Lawyers have labelled whistleblower laws for the National Disability Insurance Scheme the worst in the country as they urge the Australian government to make changes to protections.
The Human Rights Law Centre's Whistleblower Project has called for stronger protections for people calling out misconduct within the scheme, including fraud.
"When whistleblowers bring information of wrongdoing to the regulator, they are helping everyone in Australia," the project's lawyer Kieran Pender told a parliamentary inquiry into integrity of the NDIS.
"They are ensuring integrity in the NDIS and better treatment of participants.
"Our view is (NDIS whistleblower protections) remain the worst of among the worst in the country."
The "patchwork" protection should be amended so wrongdoing can be more easily reported by a lawyer, medical practitioner, union or independent advocate.
Government-funded legal support should be set up for whistleblowers to report reprisal from their employers and other for speaking out, the centre said.
Its project is Australia's first dedicated legal service for whistleblowers. It has not received any federal government funding.
Madeleine Howle, a Whistleblower Project lawyer, told the inquiry it was essential regulators and the public were informed of abuse and neglect of people with disability, in addition to other forms of misconduct.
"We commend the Albanese government's earlier reforms to NDIS whistleblower protections in March, which addressed some of the most glaring issues that were preventing whistleblowers from speaking up," she said.
"But NDIS protections remain piecemeal and out of date. That silences the voices of workers, people with disability and advocates."
Allied Health Professions Australia's chief executive Bronwyn Morris-Donovan said the industry was not provided appropriate data on NDIS fraud or kick-backs, which made it difficult to track wrongdoing.
"Most of the information the sector gets is the same as everybody else gets in the public media," she said.
"There's no denying there is a problem, we just have no hold or deep understanding of what it looks like," she told the inquiry.
National Disability Services, Australia's peak industry body, has called for mandatory registration of all providers to make the scheme more accountable.
About 94 per cent of NDIS providers are unregistered, and most are able to operate outside consistent regulatory oversight.
The federal government is overhauling the $50 billion scheme in a bid to claw back tens of billions of dollars in savings to stop the NDIS from growing at an "unsustainable" pace.
This includes a crackdown on fraud and dodgy providers.
The Australian Federal Police, Australian Taxation Office and Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre are among the organisations that will also appear at the inquiry's public hearing.
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