Independent Assessments

                                 Submission 18

Please find attached a copy of my submission to the NDIA regarding their recently released Consultation Papers regarding the proposed changes to NDIS legislation, including Independent Assessments and changes to permitted disability supports.

I am extremely disgusted that the NDIA and Liberal government have chosen to violate the recommendations from the Tune Review, to violate numerous international laws that Australia has agreed to abide by and that the NDIS was created in part to give effect to Australia’s obligations under those agreements, to violate the Object and Principles of the NDIS Act 2013, to attempt to rip the central tenets of the NDIS Act out of the legislation - in particular those that provide protections to participants, to deny applicants and participants any right to fair process regarding Independent Assessments, and to propose the addition of laws founded solely on the basis of discrimination.

In the current proposal, the great majority of the proposed changes are actively detrimental to applicants and participants of the NDIS, and in no way represent “fairness”.

I had previously raised the issue of the detrimental effects to the participant from an inaccurate/flawed independent assessment. Having had acknowledgement of the issue from the NDIA in October, I was particularly infuriated by the NDIA’s explicit denial of the ability to contest or refute a flawed assessment. This was listed as an essential protection that HAD to be rolled out together with any form of Independent Assessments in the Tune Review, and by explicitly banning it the NDIA and Liberal Government are explicitly violating the recommendations from the Tune Review that they were claiming to implement.

The complete denial of the ability to refute a flawed assessment is a denial of procedural fairness. Applicants and participants should have the right to having decisions made based on a FAIR assessment of their capacity, and this is being denied.