NDIS agency to spend $50m on lawyers to fight people with disability who appealed funding cuts

The agency running the national disability insurance scheme is on track to rack up nearly $50m in fees to private law firms this financial year, as it defends itself against people with a disability and their advocates appealing cuts to support packages.

New figures published in response to Senate estimates questions on notice show the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) spent $41.4m in the 10 months to 30 April 2022, a 140% increase on the previous 12 months.

With the agency spending an average of about $4m a month on fees to external firms, including $5.6m last month, it could be expected its total legal bill may hit $50m for the 12-month period.

By comparison, the agency spent only $17m in 2020-21 and $13.4m in 2019-20.

It comes after a significant increase in the number of NDIS participants appealing cuts to their funding packages and the denial of supports.

The NDIA has already come under fire for the frequency in which it engages private firms to defend appeals cases brought by people with disability and their families. These include people appealing reductions to funding packages, the denial

The $41m paid to private lawyers to defend the NDIA at the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) also pales in comparison to the funding provided to advocates and legal aid to assist people with disability in their appeals.

Guardian Australia has reported extensively on the spiralling legal fees and increasing number of appeals cases, as well as the personal stories of participants who have spent months fighting cuts to their packages and other issues.

Another of those dealing with the AAT, Samar Bain, had her funding reinstated after Guardian Australia reported on her case last week.

During the election campaign Labor promised to fix what some advocates have labelled a crisis, promising to introduce a new reviews process and to fix the planning process which determines individual funding packages.

Shorten will be sworn in as NDIS minister on Wednesday.

He said the money would have been better spent on participants.

The latest NDIA quarterly report said there were 4,265 open AAT cases at March 2022.

It said there were 1,583 cases in the March quarter, a 244% increase on the 460 cases in the same period in 2021.

An NDIA spokesperson said those cases represented 1.24% of active participants.