NDIS Minister Bill Shorten has announced a new oversight committee to “blitz” the backlog of thousands of legal appeals over people’s disability services funding packages.

In an address to disability advocacy group Every Australian Counts, Shorten announced former disability discrimination commissioner Graeme Innes would head an independent, voluntary committee to help review disputes over NDIS plans.

NDIS Minister Bill Shorten said there were 4501 active disputes over NDIS packages before the AAT at the end of May. This had fallen to about 4000 since the election.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

It would provide an alternative to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, but participants would not lose their spot in the AAT queue if the committee could not resolve the issue.

Soon after Labor was elected in May, Shorten said the huge backlog of appeals to the AAT was obscene and he was determined to clear it.

The appointment of Innes and independent, expert case reviewers was designed to “blitz the thousands of cases at the AAT. To be very clear, this is a voluntary process, no one loses their place in the AAT queue”.

“Participating in a review of their matter doesn’t mean that they have to accept what the review says, this is an entirely voluntary extra effort to try and cut the bullshit and just get on with the issues,” Shorten said on Tuesday.

“I think that the agency … must acknowledge that things have been bad – the internal review process opaque and unaccountable, AAT processes complex, frustrating. It’s been in my opinion in most cases broken. Under the previous Liberal government, the number of participants in the NDIS seeking external review of planning decisions increased by 400 per cent.”

Shorten said there were 4501 active disputes over NDIS packages before the AAT at the end of May.

“That’s what we inherited. I committed before the election to tackle this glaring problem. I pledged too that we would have an alternative dispute mechanism to make the appeals process better for people with disability.”

Since the election, the backlog had fallen to about 4000 active cases, but the National Disability Insurance Agency had overused external lawyers in disputes, creating “an unfair, David and Goliath sort of struggle”, he said.

An initial trial would attempt to resolve 15 to 20 cases and if it worked, Shorten said, he hoped to clear 2000 cases from the list before Christmas.

The NDIA’s newly appointed chief legal counsel, Matthew Swainson, said the agency needed to listen to participants who had contested packages before the AAT, some of whom had had a “terrible” experience.

“I’m expecting what I’m hearing in here [the online seminar] today will be quite confronting, you know, I’ll be honest, I’m a little bit nervous … about participating in today,” he said.

“But I feel it really is incumbent on us to listen directly from participants to hear those experiences and to learn from them.”

In 2020-21, the NDIA spent nearly $22 million on external legal fees as the number of complaints that went to the AAT rose by more than 1000 in six months.

Former NDIS minister Linda Reynolds had warned the scheme faced questions over its sustainability, as its cost was estimated to blow out by $8.8 billion to $40.7 billion in 2024-25.

Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis from Jacqueline Maley. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter here.

Most Viewed in Politics

From our partners

Source: Read Full Article