NDIS commissioner Tracey Mackey has announced her resignation days before the release of a report into a scandal exposed by four corners. Ms Mackey’s department came under scrutiny after an ABC Investigations exposed how children with autism had been subjected to unlawful restraints by an NDIS operator.
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TVTranscript
00:00 Last September we did an investigation into the NDIS and we discovered some disturbing
00:08 facts about a particular service in Melbourne called Iribina Autism Services.
00:13 It had a severe behaviour program for children with autism and intellectual disabilities.
00:20 We discovered that there were children who were kept in small windowless rooms for hours
00:25 on end.
00:26 They were subject to a particular treatment and we discovered CCTV footage and obtained
00:32 it, which showed the unlawful restraint of at least one teenager there with six carers
00:40 restraining him, facing down into the ground, which we discovered was unlawful.
00:48 It was against the Human Rights Act in Victoria and it's unlawful throughout Australia in
00:54 fact.
00:55 And what was the particular question and answer of concern in relation to the program?
01:02 So we interviewed the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commissioner, Tracey Mackey, asking her what
01:07 she did when it was discovered that these unlawful practices were happening.
01:12 We asked why nobody was fined and why none of the executives had been fired.
01:16 She said, "Look, what we did is we closed down the program and that's the action that
01:20 we took."
01:22 We then discovered the following day when we received a phone call from a therapist
01:26 who'd visited there the following year, saying the program was in fact still operating.
01:32 And that caused great consternation, in particular with the NDIS Minister, Bill Shorten, who
01:38 said on ABC Radio that he'd been told it had been closed down.
01:43 He was perplexed by what had happened.
01:46 And from that moment we discovered some other interesting things that happened at the NDIS
01:53 Commission as a result of that.
01:55 Yeah, and so in the wake of that, what happened to a Deputy Commissioner?
01:59 So what we discovered is that the following day, in fact, a Deputy Commissioner at the
02:05 NDIS Commission was first of all stood down and later suspended.
02:11 He took a legal action in the Federal Court alleging that he'd been made a scapegoat,
02:18 that he had been told that...
02:20 Tracey Mackey had told him that she in fact thought that she would have to resign because
02:25 she had mistakenly misled Four Corners when she said that the program had been closed
02:31 down.
02:32 This Deputy Commissioner had pointed that out to her.
02:35 We had a lot of trouble getting the information from the Federal Court because the NDIS tried
02:40 to suppress those documents, so we took legal action to get access to them.
02:45 And when we did, we discovered that there had been obviously a very big mistake by the
02:51 NDIS Commissioner.
02:53 And now this news of this resignation just in the last 48 hours, has there been any reasons
02:58 given for that?
02:59 So the NDIS Minister Bill Shorten announced the resignation of Tracey Mackey.
03:06 He thanked her for her service.
03:08 They don't have a replacement at this stage.
03:10 She'll be leaving in May.
03:13 Just by the way, the NDIS Commissioner had to settle with the Deputy Commissioner as
03:17 well for undisclosed settlement reasons.
03:22 But the NDIS Commissioner Tracey Mackey told us in a statement that she was leaving to
03:27 pursue other career opportunities.
03:30 And now an investigation was ordered in the wake of all this, and what's happening with
03:34 that investigation?
03:36 So that investigation is... the report is due just in a couple of days.
03:42 So her resignation comes just a day or two before that report was going to be going to
03:47 the NDIS Commission.
03:49 It's still going to be going to them.
03:52 We've asked if we want to see the report, but we've been told it won't be publicly released.
03:59 We've been told that we will receive a summary of its findings.
04:03 And that's something that's upset many of the families that we've spoken to, because
04:09 most of them haven't been contacted.
04:11 In fact, the boy in that video, his family was never interviewed as part of this inquiry.
04:18 The only person that was interviewed was another woman that we featured in the program, but
04:22 others had their children there.
04:24 They don't know what happened to them.
04:25 They don't know what restraints they were subject to.
04:28 And they're still in the dark, and they're very angry about it.
04:31 And have any services or compensation been offered to the families whose children were
04:37 kept there?
04:38 Nothing at all.
04:39 In fact, as I said, they're really in the dark about what's happened.
04:43 And in reality, the inquiry that was commissioned into Iribina was all about the regulatory
04:50 process.
04:51 So it was all about what the NDIS Commission did when it received information about unlawful
04:57 and unauthorised restraints.
04:59 There's been no inquiry, and it doesn't appear that there will be an inquiry, into what happened
05:04 to the children, how many of them were restrained.
05:07 We know that there were 18 children there aged between 10 and 14, and what the effects
05:12 on them will be.
05:13 So it's a real concern, especially for disability advocates as well, who say this, unfortunately,
05:21 is not that unusual that these sorts of restraints are happening with other NDIS providers.
05:26 [BLANK_AUDIO]