July 5, 2018

AAT urges minister to fix NDIA decisions – an “entirely unsatisfactory state of affairs”

The Administrative Appeals Tribunal is hearing many appeals by NDIS participants against decisions made by the NDIA, and many are about delays in the process.

In a decision released this week, the tribunal member pointed out how unsatisfactory the process is.  In the decision FFVQ and National Disability Insurance Agency [2018], tribunal Deputy President Gary Humphries said the time and resources “may not have been necessary but for the haphazard approach of the NDIA to the making of decisions affecting the needs of FFVQ”.

The case is one of many recently in which the issues of timeliness of the NDIA’s reviews of plans and participants’ ability to have plans reviewed – an apparently simple concept – is complicated by release of subsequent plans by the NDIA which don’t necessarily take into account the findings of an earlier plan or decision by the AAT.  There have been examples where the agency has agreed to include findings by the Tribunal in subsequent plans, but only through the grace of the agency.

Deputy President Humphries further said: “the Tribunal urges the responsible minister to consider as a matter of urgency the circumstances which give rise to this entirely unsatisfactory state of affairs, and to assess what measures, administrative or financial, might be required to mitigate it.

In other words – fix it.