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NDIS correspondence: Notification of Decision - FOI 24/25-0004

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Our reference: FOI 24/25-0004 (LEX ID 1084)

GPO Box 700 Canberra ACT 2601 1800 800 110 ndis.gov.au

10 September 2025

David Wright Right To Know

By email: foi+request-13353-b118e056@righttoknow.org.au

Dear David Wright,

Your Freedom of Information request — Notification of Decision

Thank you for your correspondence of 1 July 2025, in which you requested access under the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (FOI Act) to documents held by the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA).

The purpose of this letter is to provide you with a decision on your request.

Scope of your request

You have requested access to documents about the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). Specifically, you requested access to:

“Dear National Disability Insurance Agency,

Please provide the following information for all Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) / Administrative Review Tribunal (ART) matters to which the NDIA was a Respondent, for the 12 months from 1 July 2024 to 31 June 2025:

  1. For all AAT/ART matters that went to hearing, the overall average number of days that a matter was at hearing, and the overall average daily cost per matter incurred by the NDIA in participating in those hearings (being the cost of hearing days only).

  2. For all AAT/ART matters, including those matters that did not go to hearing, the average total monthly cost per matter incurred by the agency in being a Respondent in these AAT/ART matters.

When providing the costs in relation to both (1) and (2) above, please include all of the following costs:

  1. All legal costs (both internal agency legal costs, and the costs of engaging external law services).

  2. All costs of engaging expert witnesses (including both those engaged directly by the agency, and those engaged by external law firms that the agency has engaged).

  3. Transcription services.

  4. Any other costs incurred by the agency (either directly, or indirectly through external law services) in responding to these matters.

Yours faithfully,

David Wright“

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Extension of time

The FOI Act provides 30 calendar days for the processing of an FOI request after it is received. As your valid FOI request was received on 1 July 2025, the original due date for your request was 31 July 2025.

On 23 July 2025, you agreed to a 30-day extension of time under section 15AA of the FOI Act, making 30 August 2025 the new date to provide you with a decision on access.

We have been experiencing processing delays and were not able to provide you with our decision by the due date. I sincerely apologise for the delay in releasing this decision to you and thank you for your patience while we progressed your application. As this is a deemed decision, we have submitted an application to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) seeking a 10-day extension to process the request under section 15AC of the FOI Act. On 9 September 2025, the OAIC granted our request for further time under s 15AC of the FOI Act, making the new date for decision 10 September 2025.

Consultation

In response to consultations with responsible business areas, I’ve been advised the following:

  • Invoices for the external legal costs are not issued until individual phases of the matter have been completed.
  • We are currently unable to confirm that all external legal service providers have submitted all invoices for matters that will form part of the 12 month period listed in the scope.
  • Costs for hearings are billed at a fixed fee rate, which means that the isolated cost of hearing days cannot be extrapolated for the information available.
  • There are no records kept for the in-house time spent and cost incurred for individual ART matters. Relevant documents cannot be created without being an unreasonable diversion of resources.

Decision on access to documents

I am authorised to make decisions under section 23(1) of the FOI Act. My decision on your request and the reasons for my decision are set out hereunder.

At this time, noting your request was received on 1 July 2025, and the explanation of available information, I have decided to refuse your request for access under section 24A of the FOI Act. Section 24A allows a refusal when after reasonable steps have been taken to locate and retrieve the documents you have requested, and I am satisfied that they currently do not exist to the extent of the scope of your request.

In considering your request, I considered that you probably intended that a document be created using the available data, as may be required under section 17 of the FOI Act.

As stated above some of the information required to consider the timeframe identified has not been received. Additionally, once received, the information is not recorded in such a way that we would be able to run a report and produce a document in answer to your request. Meaning that a manual review would be required of all matters to create an answer. For these reasons, I consider that section 17 does not apply in this instance.

In reaching my decision, I took into account:

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  • Your correspondence outing the particulars of your request;
  • The FOI Act including:
    • Section 11 Right of Access
    • Section 17 Requests Involving Computers
    • 24A Requests may be refused if documents cannot be found, do exist or have not been received;
  • The FOI Guidelines including Part 3 section 3.22, 3.23 and 3.24
  • The IC review decision, Ryan Turner and Department of Home Affairs (Freedom of information) [2024] AICmr 215 (16 October 2024), and
  • Consultation with relevant officers of the NDIA.

Reasons for decisions

Refuse a request for access (section 24A)

Section 24A of the FOI Act provides that an agency may refuse a request for access to a document if all reasonable steps have been taken to find the document and the agency is satisfied that the document cannot be found or does not exist.

Searches conducted of the NDIA’s systems, using all reasonable search terms that could return documents relevant to your request. In addition, I have consulted with relevant NDIA staff who could be expected to be able to identify documents within the scope of the request, including staff who are knowledgeable about how to conduct searches of the NDIA’s systems.

I am satisfied that all reasonable steps have been taken to locate the documents you have requested and to satisfy the documents outlined in the scope of your request currently do not exist. I have therefore decided to refuse access to your request in accordance with section 24A(1)(b)(ii) of the FOI Act.

Publicly available information

Some information you may be interested is also available on the NDIA’s website, Senate Order 13, also known as Murray Motion, requires the agency to publish details of individual contracts.

In addition, you’re welcome to make a follow-up request at a later stage. This further time may give the NDIA time to complete the record of this timeframe.

If it would be helpful, from a data perspective, I would also be happy to discuss the scope of a future request. So that we can support releasing information that you are interested in and that systems and records exist to create.

Rights of review

Your rights to seek a review of my decision, or lodge a complaint, are set out at Attachment A.

Please contact us at foi@ndis.gov.au if you have any questions or require help.

Yours sincerely

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Robert (RIA421) Senior Freedom of Information Officer Information Release, Privacy and Legal Operations Branch Reviews and Information Release Division

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ATTACHMENT A

Your review rights

Internal Review

The FOI Act gives you the right to apply for an internal review of this decision. The review will be conducted by a different person to the person who made the original decision.

If you wish to seek an internal review of the decision, you must apply for the review, in writing, within 30 days of receipt of this letter.

No particular form is required for an application for internal review, but to assist the review process, you should clearly outline your grounds for review (that is, the reasons why you disagree with the decision). Applications for internal review can be lodged by email to foi@ndis.gov.au or sent by post to:

Freedom of Information Section Information Release, Privacy and Legal Operations Branch Reviews and Information Release Division GPO Box 700 CANBERRA ACT 2601

Review by the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner

The FOI Act also gives you the right to apply to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) to seek a review of this decision.

If you wish to have the decision reviewed by the OAIC, you may apply for the review, in writing, or by using the online merits review form available on OAIC’s website via: OAIC Web Form, within 60 days of receipt of this letter.

Applications for review can be lodged with the OAIC in the following ways:

Complaints to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner or the Commonwealth Ombudsman

You may complain to either the Commonwealth Ombudsman or the OAIC about actions taken by the NDIA in relation to your request. The Ombudsman will consult with the OAIC before investigating a complaint about the handling of an FOI request.

Your complaint to the OAIC can be directed to the contact details identified above. Your complaint to the Ombudsman can be directed to:

Your complaint should be in writing and should set out the grounds on which it is considered that the actions taken in relation to the request should be investigated.

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