NDIS providers could be hit with $15 million fines if they hurt or injure a participant in their care under the next tranche of Bill Shorten’s changes, which will ramp up criminal consequences to protect people using the scheme.
Shorten, the NDIS minister, said the proposed penalties would bring the punishment for harming NDIS users into line with the maximum penalty for harming a worker – previously, he said workplace health and safety legislation valued a worker’s life at 38 times that of a scheme participant.
“These changes are well overdue”: NDIS Minister Bill Shorten.Credit: Simon Schluter
“Penalties for providers will increase from a maximum of $400,000 to in excess of $15 million when a participant is hurt or injured under the provider’s care,” he said in a statement on Monday.
The scheme’s watchdog, the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission, will also be able to refer providers for criminal prosecution for the first time if they seriously fail to comply with conditions.
The measures will increase the commission’s enforcement capacity, having only brought two civil cases under the NDIS Act in its six-year history.
The most recent case, finalised in April this year, forced regional NSW provider LiveBetter to pay $1.8 million after a young woman died from burns that she suffered while taking a bath in its care.
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It was found to have breached the NDIS Act on 17 occasions and the judge said there were “no words to properly express the degree of the harm suffered”. The $1.8 million penalty is the biggest handed to a disability provider for breaching the NDIS Act, and was issued by the judge as a deterrent to both LiveBetter and other providers.
But the proposed laws will allow for significantly larger sums and Shorten said he hoped it would mean the end of unscrupulous practices in the $44 billion scheme, one of the most expensive government programs.
