Participants in the National Disability Insurance Scheme will, in most cases, no longer be able to appeal against their total amount of funding support to any external review body, executives have confirmed. Source: The Guardian.
Minister for Disability and the NDIS Jenny McAllister, and National Disability Insurance Agency bosses were peppered with questions at Senate estimates yesterday about changes to the way NDIS support plans will be generated under a new planning model coming into effect from mid-2026.
Details of the changes were revealed in a Guardian investigation this week, which found that a computer program will generate support plans for participants and staff will have no discretion to amend them, dramatically reducing human involvement in the process.
An NDIA executive confirmed to the Senate committee that it had conducted modelling that found the new planning system – which has been labelled “robo-planning” – would save the NDIA money.
The Guardian’s investigation revealed that an NDIA boss in Queensland had told hundreds of staff in an internal briefing that under the new model, if NDIS participants appeal against their plans to the Administrative Review Tribunal (ART), they will no longer have the authority to alter a person’s plan or reinstate funding. It will only be able to send the plan back to the NDIA for the agency to conduct another assessment.
Pushed repeatedly on that topic by multiple senators, Matthew Swainson, a deputy CEO of the NDIA, eventually confirmed that NDIS participants will no longer be able to appeal against the total amount of funding support they get in their NDIS support plan to the tribunal.
Greens senator Jordon Steele-John called the revelation a “significant change in the role of the ART”.
Liberal senator Anne Ruston pushed the NDIA executives on how such changes could be made without further amendments to legislation.
“It’s not up to the NDIA to determine how the ART works,” she said.
Robyn Shannon, a deputy secretary in the Department of Health, confirmed the legislation allowing for these changes had passed Parliament last year.
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Most NDIS participants will lose external avenue to appeal funding amounts under new system, Senate estimates told (By Kate Lyons, The Guardian)
