WRMF and National Disability Insurance Agency [2019] AATA 1771 was an application in respect of a reviewable NDIA decision, which required the Tribunal to consider whether sexual therapy at a cost of about $10,000 per year is a reasonable and necessary support for an applicant diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
The Agency argued that the applicant was seeking the services of a replacement sexual partner. However at [3] the Tribunal noted:
The applicant does not seek the services of a sex worker. Rather she seeks the services of a specially trained sex therapist, a term which I have used to draw attention to an important difference. She seeks those services not because she does not have a life partner (although she does not have or expect ever to have a partner). As will appear from the confidential section of these reasons, a partner from the community would be unlikely, because of special features of the case, to be willing or able to provide the kind of services the applicant requires in order to obtain sexual release. Nor, if she ever found a partner, would she be able to sexually stimulate the partner, because of matters referred to in the confidential reasons. Her condition also prevents her from masturbation.
At [49] was noted the Agency’s argument that the support is more appropriately funded out of her disability support pension. However the Tribunal said that disability support pension is not paid in order to provide funding for the purposes for which the NDIS was established.
The he reviewable decision was set aside and the matter remitted for reconsideration with the direction that the support claimed, at the level claimed, is a reasonable and necessary support.