NDIS Appeals at the AAT

Once you have made your application to the ART, the next step is a confirmation from the ART. They will respond to your application with two documents;

1. A letter confirming they have received the application and some general information
2. A notice of the first case conference (please note if the decision relates to NDIS Access e.g. becoming a participant, this may be called a case management directions hearing).

The NDIA will also be in touch to let you know who your contact for the ART appeal will be, this may be a lawyer or a case manager. You should keep these contact details so you can ask them for things between conferences.

Four to six weeks later you will be sent the “T documents” (also called T-docs). These are all the documents that the NDIA have on file that they used to make the decision under review, and they can be hundreds of pages long.

It is important to remember that the NDIA contact handling your ART Appeal does not have any information about you except what is in the T-docs. Have a read of the T-docs and see whether they include everything you have provided to support your case. What if there are documents missing from the T-docs? If you check the T-docs and they don’t include all the relevant assessments and reports, you can ask your NDIA contact to issue “Supplementary T-docs” with the missing documents. You should be specific about which documents, so that they have the best chance of locating them.

The ART can arrange for meetings to be held over the phone, by video, or in person. If you have a preference or need a particular format for accessibility you should request this in advance. We describe the main types of first meetings below.

• Case conference (This may be called a case management directions hearing if your matter is regarding access) – a meeting to talk about the appeal. The NDIA will attend, and so will a conference registrar from the ART. You will talk about what might help to resolve the issues you disagree on. The conference registrar is NOT a decision maker, they try to help you and the NDIA work out how to resolve the appeal so it doesn’t have to go to a final hearing at the ART.

• • Before the case conference the NDIA contact will often send a “Statement of Issues”. This explains their position about the appeal, and will be discussed during the conference, so reading through this will help you understand what they are likely to say. If the conference is less than a week away and you don’t have this, you can email the NDIA contact and ask them for it, to make sure you have time to read through it.

• Things to remember about the case conference:

• • There will probably be a number of them. It is very unlikely the appeal will resolve at the first conference. It is more likely that the NDIA will ask for more information from you, and a date will be agreed for you to provide it. Then another conference will be booked in for after that date.

• • You don’t have to agree to anything. If you are being asked to do something and are not comfortable with it, you can say you need to think about it. Normally the ART will give you a few days.

• Interlocutory hearing – most people won’t have one of these. If one of these has been booked, it will be held before an ART member (who is the decision maker) to decide on issues of procedural law, such as whether the ART can hear the appeal.

• Directions hearing – this is a hearing before an ART member. A directions hearing is about how the case is going and what happens next, it is not about the issue itself.

• Hearing – this is like what you see on television. There are two sides, you and the NDIA. Both sides explain their case and can bring witnesses to give evidence. The member listens to both arguments and makes a decision. That decision might be made on the day, but it is more likely that it will come sometime later.