00:01The Department of Children and Families in Alice Springs, where Kudzai Mutsunge served as a director for Child and Family
00:09Services, while at the same time she was the sole director and secretary of an NDIS provider in Alice Springs,
00:17Life Aspects, and, for 15 months, owned half of it through a stake in its parent company.
00:23Children and Families is heavily involved in the NDIS. Hundreds of children in care have NDIS plans. Public servants have
00:33to declare conflicts of interest in writing.
00:36They are governed by those codes of ethics to ensure that they don't have access to participant information that they
00:43could then benefit from or family could benefit from.
00:45Representatives from the Disability Advocacy Service say Ms Mutsunge told them she never lodged a formal declaration because she didn't
00:54think she needed to, and that she had no role in placement decisions at the department or referring children to
01:01providers.
01:02When the ABC put questions to Ms Mutsunge, she said she did not agree with the allegations or characterisations put
01:09to her regarding any alleged conflict of interest, and could not respond to further questions within the required timeframe.
01:17The provider, Life Aspects, did not respond to questions.
01:20The senior public servant relinquished all her recorded interests in the Alice Springs company in the days before an anonymous
01:28complaint reached the NDIS regulator in March.
01:32In an email from August obtained by the ABC, the department confirmed it had referred information about Ms Mutsunge to
01:41the appropriate internal integrity processes.
01:44The outcome of those processes is not known. The department would not say whether she declared the interest or sought
01:51approval for outside work.
01:53But speaking generally, its acting CEO said the department had zero tolerance for a failure to declare a conflict of
02:01interest.
02:02The ABC has seen no evidence that any child in the care of the department was a Life Aspects client.
02:07The Public Guardian confirmed that two adults it represents had been in the past.
02:14Nobody appears to check if the people who own NDIS providers work for the government.
02:20The Public Guardian told the ABC it has no capability to do so, while the NDIS commission says it relies
02:27on self declarations, worker screening and company records.
02:31They have seen the basic additional results.
02:32The Public Guardian confirmed that three of years are red markets, it does not mean the SDGP wyd jako ćets
02:33where SDGW rate of interest.
