Justice for some: NDIS fraud punished, Robodebt crimes rewarded

While small-time scammers are swiftly jailed for exploiting the NDIS, the powerful architects of Robodebt still enjoy freedom, pensions and impunity, writes Dr Michael King.

THREE PEOPLE stood in a Sydney court last October and learned they'd spend the next 12 years behind bars for stealing $5.8 million from the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). The Australian Federal Police (AFP) traced their money through shell companies and seized their BMWs, Porsches and gold bullion.

Somewhere in Canberra, the architects of Robodebt are collecting their superannuation.

When they want it, they get it

On 19 November, the AFP executed 33 search warrants across four states, deploying over 250 officers who seized 228 devices and 43 terabytes of data. They disrupted over $50 million in alleged fraud. Operation Banksia targeted a syndicate that allegedly claimed $40 million in NDIS funds, including payments for participants who were in prison when services were supposedly delivered. Operation Howell chased $7 million more.

How many Robodebts will it take to end government cover-ups?

We may have had a Royal Commission into its systemic failures and voted in a new Federal Labor Government in the meantime, but two years on from the Robodebt findings, what has really changed?

The Commonwealth spent $495 million over eight years building the Crack Down on Fraud program, mobilising multiple agencies and every state police force. They know how to do this. The capability exists when the targets wear tracksuits instead of ties.

Yet a 2024 Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) report found the NDIS lacked basic fraud prevention until recently. Manual reviews covered 0.4 per cent of $41.85 billion in payments, and caught non-compliance in over half those cases. The Government preferred hiring AFP officers to arrest individuals after the money vanished.

State-sanctioned theft

The Coalition ran Robodebt with legal advice explicitly warning that the scheme contradicted the Social Security Act. A 2014 opinion flagged the problems. Law firm Clayton Utz told them in 2018 that the legal position was ‘catastrophic’. They kept the machine running.

Between 2015 and 2019, the scheme wrongfully pursued 450,000 Australians for debts they didn't owe, collecting $746 million. The automated system reversed the burden of proof; victims had to prove their innocence by producing payslips from years earlier while navigating a deliberately obtuse bureaucracy designed to make them give up.

Rhys Cauzzo was 28 when he died by suicide after receiving his notice. Jarrad Madgwick was 22. The Royal Commission confirmed seven families attributed their loved ones' deaths to the scheme. People sold cars, emptied savings accounts and took out loans to pay debts that never existed.

The $475 million settlement (plus earlier payouts) brought total redress to $2.4 billion. A Royal Commission delivered 57 recommendations.

Nobody has been prosecuted.

The glacial pace of elite accountability

The Australian Public Service Commission investigated. Some people received fines. Others were demoted. Nobody was fired. Nobody lost their pension. Nobody faced criminal charges.

The National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) is theoretically investigating six individuals whom the Royal Commission referred. But only after Commissioner Paul Brereton initially refused to investigate, a decision which so failed the “pub test” that over 1,200 people complained and the NACC's own Inspector found Brereton had engaged in “misconduct.” The investigation finally began in February 2025, nearly two years after the Royal Commission concluded.

Robodebt RC reforms needed ‘pronto’

Robodebt saw over 400,000 Australian citizens targeted and relentlessly pursued – mafia style – over largely fictitious debts, courtesy of their own democratically elected Coalition Government.

Compare this timeline to Operation Pegasus: investigation launched December 2020, arrests April 2021, convictions and sentencing by October 2024. Four years from investigation to prison.

The Robodebt Royal Commission ended in July 2023. We're approaching two years with no charges laid, while the NACC investigates itself for trying to protect the very people it was created to investigate.

Two systems

When the AFP wants results, they trace cryptocurrency across international exchanges and coordinate hundreds of officers across four states. They can freeze assets before suspects finish breakfast. But when the target oversaw an illegal scheme that stole 50 times more than the largest NDIS fraud? Investigations are “complex”. Witnesses need “careful” handling. Years pass.

The message: rob the Commonwealth and you'll share a cell block. Be the Commonwealth and rob the people? You'll share concerns in Senate estimates and retire to the private sector with your superannuation intact.

The AFP's NDIS prosecutions matter. Every dollar stolen from disability services is a dollar that can't help someone who needs it. Fraud corrodes these programs and gives ammunition to those who want to dismantle them.

But Robodebt didn't just steal money, it poisoned public trust in the welfare system itself. It validated every cruel stereotype about welfare recipients as cheats and bludgers. It demonstrated that the Government could terrorise you with illegal demands and face no consequences. Every person now dealing with Centrelink who wonders whether the system will suddenly manufacture a phantom debt carries that trauma.

Until the individuals responsible for Robodebt face the same justice system that jailed the NDIS fraudsters, until we see charges laid, trials conducted and accountability delivered, we're just admitting there are two legal systems in Australia: one for those who steal from power, and one for those who steal with power.

The AFP proved it knows how to catch criminals who exploit vulnerable people. The only question left is whether they're allowed to catch all of them, or just the ones without parliamentary pensions.

Dr Michael King is an adjunct senior lecturer with the Australian Graduate School of Policing and Security, Charles Sturt University. His research focus is on financial crime.