Dear Committee Secretary,
I am the Managing Director of Distinct Directions Pty Ltd, a registered NDIS provider of specialist behaviour support and psychology services across the Central West of New South Wales (Provider 4050007620). I write to ask whether the committee will accept brief supplementary evidence directly addressing the provisions of Schedule 2 Part 5 of the Bill. I appreciate that the extended submission period closed on 1 June and that the report is due on 16 June; the evidence below crystallised in the past fortnight, and if it cannot be accepted as a submission before the report, I ask that this correspondence and the enclosed exhibit be circulated to committee members as additional information to the inquiry. This correspondence does not seek the committee’s intervention in the provider’s individual matter, which is being pursued through the Agency’s own processes and a separate parliamentary representation; it is provided solely as evidence on how Part 5 will operate.
The evidence, set out in the enclosed de-identified exhibit, is this. Since November 2023 the NDIA’s PACE system has rejected 4,501 of this provider’s travel claims ($51,392 at 11 June 2026) with the message “Service Booking does not exist,” while paying $905,424 for the services delivered at the same appointments, on the same plans, on the same days. Where these identical claims are invoiced to plan managers and processed by a person, the collection rate is 97.4 per cent; through the Agency’s automated channel, 49.7 per cent. The Agency’s payment enquiry process has closed the matter three times (2023, 2024, and June 2026) without repairing the defect, most recently on a finding its own claim records contradict, reached without any record being requested from the provider. The oldest rejected claims date from November 2023 and remain unresolved after thirty-one months; the most recent enquiry was closed within ten days of being opened.
This evidence is offered as a sample, not as an isolated grievance. The defect is architectural: it arises in how PACE constructs plans, not in anything specific to this provider, and payment and claiming failures associated with the PACE transition have been publicly reported across the sector since 2023. This organisation is simply a case in which one provider has been able to document the failure mode end to end, from claim lodgement through rejection text to the Agency’s complaint handling, across thirty-one months of complete data. The Agency does not publish claim rejection data, so the number of providers carrying equivalent unresolved rejections, and the total value that the 90-day window will extinguish at commencement, is not visible to the Parliament. That opacity is the strongest reason for a structural safeguard rather than reliance on undefined discretion: if the affected population is small, a tolling provision costs the Commonwealth nothing; if it is large, the provision is essential; and only the Agency knows which.
Schedule 2 Part 5, item 89 reduces the claim period in paragraph 45A(5)(a) from 2 years to 90 days. Unlike Parts 3 and 4 of the same Schedule (items 82 and 88), Part 5 contains no application provision, and the Explanatory Memorandum at page 107 confirms the delayed commencement to 1 December 2026 is intended only as a run off window in which claims older than 90 days may be made before the new timeframe takes effect. For claims a defective Agency system mechanically rejects, the run-off window provides nothing: making the claim is the act that fails. As at 11 June 2026, 93.7 per cent of this provider’s rejected claim value is already older than
90 days; absent resolution, at commencement it will be 100 per cent, and 83 per cent of the rejected claims sit on service agreements that have expired since the services were delivered, making resubmission within the window impossible in most cases. The existing exceptional circumstances discretion in subsection 45A(6) is undefined and rests with the agency whose system causes the rejections.
The committee may wish to consider a tolling amendment to Part 5: where a claim is made within the statutory period, is rejected otherwise than by reason of the claimant’s conduct, and a complaint or payments enquiry bearing an Agency reference number is lodged within 90 days of the rejection, the claim period does not run until 90 days after the enquiry is finally determined, and a claim rejected by Agency system or administrative error is taken to have been made on the date of its first submission. The trigger is objective, the Agency controls the duration of every toll, and a claim lodged in time and logged in dispute is documented and verifiable, consistent with the integrity purpose stated in the Explanatory Memorandum. The proposal gives objective form to Recommendations 32 and 33 of People with Disability Australia’s submission. Alternatively, the same protection can be delivered after passage by Ministerial transitional rule under Schedule 5 of the Bill, machinery used twice on this section since 2024.
I would welcome the opportunity to provide any further information the committee requires, and I am available at short notice.
Yours sincerely,
Daniel Jarvis
Managing Director
Head Office
103 Piper StreetBathurst NSW 2795
NDIS Provider Number:4050007620
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