Selkirk and National Disability Insurance Agency

This matter concerned an application for review before the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, brought by Selkirk against a decision of the National Disability Insurance Agency. The core of the dispute revolved around whether the Tribunal had jurisdiction to review a decision by the Agency not to appoint a plan nominee or a correspondence nominee for a participant under the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

The legal issue before the Tribunal was the interpretation of specific provisions within the National Disability Insurance Scheme Act 2013 (Cth), particularly sections 99, 86, and 87, and whether the phrase "a decision to appoint a plan nominee" and "a decision to appoint a correspondence nominee" as listed under section 99 as reviewable decisions, encompassed decisions *not* to appoint such nominees.

The Tribunal, applying principles of statutory construction, considered the ordinary English meaning of the words, their context within the Act, and the overall purpose of the legislation. It found that the ordinary grammatical meaning of "a decision to appoint" signifies an affirmative or positive step to make an appointment, rather than a refusal or decline to do so. The context of section 99, which lists specific reviewable decisions rather than all possible decisions under nominated sections, further supported this interpretation. The Tribunal concluded that the legislative intent was to limit reviewable decisions to affirmative appointments, aligning with the ordinary and contextual meaning of the terms.

Consequently, the Tribunal determined that it did not have jurisdiction to review the Agency's decision not to appoint a nominee, as such a decision did not fall within the scope of the reviewable decisions as defined by the Act.