Funding for NDIS support ‘limited’

­NDIS lawyers say it is possible for people owed ‘reasonable and necessary’ support to get no money at all.

Liam McGarrigle, with his mother Michelle and father Michael at the Federal Court in Melbourne. Picture: Stuart McEvoy

Just because people with disabilities were entitled to funding from the National Disability ­Insurance Scheme didn’t mean they would receive any, lawyers have told the Federal Court.

Liam McGarrigle, 21, has ­autism and an intellectual ­disability, and is fighting the NDIS agency over an initial ­decision to fund only $8000 of the cost of his taxi trips to support programs the agency found he ought to attend, including activities in Geelong and his job at a low-wage Australian Disability Enterprise.

On review, the Administrative Appeals Tribunal found Mr McGarrigle’s taxi costs were closer to $15,850 a year — he lives 25km outside Geelong with no public transport — but, ­accounting for the “financial ­sustainability of the scheme” the tribunal found the $22 billion NDIS should cover only 75 per cent of these trips.

It is this decision Mr McGarrigle is challenging in the Federal Court.

Counsel for Mr McGarrigle, Chris Horan QC, told Justice Debbie Mortimer yesterday that the NDIS agency wanted “flexibility to ­reduce funding via a broad range of indeterminate criteria”.

“With respect, it’s flexibility for the agency not the client the NDIS is concerned with, Mr Horan said.

The argument centred around whether agency chief executive David Bowen — or the tribunal — ought to be able to only partially fund reasonable and necessary support and how much the overall financial sustainability of the scheme should be used as a ­“balancing factor” in providing people with proven support.

Counsel for the NDIS Joanna Davidson told the court “it is possible you will have a reasonable and necessary support that will not be funded”.

“Just because it is reasonable and necessary it does not necessarily follow that it must be funded,’’ she said.

Mr Horan said the fact the agency was relying on family to pick up the tab for transport costs it refused to meet meant the non-means tested scheme was “means-tested by the backdoor route”.

In the original promise of the scheme, clients were told that whatever their proven “reasonable” need, they would receive an uncapped amount of funding to meet it regardless of their ­circumstances.

But as the NDIS builds from 30,000 people to 460,000 people over the next three years, it has begun facing significant cost pressures.

Mr Horan said if the agency or tribunal were going to make claims about the threatened ­financials of the scheme, they owed it to people to explain precisely how and why that might be the case.

Justice Mortimer has retired to consider her decision.