Cenatiempo

 

Topics: NDIS

 

E&EO … 

 

Stephen Cenatiempo

The response to yesterday's speech by Health and Aged Care Minister Mark Butler of the National Press Club has been, well, largely negative. The Greens have said they're going to oppose it. Of course, they're opposing it from the view that any change to the NDIS is an attack on disabled people. Well, that's clearly not the case. The NDIS needs to be overhauled and in a major manner. But the Minister says that we're going to get $15 billion in savings by shifting to what's called a functional capacity assessment model and reducing the projected participant numbers to $600,000 by 600,000 people by 2030. There'll also be $2 billion for something called a Thriving Kids program and $3 billion in new aged care funding, which of course is being funded by ripping off private health care rebates from over 65’s. To talk to us about this, the Shadow Minister for the NDIS and Shadow Minister for Families and Social Services, Melissa McIntosh. Melissa, good morning.

 

Melissa McIntosh

Good morning.

 

Stephen Cenatiempo

This seems to raise more questions than answers.

 

Melissa McIntosh

It certainly does, so many questions. First and foremost, of course, there's no doubting that the NDIS expenditure is out of control and the whole scheme is broken and we have to remember this is Labor's baby. And the whole structure, the design of it, Mark Butler admitted this yesterday, there's certain building blocks of a good program and the NDIS has none of those. Well, they created the thing. But what he's done, they've lost control of the NDIS, they lost control of the expenditure, of quality. But what concerned me most is around what you're talking about, these really highly dependent severe disabilities that absolutely need the NDIS being asked to re-evaluate, I think they should be carved out. I want to have compassion as well; we can't just all be focused on the budget. So, if you're really severely disabled, you've been through a lot, you shouldn't have to re-register everyone else, okay, fine. But carve these people out and give them some dignity. On the rorting, Mark Butler barely even touched that issue yesterday, and $5 billion of Australian taxpayers’ money is going on this rorting, you see it every day. Turn on the tv, it's highly condensed in certain postcode areas and the Quality and Safeguards Commission is barely doing anything about it. They're banning people for two, three years and then letting them back into the NDIS.

 

Stephen Cenatiempo

I just found it extraordinary to find that the vast majority of suppliers to the NDIS weren't even registered in any manner. So, this was just an opportunity for grifters and rent seekers to start up a business and make millions.

 

Melissa McIntosh

Yeah, there has to be registration, and the government seems to be going that way. Although Mark Butler said yesterday it won't be full registration, so we need to see the details on that, but not when 94 per cent of providers aren't registered, of course it's going to welcome the rorters and the criminals into this scheme - but get rid of that. He was hard on participants yesterday, yet soft on the perpetrators of crime and rorting that has infiltrated the NDIS.

 

Stephen Cenatiempo

So, I want you to explain your take on this. So, I've had a family member just recently go through the application process and the tears and stress and issues that it caused for them. Apparently, the legislation says that an application's supposed to be assessed within 28 days. They had to wait over 100 days to be assessed and then at about the 80-day mark, we're told, oh, well, it's going to take another 28 days because we're finally getting onto it. Are they now going to have to be reassessed after having spent 100 days getting assessed?

 

Melissa McIntosh

The Minister in his speech yesterday confirmed that every single participant on the NDIS, all 760,000 will have to be reassessed and go through that process for them to then carve out who is and who isn't eligible. So, yes unfortunately, they'll have to go through that stress again, unless he clarifies a different position, and then the question is around where do these people go? What systems are in place? And this is when I start talking about cost shifting. You know, if an expenditure is an expenditure, if you're just trying to move it out of the NDIS into another budget it’s still going to cost taxpayers money, and what are those safeguards in place if they've got to go to the states? He was saying yesterday the states have signed up, but he also put doubt in because  a lot of them are questioning this and they don't really want it. We've got to remember this is Labor's own making. They pushed really hard on us when we wanted to clean the thing up when we're in Government, made us out like we didn't care about anyone. We’re now saying, okay yes, we'll support the Government on this, we'll work with them, but we do need to have some consultation. There's legislation that's going to be rammed through Parliament apparently in a couple of weeks’ time as part of Budget Week and they'll be expecting us to support them on this, but we need time to look at complex legislation, to get it right so people aren't unintendingly being a hurt more than they might be already.

 

Stephen Cenatiempo

But surely the cleanup is not that hard. If you agree that the NDIS is a good system or the principle of it is a good system, then surely you have only registered suppliers can provide, you have a scale of fees that says you can't charge more than this for this particular good or service; a wheelchair might be $1000, you can't charge $5000 for it, a pair of crutches might be $100, you can't charge $500 for them, a cleaner can only charge however much an hour, and then you get rid of all of the rorters out of the system, you determine who's eligible, you make a list of the kinds of disabilities that are eligible and there's your system. It should be that simple, shouldn't it?

 

Melissa McIntosh

It sounds very pragmatic, doesn't it? And I agree, one of the areas that I think the government could have gone a lot harder on was around the pricing and the costing and this overcharging that happens; someone calling up getting a cleaner and they charge the quoted one price is the statement using the NDIS and it quadruples in price it shouldn't be on. So, yes, clean that up, there would be a bucket load of savings just in that alone. Yes, get rid of the rorters, these are criminals. So, you're treating the symptoms when you're just doing registration, which we do support but the cause is still there. Bad actors infiltrating a scheme that's looking after our most vulnerable. Well, let's go after these people, they shouldn't be allowed near anyone, they shouldn't be allowed near aged care, they shouldn't be allowed near childcare, they shouldn't be allowed near the NDIS.

 

Stephen Cenatiempo

And there needs to be prosecutions too and proceeds of crime activity as well to recover the money that these people have ripped off from us.

 

Melissa McIntosh

Yeah, that's right. It's been revealed that at least 20 convicted criminals have been within the NDIS and now barred. But the issue is the Quality and Safeguards Commission doesn't publicise what wrongs these people have done. There's very little information, zero transparency, and they don't even publicise that they've got a criminal record prior. So, these people are going in and out of the scheme. They may, as I just said, may only get barred for a couple of years and then they're back in again and nobody knows that they were barred previously. So that whole part of the whole bureaucracy behind the NDIS, and Mark Butler seemed to indicate that there was going to be more bureaucracy now, that needs to be cleaned up and fixed up and more transparency inserted into it.

 

Stephen Cenatiempo

And the frightening thing here is, this bloke's one of the better Ministers this Government's got.

 

Melissa McIntosh

Is he? I like having a go at him.

 

Stephen Cenatiempo

Goodness me. So, when are you expecting legislation to be available for you to have a look at?

 

Melissa McIntosh

I don't know, that's the thing, and I think this whole process has been poorly done by Mark Butler and the Government. There's been zero consultation, not only with the Coalition, but with the disability sector and participants, it came out of the blue. Maybe he knew that it wouldn't be received very well if he did talk to people about it. So, we have Budget coming up in a couple of weeks now, I think two weeks, so you'd expect we'd start seeing something, a draft at least prior to that. Maybe they want to spring it on us and then blame us if we don't pass bad legislation. But we can't just ram things through if the outcome isn't what is going to be what's intended in reducing the cost - two per cent growth target they have now, but that's even questionable. They set it at eight per cent previously, then that was five and now it's two. If we're going to get there, that will save money, but we need to know whatever measures, mechanisms they have in place are actually going to deliver outcomes.

 

Stephen Cenatiempo

Indeed. Melissa, great to talk to you this morning, thanks for your time.

 

Melissa McIntosh

Thank you, you too.

 

Stephen Cenatiempo

Melissa McIntosh, the Shadow Minister for the NDIS and Shadow Minister for Families and Social Services.