2SM Mornings with Chris Smith - 16 June 2026

Posted by 22sc on June 16, 2026

Melissa McIntosh MP
Shadow Minister for Families and Social Services
Shadow Minister for the NDIS
Shadow Minister for Women
Federal Member for Lindsay

16 June 2026

Transcript

2SM Mornings with Chris Smith

Topics: Socceroos, Resolve poll, NDIS inquiry, CGT inquiry, PM lying, interest rates, Coogee shark attack

E&EO

Chris Smith

She's Shadow Minister for Women, Shadow Minister for the NDIS, and Shadow Minister for Families and Social Services. Melissa McIntosh. Good morning to you again.

Melissa McIntosh

Good morning, and to your listeners too. Good morning.

Chris Smith

Have you been jumping on the Socceroos bandwagon like we all have?

Melissa McIntosh

Of course, because the goalie is a Penrith boy!

Chris Smith

Yes! Glenmore Park!

Melissa McIntosh

We breed them good out here.

Chris Smith

What a story. And what about Origin? How big is this game in Melbourne going to be tomorrow night?

Melissa McIntosh

Once again, I think our Panthers boys and the whole team will bring it home for the Blues. Surely. Surely.

Chris Smith

Surely. Okay, that's the sports report. Now let's get to business.

Melissa McIntosh

Not biased at all, hey.

Chris Smith

Yeah. A very interesting Resolve Political Monitor survey out today shows that your party's policy of restricting welfare to Australian citizens and linking immigration rates to housing is a winner.

Melissa McIntosh

Yeah, I am not surprised, and that's why I surveyed my community, like probably over a year ago now, and I knew that the immigration rates, people felt were too high, and that the housing pressure was too much. So it's a common sense policy, really. And Australians have been really sending that message pretty loudly for some time, and we can't continue to bring that many people into our country when we don't have the houses to house them.

Chris Smith

And you've got to earn your right, you've got to earn your stripes as a citizen to get access to welfare.

Melissa McIntosh

That's right as well, and that's right across the board, including the NDIS, which is an area I know really well right now, being the Shadow Minister, and going through all of these changes, and really looking at the cost blowout of the NDIS. So, again, another common sense policy to ensure that the NDIS is there for Australians who need it most.

Chris Smith

While we're talking about the NDIS, I've got a number of callers on the open line board now, but one in particular wants to talk about that subject. Since you've introduced it to our conversation, how about we hear from Ruth? Good morning, Ruth. Go ahead.

Caller

Morning, Chris. For a few years now, I'm an incomplete paraplegic, three strokes, amputation, a quarter of a hand etc. I have just been frauded severely. I had two workers from Brazil - I'm not saying names - and within 12 weeks they took $74,000 out of my account. Now, not necessarily they're to blame, even though they are, because they've rorted the system. We've asked for $50,000 back, but they've [inaudible], but the people that pay our accounts need to be accountable. The people that are [inaudible] don't follow through on things we order. Say before Covid, our wheelchairs, our manual wheelchairs were between $5000 and $7,000. They're now looking at over $20,000 for a manual wheelchair. Our incontinence pads were $8.30 a packet, now paying $34 a packet. It is not the clients that are misusing NDIS, it's all the sticky fingers in between. And there is, I followed up with fraud to find out that my support coordinator was meant to also put a report in, of which she never did. She didn't follow through on anything. These people are also flight risks, but NDIS told me that I can't ring federal police to tell them, that NDIS will. Well, every time I ring up the NDIS, they can't find my case number, they can't add anything to it, and the system is a mess, an absolute mess. And it is not the clients that are doing this.

Chris Smith

So, Melissa, that's interesting. So, firstly, the carers are not carers. Some of them, by the sound of what Ruth is saying, have got their hand in the in the cookie jar, and that the system of reporting this stuff is non-existent.

Melissa McIntosh

Thank you, Ruth, for sharing your story. And sadly, it's a story I've heard many times over. And this is the problem with this legislation that the Albanese Labor Government's trying to ram through Parliament is that it's not dealing enough with the fraud in the system, the crooks, the criminals that are trying to rip off clients, as Ruth said, also the Australian taxpayer, and doing too much when it comes to putting the pressure on those that need it most. Ruth has multiple reasons in her opening of why she should be on the NDIS. She's going to have to go back now under the Government's legislation and prove yet again that she's a current amputee, and her limb has not grown back, and all of her other issues, she's going to have to go back. So, imagine how much bureaucracy when 760-odd thousand Australians are going to have to go and prove their disability again, and the people that are on the NDIS, there's a couple hundred thousand that are going to get pushed off, and right now the states are saying we don't want to have to deal with them, so where are they going to go? So this is my issue with the NDIS changes. Yes, there's too much rorting in the system. Yes, we are paying too much for this thing. It's $50 billion a year, but the Government's not doing enough to deal with this rorting, and it's really going after the participants that need it.

Chris Smith

Yeah, yeah, it's true.

Melissa McIntosh

It makes me really cranky.

Chris Smith

Yes, well, they want to focus on autism, that's fine, but they can't just leave autism as their priority. They've got to focus on the rip-offs that occur within the system, which seem to be rampant, and we know that just anecdotally. All right, let's talk about the Senate inquiry into the Government's tax changes. I see that Geoff Wilson from Asset Management has set up shop in a room next door to where the inquiry is being held to monitor every piece of evidence he hears. He is suggesting that the inquiries is somewhat rigged because it fails to allow for proper scrutiny.

Melissa McIntosh

Oh, what a surprise. And I'm just going to quickly talk about the NDIS, two seconds more. There are over 4000 submissions to the NDIS inquiry. The Government hasn't yet uploaded more than a couple of hundred. We had three days of inquiries, and on this tax one, we've got two days, and the same thing is happening again. The Government is running away from any form of transparency. They don't want to hear from any critics, and they just want to ram these pieces of legislation through, and these are things - the NDIS - did not take that to the election. Now, with the CGT and negative gearing changes, did not take that to the election. In fact, we know the Prime Minister's lied 50 times on this particular issue, and now he's got a big national campaign against him.

Chris Smith

Yeah, you mentioned the word lying. I noticed that your party is distributing what could be described as attack ads on the lying, and my take on all of this is the lies over negative gearing and capital gains tax and family trusts have been so large, they're the biggest porkies in politics, and I have a feeling this is the beginning of the end of Anthony Albanese, and he won't be running as the candidate for the Labor Party coming up at the next election in 2028. I don't think he can survive because of the lies. I'll play for our listeners who haven't heard it. This is the latest attack ad put together by the Liberal Party on what Anthony Albanese has said in prior years about lying.