The carers of residents living in a New South Wales disability facility have won a landmark pay dispute against the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA).
The Federal Court has dismissed the NDIA's appeal to avoid paying $1.5 million to charity organisation Nardy House.
The organisation has been footing the bill for registered nursing care since October 2019, when the NDIA notified three residents at Nardy House that their funding for registered nurse care would be cut.
The families of those residents took the NDIA to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) to ensure the cost of care by registered nurses was met by the agency.
The AAT overturned the decision in December last year and ordered the NDIA to pay Nardy House for the care provided, backdated to October 2019, at a cost of more than $1.5 million.
The NDIA contested this decision in the Federal Court, but its appeal was denied on Thursday by Justices Wendy Abraham, Debra Mortimer and Thomas Thawley.
Nardy House chief executive Denise Redmond said the result was a "huge win".
"It's been a long battle to get the services that people with this level of need actually require to live reasonable lives," she said.
Ms Redmond said the financial and emotional impact of the court proceedings took a toll on the residents involved.
"These carers have already been through the trauma of putting the person they love in care," she said.
"Then they [were] confronted with a withdrawal of the high level of services that they know their person requires."
The Federal Court said it denied the appeal for many reasons, one of which was that each respondent was "a person with severe to profound disabilities" who was "significantly reliant" on those who cared for them.
The three respondents, who cannot be named due to legal reasons, were aged 28, 40 and 46 at the time of the AAT's decision.
Each live with complex disabilities and chronic health conditions.
The NDIA appealed the AAT's decision on the basis that it had preferred the evidence of an expert witness from the respondents' side rather than one of its expert witnesses, registered nurse and Southern Cross Healthcare director Barbara Merran.
Ms Merran told the AAT she was concerned about the distribution of funds between different service providers and said she did not understand why Nardy House should get more funding than other providers.
"I don't think they're any more important than anybody else with a profound disability living in shared support," she said in her evidence to the tribunal.
The Federal Court agreed with the AAT's judgement that Ms Merran gave her evidence in a "subjective manner" and had a "personal interest in the promotion of the delegated model of care by reason of her being a director and shareholder of [Southern Cross Healthcare]".
The court also ordered the NDIA to pay the three residents' legal costs on or before December 1 this year.
In a statement to the ABC, the NDIA said it had noted the Federal Court decision and was considering its response.
The agency also said its "priority remains ensuring every participant receives the full disability-related support they need".
