For the past 18 months, 63-year-old Richard Hamon has fronted the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) fighting for more funding under the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS).
Legally blind due to a degenerative genetic condition, what he wants is simple: money to travel to major cities for vision assistance assessments, assistive technology to help him use his computer, and to keep living independently — working, gardening and bushwalking.
But in 2020 he was granted $25,080 a year in NDIS funding, not even enough to cover the cost of trips to Melbourne for specialist appointments. He took that decision to the AAT to be heard in front of an independent third party.
External lawyers contracted by the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) have been fighting Hamon’s request across 10 separate directions hearings. In one case, lawyers were contracted to check a cost estimate of less than $50 — finding a $2.38 discrepancy.
As revealed in Senate estimates, there’s been a 400% increase in people with disabilities disputing their NDIS plans in the AAT; last year it spent $17.3 million on external legal firms — an increase of 30% on the previous year.
Hamon has yet to have his case heard by a tribunal member and said he hasn’t been provided accessible audio documentation as requested. Instead he is expected to read thousands of pages of hearing notes or have them read to him by a volunteer.
He cannot afford assistive technology, so he has developed spinal problems from hunching over his computer.
“It’s an excessive, depressive, stressful and anxiety-ridden process,” he said. “I’m afraid it will shorten my life significantly.”
Thin market limit assistance
Hamon lives in Devonport, in regional Tasmania, with his wife, Dorota. Maintaining his independence is extremely important — the couple love bushwalking and have a large vegetable patch they enjoy working in. He wants his wife to continue living independently and working as a laboratory manager for the Education Department rather than becoming his full-time carer.
“[It would take] her livelihood, interests, superannuation, career — it would take everything from her,” he said.
There are not enough disability workers in the area, he said. Occupational therapists have eight-month waiting lists and Hamon needs blindness-trained specialists to assess him for assistive technology. That requires travel to Hobart, Launceston and Melbourne.
And there is not enough NDIS funding to cover transport costs and disability workers to accompany him. In the past decade he’s had to visit the Launceston Eye Institute 18 times, travel to Hobart 16 times in five years for botox treatments to ease vision-impairment-related migraines, visit occupational therapists to help him with balance, neck and shoulder injuries, and seek a specialist assessment on the rate of degeneration of his vision and reports on what supports he’ll need.
He said the trips have cost him thousands of dollars.
The NDIA rejected his request to have funding to travel to Melbourne to be assessed by Vision Australia, arguing the Tasmanian government should provide that through the patient travel assistance scheme — but state representatives argued the NDIA should cover the costs.
Hamon said Dorota has had to take time off work to drive him to appointments, but they can’t afford to lose her salary: “The essence of the NDIA has been to force my wife to give up work. Family and friends are expected to do all the heavy lifting that the NDIS was brought in effect to do.”
The delays in assessment added to the stress of the tribunals and have caused Hamon’s physical and mental condition to deteriorate.
Taking it to the tribunal
Shortly after receiving his initial NDIS funding plan, Hamon applied for a review in the AAT where he met HWL Ebsworth lawyers contracted by the NDIS. Between 2020 and 2021, HWL Ebsworth received nearly $4 million across five contracts with the NDIA.
Between July 2021 and March this year, 4656 people with disabilities applied to be heard by the AAT, 80% of which were for review of funding-support decisions. Most reviews take more than four months to finalise.
In more than half of all cases, the tribunal rules the decision should be changed — but that’s if the applicants can get in front of a tribunal member. Just 2% of applicants have their cases fully heard; the rest reach agreements in closed-door meetings with the NDIA’s lawyers.
This is problematic for two reasons: first, only 20% of people with disabilities have legal representation in these meetings, creating an imbalance of power. Second, there are no test cases or public outcomes of these decisions, meaning other people on the NDIS can’t use the agreements to support their cases.
In many cases the funding being debated is much less than the amount paid to NDIA lawyers. This is true for Hamon. He’s coming up to his 11th directions hearing — a closed-room discussion between him and the NDIA where both parties present evidence — without having his case heard by a tribunal member.
For one trip to Melbourne to visit Vision Australia specialists for assessment, Hamon calculated it would amount to $45.39 in per-kilometre driving costs to get him from the ferry to a nearby hotel for a medical appointment. A senior associate at HWL Ebsworth was contracted to check this and, after debating toll roads and parking costs, found it would cost $43.01 — a difference of $2.38.
HWL Ebsworth declined to comment for this article.
Deteriorating while waiting
While before the AAT, Hamon’s NDIS plan was changed three times more as a result of the tribunal’s review. Although his funding was more than tripled, he didn’t accept it because it still didn’t cover assessments by Vision Australia. His only option was, again, to dispute the plan in the AAT.
“If you sit back and do nothing, it sets a precedent for every new plan. You have no choice,” he said.
Hamon also asked that the nearly 900 pages of documents submitted by the NDIA’s lawyers be provided to him in audio format with a separate recording for each document. As of this month, the NDIA said through its lawyers it “intends to produce” audio files. Requests to have emails sent to him in large, bold font have also been ignored on multiple occasions.
This, Greens Senator Jordon Steele-John tells Crikey, isn’t uncommon: “I’ve heard stories where the NDIA have called people who cannot use a phone, they’ve demanded a written reply from people who are unable to type, and they are not giving people adequate warning of meetings so people are not able to organise the support they need.”
“The NDIS is supposed to enable disabled people to live our lives, not cause further harm and distress.”
Across the 18 months Hamon has been fighting — without the cash to get assessments for assistive technology — he has developed a number of illnesses: severe neck and shoulder pain from hunching over his computer with a magnifying glass working through documents (an MRI scan showed parts of his spine have narrowed, putting pressure on the nerves in his neck); stomach pain; and he is now being tested for ulcers. He also says he suffers from PTSD and gastrointestinal issues worsened by stress.
His psychologist has attested Hamon’s mental health has deteriorated significantly since 2019 because of depression, anxiety and stress, as well as his increasing lack of independence which affects his relationship with his wife and his quality of life.
“I don’t know how much more of this I can take,” Hamon said. “This has made me ill. After every directions hearing I go into a meltdown condition and it takes me days to recover. I’m afraid this will shorten my life significantly.”
The NDIA told Crikey it does convert documents into accessible formats when submitting them to the AAT and is providing “significant funding” to Hamon with the highest level of transport funding provided to him.
“The agency has and continues to work with Mr Hamon to assist him with his accessibility requirements,” it said, but it didn’t respond to requests about value for money over legal fees.
Hot-button election issue
The NDIS has come under scrutiny during the election campaign. Labor has a six-point plan to fix it, pledging to crack down on rogue providers. (Anthony Albanese’s failure to remember the six-point plan briefly became a campaign ‘gotcha’ moment.) Labor and the Greens have pledged to reduce the staffing cap in the NDIA, put more people with disabilities into leadership positions, and address the growing number of people taking their packages to the AAT.
The Greens have also pledged to remove the age cap, which is currently set at 65, while Labor’s NDIS spokesman, Bill Shorten, vowed a “blitz” on outstanding NDIS matters at the AAT and will implement a panel of experts to review plan cuts.
Although the Coalition has largely avoided talking about the NDIS, extra funding has been announced for advocacy and legal support for people with disabilities. NDIS Minister Linda Reynolds told Crikey the NDIA continued to make “decisions in line with the criteria set out in the NDIS Act“, which, she added, was Labor’s legislation, and that the government was working to cut red tape built into its original design.
This article has been updated to reflect the fact Richard Hamon will remain on the NDIS after he turns 65.
I suspect that another problem, is that the LNP has been filling the Administrative Appeals Tribunal with former LNP politicians and officials.
It is, but having assisted a couple of clients at the conciliation stage I suspect that a significant number of people give up before it gets to the Tribunal. Our experience was that they bring in their lawyers early and they hit hard. They demand more and more paperwork, and when you give it to them they claim they didn’t get it or it wasn’t the exact paperwork they wanted. They hit you with lots and lots of legal jargon, which was even difficult for me because I wasn’t across the legalisation and the precedents when I started with these matters (I’m better now, but I’m not going to try and pretend that I’m an expert). The conciliation hearings are long and tedious. Our experience was that the registrars who run the conciliations come down pretty hard, in a polite way, on the applicants. It was a nightmare. I would be very surprised if people don’t just give up and take what they are given. I reckon that in the two matters I assisted with there was over $100,000 in legal fees involved on the government side. This was for parts of plans which were worth about $20,000. It’s a war of attrition.
Only the mind of a pettifogging bureaucrat could initiate and continue this immoral attack on our most vulnerable.
The sooner we get this mob of spivs and wideboys out of government, the better.
If the idea has been to see the cost as a burden, then that idea needs to be turned on it’s head and solutions should be looked for, not just bashing the vulnerable whilst paying huge fees to bloodsuckers.
Don’t forget that the bureaucrats are doing as directed by the department minister, a politician, who is directed by the party back room.
I suspect that the cost of the legal teams far outdo the “savings” to the amount paid for an NDIS claim. This item from ch 10 The Project is heartbreaking.
NDIS phone support worker asked her why she couldn’t use a stoma bag more than once!
Elly’s Fight: How NDIS Cuts Are Changing Aussie Lives – Since the National Disability Insurance Scheme was first set up, it has changed the lives of countless Australians. However, almost a decade on, the same people who fought for the NDIS are now fighting to keep their funding. This is Elly’s story. at https://10play.com.au/theproject/news/2022/ellys-fight-how-ndis-cuts-are-changing-aussie-lives/tpv220328zminb
There are more horrifying stories on Facebook Page “Too Peas In A Podcast Hangout”. You can search NDIS on the page ….. then ?
Amazing that the LNP will throw more money at the lawyers and pretend it’s doing a favour for disabled people. Or are the lawyers themselves disabled?
Sack the lawyers and half the bureaucrats and give the money saved to the people who need it – the disabled! It is crazy that disabled people need to hire lawyers to fight the lawyers hired by the government to fight disabled people. Not just crazy:- criminally insane. And then to have to do it all again after age 65. How cruel and stupid is that! Ruled by Fools – that’s us.
Nothing foolish about it. Big legal firms donate to political parties. Individuals with disabilities do not.
Gee, the NDIA must’ve been rapt by that $2.38 saving. Exactly how much did it cost for HWL Ebsworth to find this discrepancy?
My son was on CentreLink payments some years ago while between jobs. One evening I took a very hostile call from a legal company alleging my son had claimed more than he was entitled to, that his case had been put in their debt collector’s hands and threatening to send someone round to take furniture to the value of the debt.
I responded by saying that any visit by a debt collector would be reported immediately to the police.
Further questioning established that my son had received a $30 payment that should have been $28.25. For less than $2 the “debt” had been referred to a legal company who had called in a debt collector who had phoned and made threats.
I still wonder how much that referral cost. And what item of furniture I had that was worth less than $2.
Good grief! I am sooo sorry that a government that claims to represent US, should act like that. But then it doesn’t does it?
That’s not how Centrelink collect their debts. What organisation was the supposed debt owed to?
They’d pay the outstanding purported debt and give themselves a fat fee for ‘expenses’.
I wonder if the federal government, includes the legal costs of fighting the disabled in court, in the broad category of funding for the disabled?
What are the chances… The Coalition always manage to fund bastardry regardless of its ratio of dollar efficiency eg: refugee detention.
The extra funding provided for advocacy and legal support services was a small one off payment for the current financial year.
From July 2022 – June 2025, those services have all had anywhere between a 30-45% cut to their annual funding as the numbers of people seeking reviews and appeals increases.