Nematian and CEO, National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIS)

What the record established

Ms Nematian has fibromyalgia, musculoskeletal impairments and migraine, alongside psychosocial impairments.

Her treatment record was not thin. On the psychosocial side it ran to five named psychologists, four named psychiatrists and seven named antidepressants with an antipsychotic [64]. That count answered the Agency's argument that further therapy had been recommended and was therefore available: the recommendations “are not, at least generally speaking, new treatment ideas.”

She also went back to one of the report authors whose recommendation was being used against her, and asked him to state the purpose of the treatment he had recommended. That supplementary report, filed in April 2025, closed the permanence question on the impairments it covered [67].

Where it stopped

Exercise. The Tribunal found that the exercise treatment in her record had tended to help but had not been sustained, and fibromyalgia and the musculoskeletal impairments lost permanence at [127].

The barriers were in evidence and did not save it. A program that would not re-enrol her [109]. Medicare session caps [59]. The Tribunal's answer was the public pool, which sat untried [110]. Migraine failed separately at [138], on Botox that had not been trialled.

The consequence did not stop at permanence. Because functional capacity is assessed only against impairments that are permanent [141], the pain-related mobility and self-care evidence went with it, discarded at [170] and [179].

Social interaction survived, on evidence that she usually requires assistance and physical accompaniment to take part [175]. She entered the scheme there. The pain file established nothing.