Butler and National Disability Insurance Agency

What happened

Butler and National Disability Insurance Agency was a review of a funding decision under the National Disability Insurance Scheme. The agency challenged expert reports from two physiotherapists that had been prepared with AI assistance. The system used was not identified on the record.

What emerged in evidence was narrower than a fabrication case and more awkward. At least one practitioner acknowledged that AI had aided drafting. Citations in a report required correction by another witness. And the author could not confirm who had inserted the phrase describing the supports as the minimum necessary, which was the phrase the funding question turned on.

What the tribunal did

The tribunal in Butler affirmed the decision under review, holding the disputed supports were not reasonable and necessary under section 34(1) of the relevant Act. It found one practitioner unconvincing in her evidence and gave the AI-assisted reports reduced weight. It imposed no sanction.

Its statement of principle is narrow and quotable, and it is more permissive than the outcome suggests. The tribunal took no issue with AI used to reduce to writing the observations and assessments made personally by the practitioner. The practitioner must, however, be responsible and accountable for the content of a report.

That is close to the line the Standard draws. Transcription of the expert's own observations is not the problem. Being unable to say which words are yours is.

Where it stands

Butler was decided on August 28, 2025. No appeal was located as of September 28, 2026.

It belongs beside the New South Wales practice note requiring leave before a generative system is used in an expert report, as the two Australian approaches to the same question: one by rule in advance, one by weight after the fact. Matter of Weber reached a comparable result in New York by a third route, rejecting the analysis outright when the expert could not account for how it was produced.

The obligation it engaged

Clause 2, non-delegation, is what Butler engages most directly. The opinion, its basis and its limitations are the expert's alone. A practitioner who cannot say who wrote the operative phrase has not met that standard, however sound the underlying assessment may have been.

Clause 7, contemporaneous record, is what would have answered the question Butler turned on. The tribunal asked who inserted a phrase. That is a question a record answers in seconds and memory answers badly, and the reports lost weight partly because no record existed to settle it.

Sources

• Hallucination Cases Database (Damien Charlotin) · September 28, 2026
  Butler and National Disability Insurance Agency

What could not be confirmed

Which system was used is not stated in the decision. The findings as to each of the two practitioners named in the proceeding should be checked line by line against the decision before either is described separately; the reading relied on here did not cleanly separate them, and the file number is recorded as 2023/6289.