Government accused of misrepresenting NDIS cuts in heated hearing

NDIS Minister Jenny McAllister repeatedly rejected the accusation. (ABC News: Ian Cutmore)

The Greens and Labor have repeatedly clashed over the government's upcoming NDIS cuts in a Senate hearing this morning.

Greens senator Jordon Steele-John accused the government of misrepresenting the target of its cuts, which minister Jenny McAllister repeatedly rejected.

Three days of public hearing into the NDIS bill will take place from Tuesday.

The federal government has been accused of selling its cuts to the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) as a crackdown on fraud, while instead pursuing billions of dollars of dramatic savings by slashing participant packages.

Greens Senator Jordon Steele-John and NDIS minister Jenny McAllister clashed repeatedly in a heated Senate estimates sitting this morning, just days before public hearings into legislation that paves the way for the biggest ever cuts to the scheme.

Treasury modelling tabled in the Senate last week shows that, of the $38.1 billion predicted to be saved from the cuts over the next four years, just $0.9 billion (2 .4 per cent) was expected to come from "making the minister the decision maker on pricing and related fraud measures".

The same document shows that almost 60 per cent of those overall savings would come from the cutting of participant community participation and therapy budgets ($13.2 billion over four years) and tightening access to the scheme through a new functional capacity test ($9.3 billion).

The government has repeatedly referenced fraud as a justification for its generational overhaul of the scheme, with a separate Senate inquiry hearing last month about $3.7 billion of NDIS funding was lost to "integrity leakage" last financial year.