NDIS: Questions Lead To Questions

The NDIS was originally designed to not allow the removal of participants. It was supposed to be a "once you're in, you're in" deal where you can absolutely trust that the support would be there when you need it.

Enter stage left: absolute piss-takes en masse. Cars purchased. Entire core budgets dedicated to 28 days of "respite" in Bali. Big Macs claimed as "consumables". People accessing the NDIS entirely because they heard it pays for psychology. Mass misuse of Federal funds without even an attempt at pretense, simply because everyone was getting away with it. There were and are absolutely grey areas and complexities in many, if not most cases (I know this very well firsthand) but the scale of clear and deliberate misuse was unsustainable.

Introduction of Eligibility Reassessments

When eligibility reassessments were finally implemented, it was done in a wildly unfair way.

A fraction of participants received letters indicating that everyone was being reassessed, and that they needed to provide fresh evidence. This was only true in the narrowest conceivable interpretation of the wording: the vast majority of these "assessments" consisted of automated processes not flagging anything as obviously wrong with a file, and these people never heard about it or had to provide anything.

The ones who did receive these notices had preposterously short windows (less than 30 days) to provide evidence, which wasn't even enough time to do an FOI, and no indication of what the new evidence actually had to prove. In many cases it was things like mismatched addresses on identification, but the participant had no way of knowing and not enough time to find out.

This was, in short, effectively a method for the NDIA to unceremoniously flick a bunch of people off the Scheme without meaningful due process. This was flat out the wrong way to do it.

The only thing we can say in their defense is that "obtain financial advantage/property by deception from a Commonwealth entity" is a crime punishable by up to ten years in prison per count, and has no statute of limitations. Silently removing peoples' ability to keep committing it, while done in a completely unfair way which has caused very real human damage, was by far not the sharpest knife they had to hand.

The process has improved since then. There are more reasonable windows and more opportunities to be heard fairly and provide the right evidence. But it is still something which often has a giant downside and effectively never has an upside.

Advice For The Present Day

It may be helpful to look at the most common situations in which eligibility reassessments actually occur.

The safest cohort to be in is one which spends 80-90% of its budget each plan, mostly on support workers and OTs, and which doesn't draw attention to itself. This group tends to pass through reviews with rubber-stamps which continue funding more-or-less the same each year. The worst cohort to be in is one which spends almost none of its core budget, with use of capacity building looking suspiciously similar to treatment, and which regularly contacts LACs with questions of "can I get this?" and "can I get that?".

For the former group, it's really clear that the NDIS is a desperately needed lifeline which they use to full effect. For the latter group, a delegate often assumes that they just want free stuff. In any case, the Scheme has recently become much more prescriptive about what it will fund, so answering the question of what you can get is now much quicker and easier.

In general, the justification for funding capacity building is that it will reduce core support needs in the future (or prevent them from growing); it is not endless free allied health. The NDIA are increasingly of the opinion that capacity building must be time limited and tapered over time. And if you clearly do not need core support to survive, then capacity building cannot be justified either, and a delegate will happily reallocate both towards someone who does need them to survive by means of an eligibility reassessment.

Checkin

Version: 1

Written: 2026-01-13

Written on: 7.5mg olanzapine since 2025-11-11 - likely causing significant cognitive impairment

Mental health was: poor - estimate 25% brain