NDIS Providers Luring Vulnerable First Nations Clients With KFC Before Draining Their Care Plans in Eight Weeks

DARWIN – Unscrupulous NDIS providers in the Northern Territory have discovered that vulnerable First Nations participants will sign documents they do not fully understand if you offer them a phone or a bucket of KFC – a recruitment strategy not typically covered in the Government’s five-year First Nations Disability Strategy.

The complaints detailed in a new report by disability advocates and the Darwin Community Legal Service describe providers misrepresenting themselves as NDIS staff and draining entire care plans within two months. Plans designed to last a year are being emptied like a buffet at a mining camp Christmas party.

“People are being promised phones or KFC to change providers. It’s happening every week” said one anonymous disability advocate in Katherine. The advocate presumably asked to remain anonymous because the system they are working inside is the one doing the harm.

In one case a 36-year-old non-verbal Aboriginal man with an acquired brain injury had 35 hours of support per week allocated by a new provider who had let themselves in. His approved plan allowed seven. The extra 28 hours were described by investigators as “over-servicing” and by everyone else as “theft.”

Indigenous people in the NT experience disability at nearly twice the rate of non-Aboriginal people and comprise 51 per cent of all NDIS participants in the territory. Many live in remote communities where language barriers and limited services make them easy targets. The NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission confirmed it was “increasing compliance and enforcement efforts” – a sentence that implies previous efforts were neither.

The Government meanwhile released its five-year NDIS First Nations Strategy 2025-2030 which promises “culturally safe and accessible support.” Participants in Tennant Creek confirmed the strategy had not yet arrived but another provider offering a free Samsung had.