Proof Committee Hansard

COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA 

Proof Committee Hansard 

JOINT COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC ACCOUNTS AND AUDIT 

Commonwealth risk management—Auditor-General's report No. 18 (2015-16) 

(Public) 

WEDNESDAY, 30 NOVEMBER 2016 

CANBERRA 

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HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

JOINT COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC ACCOUNTS AND AUDIT 

Wednesday, 30 November 2016 

Members in attendance: Senators Smith and Ms Flint, Mr Gee, Mr Hart, Mr Hill, Ms Madeleine King. 

Terms of Reference for the Inquiry: 

To inquire into and report on: 

Auditor-General's report No. 18 (2015-16)—Qualifying for the Disability Support Pension

WITNESSES 

BROWNE, Mr Miles, Senior Lawyer, Victoria Legal Aid ................................................................................... 1 

BUTT, Mr Matthew, Executive Officer, National Welfare Rights Network ...................................................... 1 

CHARKER, Dr Jill, Deputy Secretary, Program Design, Department of Human Services ........................... 10 

GUTHRIE, Ms Fiona, Chief Executive Officer, Financial Counselling Australia ............................................. 1 

HALBERT, Ms Cath, Group Manager, Payments Policy Group, Department of Social Services ................ 10 

HEHIR, Mr Grant, Auditor-General, Australian National Audit Office ......................................................... 10 

JAFFIT, Mr Ivan Leonard (Len), Program Manager, Commonwealth Entitlements Program, 

Civil Justice Access and Equity, Victoria Legal Aid ........................................................................................ 1 

KAIROUZ, Ms Edel, Executive Director, Performance Audit Services Group, Australian 

National Audit Office ........................................................................................................................................ 10 

KELLY, Ms Michelle, Group Executive Director, Performance Audit Services, Australian 

National Audit Office ........................................................................................................................................ 10 

NEWMARCH, Ms Eileen Anne, Financial Counsellor, Care Financial Counselling Service .......................... 1 

PITT, Ms Janine, General Manager, Participation and Disability, Department of Human Services ............ 10 

TOZE, Ms Cathy, Director, Disability Program, Department of Human Services ......................................... 10 

WILSON, Ms Serena, Deputy Secretary, Department of Social Services ........................................................ 10

Wednesday, 30 November 2016 JOINT Page 1 

BROWNE, Mr Miles, Senior Lawyer, Victoria Legal Aid 

BUTT, Mr Matthew, Executive Officer, National Welfare Rights Network 

GUTHRIE, Ms Fiona, Chief Executive Officer, Financial Counselling Australia 

JAFFIT, Mr Ivan Leonard (Len), Program Manager, Commonwealth Entitlements Program, Civil Justice 

Access and Equity, Victoria Legal Aid 

NEWMARCH, Ms Eileen Anne, Financial Counsellor, Care Financial Counselling Service 

Committee met at 08:35 

CHAIR (Senator Smith): I declare open this public hearing of the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and 

Audit for its inquiry into Commonwealth risk management based on the Auditor-General's report Qualifying for 

the disability support pension. The committee resolved to conduct the inquiry on 13 October 2016. 

Welcome and thank you for giving evidence today. Although the committee does not require you to give 

evidence under oath, you should understand that this hearing is a formal proceeding of the Commonwealth 

parliament. Giving false or misleading evidence is a serious matter and may be regarded as contempt of 

parliament. I also remind all witnesses that in giving evidence to the committee they are protected by 

parliamentary privilege. It is unlawful for anyone to threaten or disadvantage a witness on account of evidence 

given to a committee and such action may be regarded as a contempt of parliament. This hearing is public and is 

being recorded by Hansard. It is also being broadcast live. 

Given the private and personal nature of the cases involved with the program, I would ask witnesses to please 

refrain from making comments that may lead to a person being identified to protect the privacy of individuals. I 

now invite brief opening statements from each organisation represented here today and the committee will then 

proceed to questions. 

Mr Jaffit: Thank you for reading our submission and providing the opportunity to appear today. In 2015-16, 

Victoria Legal Aid provided legal advice on Centrelink matters on more than 2,000occasions, frequently in 

relation to one of the two levels of external review. In addition, we represent eligible clients in their appeals 

against Centrelink decisions. The vast majority of work that VLA undertake in this space is in relation to 

disability support rejections or cancellations. At the outset, I would like to take this opportunity to highlight the 

following areas of concern. Firstly, in our view, better information being given to applicants and better decision 

making by Centrelink at an earlier stage would reduce unnecessary hardship to people experiencing disability and 

would reduce costs to the community. The high set-aside rates for decisions at all stages of appeals set out in the 

ANAO report demonstrate that, but for better information and an opportunity to provide relevant medical 

evidence, many people who should be receiving disability pension are missing out on the correct entitlements for 

significant periods of time. Better information at an earlier stage also assists applicants to decide to not pursue 

unnecessary and unmeritorious claims or appeals. For our clients, most appeals to the last stage of the AAT 

appeal process are settled prior to hearing and the settlements for our clients are generally favourable, largely due 

to the opportunity to provide relevant medical evidence. 

The impacts on our clients of delays in being granted disability pension or being placed back on Newstart 

following an incorrect cancellation are significant given the differences in rates. Those caught up in this process 

often find it very distressing. The delays increase risks of eviction and homelessness, and cause additional 

challenges for those unable to work and trying to meet expenses related to their disability such as medical 

treatment, transport costs, particularly travel in regional areas. 

We also have specific concerns about the operation of the program of support requirements. While we see the 

benefit of programs to assist people into the workforce who have permanent disabilities, there are some people 

that will not be able to be assisted by a program of support due to their permanent impairments. We understand 

that this is the reason for the exemptions that are allowed under the determination. However, there are some issues 

with this mechanism that mean that on many occasions these provisions act either as an unreasonable barrier or as 

something that only has the effect of significantly delaying a person who is unable to support themselves through 

work being able to access the disability pension. 

We see many clients where the medical evidence leads to a conclusion that their permanent conditions would 

mean that a program of support either would not enable them to improve their work capacity or would prohibit 

them from engaging in a program of support. However, as the relevant exemptions cannot apply unless a person is 

engaged in the program of support as at or prior to the date of claim these important, sensible and logical 

exemptions simply cannot be considered. 

PUBLIC ACCOUNTS AND AUDIT COMMITTEE

Page 2 House of Representatives Wednesday, 30 November 2016 

Finally, I would like to note that the comments made in the ANAO report around information for applicants 

reflects our own experiences. It would be beneficial for applicants to have a better understanding of the medical 

requirements and types of medical evidence that would assist a decision maker. We also see significant benefit in 

providing copies of the impairment tables at the earliest possible stage. A lack of information limits the ability of 

Centrelink applicants to properly assess whether a claim or appeal is worth proceeding with and to determine 

what evidence might assist Centrelink to come to the correct decision in a timely fashion. My colleague and I 

would be pleased to answer any questions the committee may have. 

Ms Guthrie: I thought it might be helpful for the committee if I just quickly explain what financial 

counsellors do because it is not generally understood in the community and sometimes we are confused with 

financial planners, which is completely the other end of the spectrum. They are helping people who have money 

to invest. Financial counsellors are helping people who have got into some sort of financial hardship and that is 

not because they are not good at managing money; it is generally because people have lost their jobs, they have 

become sick, their relationship has broken down, or, very sadly in a country as rich as Australia, they are living in 

poverty because the level of Newstart in particular is very low. 

Our job is to help people get back on track and that might be around renegotiating repayment arrangements 

with creditors, getting hardship arrangements or debt waivers or advice about bankruptcy. It might even be 

challenging the contract because there is some lending that we see which is actually unconscionable and unfair in 

the first place. That is what we do. There are 800 of these wonderful people in Australia. Every day they are 

dealing with these sorts of situations. So I think we are well placed to provide the committee with some input into 

this inquiry, which is why we are so pleased to be here. 

Very briefly, our submission was relatively short and we just touched on three things. Firstly, we talked about, 

in a practical sense, the lengthy periods while someone is waiting for a DSP to be assessed and how that can 

exacerbate financial hardship. Secondly, we talked about some issues that we see with the way the assessment 

criteria are applied. Thirdly, we commented on the goal of the system overall, saying that really it should be to 

provide support to people who need it, and we do not think that that goal is being met at the moment. 

In my job, I am the CEO of the organisation. I was a voluntary financial counsellor 30 years ago. I found that I 

would go home and worry about the clients too much. I was not very good at the boundaries, so I am very happy 

in the role of supporting the profession and trying to advocate for a fairer marketplace. I suspect that Eileen here 

on my left will probably be able to provide you with more practical input than I will because she does the job day 

to day. Our submission was informed by those kinds of experiences. 

Mr Butt: Good morning. The National Welfare Rights Network is a network of community legal services 

which provide free legal assistance in Centrelink matters. Our members work day to day and a large part of their 

work is with people claiming disability support pension or seeking to appeal decisions to reject claims or cancel 

entitlements. 

The main things I would highlight for the committee this morning are the following. First of all, in our view 

there really needs to be a public transparent evaluation of the new claims assessment process. There are two 

aspects to that: the first is the replacement of the treating doctor's report with a single sheet of advice about the 

information a claimant should supply; the second aspect of it is, effectively, a two-step medical assessment 

process—the first step by a Centrelink employed job capacity assessor and the second step by an externally 

contracted doctor. Again, we think there is a range of aspects of both steps of this process that need to be 

evaluated, and I have tried to highlight some of those aspects in our written submission. 

The second matter I would raise for the committee is that the current evaluation of the impairment tables be 

made public when finalised and that there be a process for getting input into that process from stakeholders, 

especially disability advocates and organisations. The third thing is that I would support the submission from 

Victoria Legal Aid highlighting the importance of improved information for claimants of the disability support 

pension. There are challenges here for Centrelink, of course, because of the very high volume of decision-making 

in this area, but I think there are opportunities for improving the level of information and there are benefits to that, 

including hopefully enabling people to make more informed decisions about whether to appeal or not. There is a 

lot of appeal activity in the system. 

The last thing I would highlight is the particular issues for service delivery in relation to the disability support 

pension in remote Aboriginal communities. The Auditor-General's report canvassed the administration of the 

system more generally, but there is a real need for the Department of Human Services and the Department of 

Social Services to come back and look at service delivery options for remote communities to make sure that the 

right decisions are being made. That is partly the difficult question of resourcing for the Department of Human 

Services, but it is also partly a matter of looking for more innovative ways to, for example, collect information 



from community clinics and community nurses and ensure that accurate decisions are being made. They are the 

matters I would highlight for the committee this morning. 

CHAIR: Great. Thanks very much. We will now move to questions. 

Mr HART: Firstly, I would like to thank you for your submissions and for your attendance today. Certainly, I 

have found it of great assistance in understanding the audit report and the issues that we are facing today in 

reading the submissions and hearing from you this morning. Victoria Legal Aid has made a very strong 

submission around the importance of making the correct decision at the earliest stage possible. It has highlighted 

the fact that there are difficulties in providing correct information. Can you describe what you are seeing with 

difficulties in providing the correct information? Are there any suggestions that you could make for 

improvement? 

Mr Jaffit: We tend to see matters at the appeal stage, at one of the external tribunals. That is where the bulk of 

our work is done and the majority is done at the General Division of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. What 

we are finding is that most of the people we see have no understanding of what the central issues are prior to at 

least the first tier of external review—what used to be the Social Security Appeals Tribunal. They are unaware of 

what a program of support even is. They have no understanding that it is a barrier to their claim irrespective of 

anything else. They have a doctor who is telling them that they have permanent disabilities and they cannot work, 

and they think that is sufficient. There is a complete absence of relevant information at the very early stages, 

which I think would serve two purposes: firstly, ideally it would assist in cutting down on the need for appeals in 

many cases; secondly, it would lead to better decision-making at an earlier stage. Applicants would be in a 

position to provide what is the correct evidence and make informed decisions about whether they should be 

applying for a disability support pension or, for example, testing their eligibility for and the appropriateness of a 

program of support prior to lodging the claim for disability pension, instead of putting themselves on track for an 

extended delay of what can be one to two years before they find out what the real issues are. 

Mr Browne: For example, in the impairment table that relates to the lower limb function, one of the key 

assessments is about getting five points. You can only get five points if you cannot stand for more than 10 

minutes. The difficulty is that that discussion is not going on with clients. They are focused on whether or not 

they are going to have knee reconstruction. That is what Centrelink is asking them: 'Is the condition going to 

improve in the next two years?' If you sit down and look at the tables with them, then you are going to actually 

have a quite different discussion, which is: 'What's the point in running around trying to get a specialist opinion 

on treatment when in fact you were never going to be eligible for disability support pension in the first place?' 

That type of information is not being provided to applicants at an early stage; therefore, there are a lot of, as Len 

described, appeals in the system and clients running around doing work that they really would not do if they knew 

that information. 

Mr HART: So we have got some potential flaws in the decision-making process. Incorrect information is 

being supplied, or an incorrect understanding of the process at the very base. I am curious about the key reasons 

that you are seeing for decisions being overturned. Enlarging on the theme that you have developed so far, is that 

as a result of correct information not being supplied in the first place or a complete misunderstanding as to the 

process, or is it a combination? 

Mr Browne: I would say it is two things. The first is: as an appeal progresses, you tend to get a much better 

idea of what the issues are, and one of the things that Legal Aid is able to do is to provide a specialist report 

addressing criteria in the tables. Obviously that is hugely useful for a decision maker, and that is not going on 

earlier in the process, for the information reasons that we have talked about. The second question is whether or 

not early decision makers are equipped to make decisions taking into account the approach being taken by the 

Administrative Appeals Tribunal to legal issues around the interpretation of the tables. There is also scope for 

tools to assist decision makers to make consistent decisions that reflect the approach being taken by the 

Administrative Appeals Tribunal to a very complex set of tables. 

Mr HART: I think that is of great assistance to me in understanding the situation. Some of the issues that we 

are considering today are about targeting of reviews. Do you consider that the reviews that you are seeing, which 

people are seeking advice on, are well targeted? Are there opportunities for improvement in the targeting of those 

reviews? 

Mr Jaffit: It is probably difficult for us to comment because we only see the ones where the review leads to 

an unfavourable decision from our client's perspective. We do not really see the full picture. But we certainly see 

a lot of people that have been reviewed, for one reason or another, where, once we are able to get specific and 

tailored medical evidence—as Miles pointed out—and address the legal issues about the interpretation of the 



tables, we often get very different outcomes. So I would be loath to comment generally on the targeting, because 

we only see a very small bit of it, but the bit we see is probably not well targeted on all occasions. 

Mr HART: Would any of the other witnesses like to comment on that issue? 

Ms Newmarch: I have not seen a lot of people with reviews, but I do know that even the idea of a review 

creates significant anxiety even in the population that are not up to current review. They come in and they are 

going, 'There's these changes to DSP.' I think one of the things that gets left out of the story is the overwhelming 

nature of people's anxiety related to their income support when they are receiving it and that, even for people who 

are not targeted, that anxiety passes through to that population. 

Mr Butt: I think there has been some media about some poorly chosen reviews. In my opinion, that largely 

reflects legacy issues about Centrelink's records. People who were granted the payment before job capacity 

assessment processes often have fairly minimally documented reasons for the grant. I think that is the major 

reason why there have been some cases in the media where the person really was inappropriately selected for 

review. Generally speaking, Centrelink's processes are robust in terms of the reviews. It is an extremely 

distressing, stressful process for the people who go through it but I think that the process for selecting is pretty 

robust. The process for going through the review process is being done quite well in the circumstances. There is a 

good process for involving social workers in appropriate cases. 

Mr HILL: You have knowledge that we have not been able to understand. What do you see as the criteria that 

guides the reviews? Many submissions say they are completely non-transparent and no-one understands why 

people are being reviewed. Do you have information you could assist us with? 

Mr Butt: I think the departments will speak to you later and they are best placed to identify the criteria in 

particular. I understand that a range of criteria are being used that are reasonable in the circumstances. 

Mr HILL: But you do not know what they are? 

Mr Butt: Some of them are to do with age, work history, declaration of employment income, nature of 

disability. I think those are all reasonable criteria to narrow down the group. 

Mr Browne: We see a lot of the under 35 review, which is obviously a government policy. We also see 

reviews occur due to clients being overseas for longer than 28 days. That can lead to a review because applicants 

apply for unlimited portability which then leads to a complete review of their impairment as against the tables. 

Some of the difficulties we see there is that clients are not aware or are making decisions whilst overseas about 

whether or not to initiate a review and are not aware that it may lead to a cancellation of their DSP, and we see 

that happening. We also see clients who travel overseas often identified for review of the basis that a person with 

a disability may well have trouble travelling overseas frequently. Whether or not that is appropriate is a matter for 

Centrelink but those are examples where we see reviews occur. 

Mr HART: There is some commentary in the Victorian legal aid submission with respect to what is described 

as a new process for assessing claims. There has been a changed process. What used to be an 11-page application 

has now been consolidated to one page. On the general theme of the reliability of material that guides the decision 

maker, do you want to make any comments about the new process? I understand that you have some views that 

the new process may not be of assistance to making accurate decisions. 

Mr Browne: The ANAO report noted that the job capacity assessments were well supported by evidence. Our 

concern is that might cease to be the case under the new system. The process that is proposed is one—Ben talked 

about it in his opening statement—where there is no initiated document that provides detailed evidence about a 

person's medical condition which is focused on the criteria for disability support pension. I am sure the committee 

would probably be interested to see how complex the application process for the disability support pension is if 

you were not already aware of it. None of that medical evidence is there. So I guess we have a strong concern that 

the process is not focused and geared towards good decision making and that decisions are then made by 

government contracted doctors. Again we are concerned that any tools for good decision making around applying 

the law may not be applied as effectively by medical assessors outside the Centrelink system. 

Mr HART: Thank you. That is of considerable assistance. 

Ms MADELEINE KING: Thank you for coming in today and thank you for your submissions. First, you 

might clarify your statement. Was it, 'Delays in assessing entitlements to the DSP increase the risk of eviction and 

homelessness.' Is that what you meant? Was it that the assessment process increases that risk? 

Ms Guthrie: I think what we meant was: there was a flow-on effect, because people are living on a much 

lower level of income, and they are already in financial hardship, so it is exacerbated by that uncertainty. People, I 

know, have to plan, of course— 



Ms Newmarch: I think that, when people go on to Newstart allowance, waiting for the disability pension, they 

have often come from paying rent and having loans—having a car loan, maybe—et cetera. And suddenly they are 

forced to live on Newstart allowance with a disability. Sometimes that can be a physical injury but, within a few 

months, the person can rapidly escalate into depression because all these other things have happened to them: they 

have lost their car; they have lost their house; they are under threat of eviction; and they are living on Newstart 

allowance with that disability. So any delay in assessing the disability just adds to their living stresses. 

Ms MADELEINE KING: Certainly. 

Ms Newmarch: Some of the people we see have pretty amazing circumstances in terms of how they have, just 

through an accident or illness, gone from— 

Ms MADELEINE KING: From having a stable kind of lifestyle, I suppose— 

Ms Newmarch: Yes: from being stable, earning an income and doing what other people do, to having to live 

on Newstart allowance while they wait for this assessment. 

Ms MADELEINE KING: Briefly, to follow up: you put it in terms of being at risk of eviction and 

homelessness; have you seen it move from risk to actual homelessness and eviction of tenants? 

Ms Newmarch: Often the people end up in supported accommodation, refuges or things like that while they 

are waiting for public housing because the public housing waiting lists are so long. They are usually given priority 

for public housing in these circumstances, but, if they do not have family support, they will usually end up in a 

refuge or something like that. But they are under stress, too—the lack of availability of that housing. So, yes, they 

get into pretty dire circumstances very quickly. So the quicker they can get the disability support pension, which 

is a much higher rate of payment, and access to public housing, the better their lives. 

Mr HILL: I want to go back to the review side of things. I am reading from the National Welfare Rights 

Network's submission. It states clearly that, in your view, the criteria for the review should be transparent and 

publicly available, which does suggest that you do not know what they are. But, anyway, we have dealt with that. 

In terms of the timeliness of reviews, one of the consistent issues which has come through in the submissions is 

that people have 21 days, for what is quite a scary kind of process for many people—21 days to provide 

responses—and that this is causing distress and anxiety. Again, to quote from the National Welfare Rights 

Network's submission: 

Many find it very hard to meet short timeframes for providing further evidence, due to the need to make appointments to see 

doctors and specialists to get up to date medical information. 

I am just curious as to whether there is any additional commentary around that timeliness side of things, because 

it does seem to go to the public administration of these reviews, not the targeting or policy criteria, and whether 

there are particular cohorts of vulnerable people who you feel are affected by this and any alternative processes or 

changes that you think might be sensible for us to consider? 

Mr Browne: I see a strong argument for providing more time. If there has been identification of reviews 

through a process, then arguably you could provide people with six months' notice of a review. Again, we would 

emphasise the importance of providing impairment tables. There are new impairment tables. That is the reason 

why the reviews are occurring. Many applicants who were successful under old tables will not have the medical 

evidence that is required to assess their disability under the new tables. I particularly would consider that people 

with an intellectual impairment or an acquired brain injury will likely have been assessed under the old tables, 

without the need for a neuropsychological report, for example. Obtaining those reports for a person with those 

disabilities in a regional area is hugely difficult. They may have to wait up to a year for specialist reviews in the 

public health system or obtain private funds to pay for reports that normally are above $1,000. So, obviously, 

legal aid is able to assist with this. But a system where those people would have six months' notice of what was 

likely to occur would allow them to make their own arrangements to establish and justify the reason why they are 

receiving disability support pension. I think that would be the main point in relation to time lines and information. 

Mr HILL: So people with neuropsychological or mental illness and also people in regional or remote areas 

have particular difficulties? 

Mr Browne: That is right. If you have a condition that has not been reviewed—even a knee condition, for 

example—by a specialist in five or six years, Centrelink will require you to provide—that is my understanding or 

certainly in the cases that we see—an up-to-date specialist opinion on whether there is now surgery available. If 

you are in the public health system, in the regional area, my experience with my clients is that they are being told 

it is a very long wait time for that specialist review. Obviously, they can go into the private system but is that 

realistic for people on a very low payment? 



Mr HILL: I think many people would be astounded if they could get an appointment with many medical 

specialists in the private system within a week or two. 

Mr Browne: It is outside my experience. It is just that they are the issues we hear from clients, that they have 

trouble arranging specialist appointments that might be required. 

Mr HILL: There is a sense, I think, to quote the VLA, that the new claims process is inimitable to good 

administration, and the Welfare Rights Network was concerned that it does not deliver value for money. Could 

you expand a little more on whether there are any specific suggestions for improvements or whether you think it 

is really six or 12 months in, given the growing concerns, that an independent review would be sufficient? 

Mr Butt: I can address that in a couple of respects. I think it is true to say it is early days. There has been a 

full financial year since the new process was rolled out but, as the committee will know, there is usually a backlog 

of disability support pension claims. We have not actually had a full year of claims under the new process so I 

think it is true to say it is still early days. Subject to that and to the need for a full evaluation, there are a couple of 

core issues. One is, as we all know from most of our dealings with government, government generally uses 

standard forms to ensure consistent information is obtained from people that is relevant to the decisions it needs to 

make. That is the process it used to obtain and does not now. 

There are a lot of questions to be raised about whether there was a sound reason for abandoning the use of a 

standard form. The basic reasons are that primary medical records, generally, will not contain information 

relevant to the very unusual and particular assessment that needs to be made of eligibility for the disability 

support pension. There were problems with the existing form. I can certainly understand the department's 

perspective that doctors would often not answer the questions in a way that was most useful. But I think the 

answer to that was to consider reforming the form and modifying those questions. That is the change to the 

information process. 

The second aspect is the second stage medical review by a government contracted doctor. In our experience so 

far, with that, most of those reviews affirm the decision by the Centrelink assessor. That is because Centrelink 

assessors are enforcing a tough set of rules and not erring on the side of granting where there is uncertainty. Very 

few of the claims that proceed to disability medical assessment are, in our experience so far, being changed. The 

departments might be able to enlighten you on the exact statistics. 

That, obviously, raises the question of value for money. There are a lot of unnecessary reviews, because every 

single favourable assessment goes to a second stage review. And there are a lot of questions about whether that is 

an efficient way to proceed. 

Ms FLINT: Could each of you give us an idea of how many of these matters you are dealing with, in the 

overall scheme of the people you are assisting—what percentage does it make up, in terms of your clients? I 

think, Ms Newmarch, you said it was not a huge number of people coming to see you who have specific issues in 

this area, but I note your submission, Mr Butt, that this makes up a significant part of your members. I am just 

wondering if you can give us a ballpark figure of the percentage of people seeking assistance with these matters 

for each of your organisations? 

Ms Newmarch: When you say there are not a lot people seeing us about these matters, most of our clients are 

on Centrelink of one form or another but we do see people outside that. Many of them are already on disability 

support pension, but we do see some of them who are going through the struggle of getting access to it. While 

they are a small proportion of all the people who come to us, for some of them it can be considerable. The ones I 

have seen have mostly had mental issues, often on top of physical issues, and they really struggle to get 

paperwork together and things like that. Anything they have to do is a real struggle for them. They struggle to get 

out of bed, so when someone says, 'Please fill out this form,' or 'Please provide this information,' or whatever, it is 

a real struggle for the few who are still going through the process. But we do see a lot of people who are living on 

disability support pension and living on Newstart allowance. 

Mr Butt: Our members are legal services, which are freestanding, so these are not actually our statistics. The 

interesting thing about the work that our members do is that it is dealing at both the claims level—so at the 

Centrelink level—and at the tribunal, or appeal, level. I would certainly say that the majority of the work they do 

at the appeal level and report back to us on is disability support pension appeals. That would be a very large 

proportion of it—in my experience, having previously worked in one of those organisations—but I could not give 

you the numbers as I stand here. 

Mr Jaffit: I am unable to give exact numbers either. Our systems are not designed to distinguish different 

matter types easily. I can say a couple of things. Certainly the bulk of our work in relation to Centrelink appeals at 

either of the tribunal levels is in relation to disability support pension rejections or cancellations. We have a 



weekly advice service that at we run at the general division of the AAT, with up to five appointments a week. It is 

not unusual for three, four or five of those appointments to be about disability support pension. It is pretty unusual 

for less than half to be—so, again, the vast majority. Unfortunately I do not have exact data but, having worked in 

this space for a long time from a number of different directions, including for what used to be the Department of 

Social Security in their appeals unit, my understanding is that 20 or 30 years ago roughly 30 per cent of appeals at 

the AAT were medicals. It looks like that figure is now edging up towards 50 or 60 per cent. That is an indication 

that it is becoming more and more about the disputed decisions. 

Ms FLINT: In your submission you say that you have: 

… provided legal advice on 2,090 occasions in relation to Centrelink matters. On 670 of these occasions this advice related 

specifically to review by Authorised Review Officers (“ARO”) and on 585 occasions in relation to review by the AAT. 

So you think approximately 50 or 60 per cent of those would then specifically related to disability support? 

Mr Jaffit: I would think so. I just want to apologise. I think there is a bit of an error in that. I think the 

reference to the authorised review officers includes the first tier of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. I think 

there is a typographical error in there. 

Ms FLINT: Okay. No worries. 

Mr Jaffit: And the reference to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal is the general division of the AAT. It is 

the way our matter codes are structured, the way we collect the data. 

Mr HART: I have two supplementary groups of questions. Mr Butt, in your submission you made some 

observations about the efficiency and effectiveness of the new DMA process. You refer to one case where: 

… the claimant waited months for the DMA only to be told by the GCD on arrival at the appointment that it was obvious 

from the paperwork that they were eligible. The appointment lasted a matter of minutes. 

You go on to say: 

This type of issue is a consequence of the policy setting that all non-manifest cases in which a JCA indicates potential 

eligibility for the DSP are referred for a DMA assessment. 

Can you elaborate on that for us please. 

Mr Butt: Just by way of brief background, when someone lodges a claim for the disability support pension, a 

certain proportion of those claims are granted without further assessment. Those are called manifest cases. There 

is a list of conditions which are regarded as manifest, including, for example, terminal illness. If not manifest, it is 

referred for an assessment by a Department of Human Services assessor—that is a job capacity assessment. In our 

experience, the majority of claims fail at that point. If, however, the job capacity assessor believes that the 

claimant meets the medical requirements for the disability support pension, under the new process, all of those 

cases are referred for a disability medical assessment. 

Obviously, those cases will form a spectrum and, in some of those cases, for example, the claimant may have 

been close to manifest or quite clearly qualified. That is the underlying issue in the example given in the 

submission. In that case, without going into detail, the claimant—in my opinion, the way the diagnosis was 

expressed, if it had been expressed differently it may well have been regarded as manifest. They were certainly 

severely and permanently disabled but, because the policy setting is for universal review, they had to wait for that 

review. 

Obviously, the outcome overall was favourable, but it feeds into the concerns you have heard from other 

people here today about timeliness. In our experience, a lot of the delays in the system are the wait between the 

job capacity assessment and the disability medical assessment. That also causes a lot of stress, because there is not 

a lot of visibility between the Department of Human Services and disability medical assessments, so it is hard for 

people and for Centrelink staff to find out when the appointment might be, how long—that is the timeliness side. 

Obviously—I raise it for this committee because, for public administration, there is a question of efficiency and 

cost benefit there. 

Mr HART: The other question is to Victorian Legal Aid again: I am particularly interested in your 

submission headed 'Failure to consider case law and the legislative instruments and, in particular, consequences 

for system design and/or design of the application process. Would you like to tell us the nub of your submission 

with respect to that issue—that is, that the requirement and condition be fully diagnosed and in particular the 

qualification period. 

Mr Browne: The ANAO made some, I think, really helpful comments and recommendations in relation to 

policy guidance and training products for decision makers, and reviewing appeals to work out whether there were 

lessons to be learnt from those appeals. The examples that we have pointed out in our submission are ones that 



come up in many of our cases—for example, there is a requirement for applicants making an application based on 

a disability related to their mental health to now be fully diagnosed by a psychiatrist or a clinical psychologist. 

What we were seeing were people making applications without that diagnosis and having their application 

rejected, despite having a long history of treatment from a psychologist and through medication. There was an 

important AAT decision around 2½ years ago which said: 'It's fine to get a diagnosis at a much later date after 

you've made your claim for disability support pension confirming that you have this condition so long as you can 

provide evidence that you have been treated.' What we saw was the impact of that decision, which is huge, not 

flowing through to the decisions at the lower level at job capacity assessments and that type of thing in the way 

that Centrelink was making decisions. 

The other example is, as you allude to, often because the person is not aware of the criteria for disability 

support pension, they will provide medical evidence at a later date. We see examples of decision makers being 

very reluctant to look at that evidence because, on face value, it is describing their condition six months after the 

claim was made; however, in reality, that condition has not deteriorated or improved in that time so the evidence 

can certainly be used, and the Administrative Appeals Tribunal has made it clear it can be used to evaluate the 

person's level of impairment at the time they made their claim. So it is that type of nuanced decision-making that 

we see can be problematic as an appeal goes through the process and may require going to the very end for that 

decision-making or for those decisions to be applied. 

Mr HART: Are there any changes that you would suggest, particularly with respect to system design of the 

process that is being followed by Centrelink? 

Mr Browne: I would just think more rigour with the decision-making tools and a focus on getting decisions 

right both ways—not just avoiding grants that are incorrect but making sure that when you reject a grant you are 

making the correct decision based on the law. 

CHAIR: What performance information do you believe would be useful to publicly report on the 

administration of the DSP? 

Mr Jaffit: It would certainly be useful to have some raw data, it would be useful to have some transparency 

around the DMA process, and it would be useful to have a clear review of the DMA process and whether it is 

actually achieving anything positive in one direction or the other. 

Mr Browne: I would like to see a review of the DMA process. What I am concerned about is that you are 

going to see initial job capacity assessment recommendations of a grant, refusal, potentially, as a result of the 

DMA process and then the person coming back through an appeal process and then ultimately being successful. If 

that is occurring, I think that is problematic. 

Mr Butt: Grant reject rates, timelines and timeliness, including broken down by job capacity assessment stage 

and disability assessment stage, outcomes from job capacity assessment and disability medical assessment by 

primary medical condition, and appeal statistics by primary medical condition. That would provide a richer view 

of where perhaps the pressure points are in the system. Some of those may be particular areas of medical 

conditions—I think the myalgia and fibromyalgia chronic pain conditions are extremely difficult assessments and 

there might be something to be learned from patterns of appeal and decision-making in relation to them, for 

example. 

Ms Newmarch: I would like to confirm that I think the patterns according to primary condition would be 

useful to know for rejections, appeals et cetera, as well as the data on the time that it takes for assessments. 

Ms Guthrie: I just make the general comment that access to data and transparency are fundamental to good 

administration. They are also something we are seeing as a trend in the private sector. The more access we can get 

to data, the more useful it is in all sorts of different ways. So anything we can do to shine a light on the way DSP 

works would be good in a broader sense. 

CHAIR: If fully implemented as proposed by the Australian National Audit Office, do the recommendations 

that are proposed go part way, some way or all the way in alleviating the concerns that you have raised through 

your submissions? 

Mr Butt: I think they go a significant way, and I think it is really pleasing that the departments have agreed to 

implement those recommendations. The two main areas of our concerns that would not be addressed by 

implementation of those recommendations are the new assessment process and the need for a much closer look at 

service delivery in remote Aboriginal communities. 

Mr Jaffit: We would agree that they go some way to a significant way; I would concur with my friend said. 

We still have some concerns around the mechanism of the program of support and not really meeting what was 



indicated in the initial second reading speech. There are a lot of people that simply will not benefit but are being 

barred from access to the disability pension. 

Mr Browne: I guess there is also a concern not just with the experience of the individuals but running around 

going to service providers and being provided services, services being funded for people who are not going to 

benefit from those services, and doctors being approached to provide medical assessments. It seems that there is 

some significant scope to simplify that process and allow for substantive assistance as opposed to there being a 

logistical difficulty with people not having gone to see a program and support provider. This is a complex issue 

that we go into detail in this submission, but it is certainly an area which is not addressed in detail but is certainly 

hinted at in the ANAO report. 

CHAIR: Ms Guthrie? 

Ms Guthrie: I have nothing to add. 

CHAIR: Ms Newmarch? Thank you very much for making time to attend the hearing and give evidence to the 

committee today. If you have been asked to take any question on notice—I do not think there were. 

Ms Guthrie: No. 

CHAIR: But if you were, the committee would appreciate a response within three weeks from today. The 

secretariat will be in contact if the committee has any additional questions. Thank you much and best wishes for 

Christmas. 



CHARKER, Dr Jill, Deputy Secretary, Program Design, Department of Human Services 

HALBERT, Ms Cath, Group Manager, Payments Policy Group, Department of Social Services 

HEHIR, Mr Grant, Auditor-General, Australian National Audit Office 

KAIROUZ, Ms Edel, Executive Director, Performance Audit Services Group, Australian National Audit 

Office 

KELLY, Ms Michelle, Group Executive Director, Performance Audit Services, Australian National Audit 

Office 

PITT, Ms Janine, General Manager, Participation and Disability, Department of Human Services 

TOZE, Ms Cathy, Director, Disability Program, Department of Human Services 

WILSON, Ms Serena, Deputy Secretary, Department of Social Services 

[09:28] 

CHAIR: I now welcome representatives from the Australian National Audit Office, the Department of Social 

Services and the Department of Human Services. Welcome to the hearing and thank you for giving evidence 

today. Although the committee does not require you to give evidence under oath, you should understand that this 

is a formal proceeding of the Commonwealth parliament. Giving false or misleading evidence is a serious matter 

and may be regarded as a contempt of parliament. I also remind all witnesses that in giving evidence to the 

committee they are protected by parliamentary privilege. It is unlawful for anyone to threaten or disadvantage a 

witness on account of evidence given to a committee. Such action may be regarded as a contempt of parliament. 

This hearing is public and is being Hansard recorded. It is also being broadcast live. I now invite you to make 

brief opening statements. The committee will then proceed to questions. Mr Hehir, would you like to make a 

statement? 

Mr Hehir: I will say a few words. Effectively managing risks to achieve the aims and objectives of 

government programs and activities is a longstanding requirement of public sector administration. One of the 

guiding principles of the recent reform of the Commonwealth resource management framework is that 'engaging 

with risk is a necessary step in improving performance'. And one of the stated expected long-lasting benefits of 

the reform agenda is a 'more mature approach to risk across the Commonwealth'. Risk is an integral part of the 

audits we undertake. We are currently undertaking a cross-entity audit of the management of risk in line with the 

priorities indicated by the JPCAA. 

Managing risk is central to assisting an organisation to set and achieve its strategic objectives, comply with 

legal and policy obligations, improve decision making and effectively allocate and use resources. Within this 

context, the audit we are discussing today talks about the fact that the department set out to reduce new grants of 

DSP and, in the process, taper DSP expenditure—estimated at over $17 billion in 2016-17. DSP grants have 

fallen over the time period. A focus on evaluation of the efficiency and effectiveness of the changes would 

provide an assurance that this result was in keeping with legislation. It would also assist in informing government 

about the cost/benefit of the eligibility processes and the likely impact and associated risks of making further 

changes to the impairment tables. 

The audit also highlighted that the possibility of a recipient being required to undergo a medical assessment as 

part of a compliance review was low. Human Services could improve the targeting of medical review activity for 

the large number of DSP recipients who are not covered by the review of under-35-year-olds, including through 

drawing on medical and impairment risks identified during the claims processes. The audit made four 

recommendations to assist in improving the administration of DSP eligibility and review processes, including risk 

profiling, to better identify recipients whose medical conditions have a greater prospect of improvement. 

CHAIR: Thank you, Mr Hehir. Ms Wilson, would you like to make an opening statement? 

Ms Wilson: The Department of Social Services welcomes the opportunity to address the committee and to 

provide information about the Commonwealth's risk management approaches and governance arrangements as 

applied to the disability support pension. As the committee will be aware, DSS has policy responsibility for the 

disability support pension, while the Department of Human Services is responsible for service delivery. DSS 

takes the management of risks to program integrity and program outlays very seriously and continuously seeks to 

strengthen program controls through budget measures, in conjunction with delivery by the Department of Human 

Services and assurance mechanisms they administer. 



DSS worked cooperatively with the Australian National Audit Office over the course of the 2015-16 audit 

qualifying for the disability support pension. When the audit report was completed, DSS agreed the 

recommendations and welcomed the ANAO's findings. DSS's policy initiative has strengthened the targeting of 

DSP, and eligibility processes applied by the Department of Human Services are in keeping with legislation. I 

would note that the ANAO audit report covered the period up to 2014-15. 

I would like to take the opportunity to provide the committee with updated figures on the DSP population, as 

per our written submission. The report included the population figure as at 30 June 2015 for DSP of 814,391 

recipients. As at 30 June 2016 the DSP population has fallen to 782,891 recipients. 

CHAIR: Thank you. Ms Charker? 

Ms Charker: No, thank you. 

CHAIR: Mr Hill, would you like to start with questions? 

Mr HILL: I have a series of questions, firstly, in relation to targeting of reviews. The ANAO has suggested 

DHS could better target reviews and track people based on presently held information. Submissions gave 

examples of severely disabled recipients having their payments reviewed or cancelled, where DHS would often 

eventually concede a mistake in commencing a review and conclude it. Given DHS's failure to make a 

submission—and I note now failure to make any opening statement and provide anything of assistance to the 

committee at the outset—I will, at the end of this hearing, table a large list of questions for detailed response 

around the targeting side of things. My first question is: are the criteria for targeting made publicly available to 

improve transparency and to reduce the fear and anxiety that we heard earlier from the NGOs is caused by these 

reviews, and, if not, why not? 

Dr Charker: The criteria are not currently made publicly available. There are, as you would very much 

appreciate, significant individual differences which, even if a particular criterion were met, may have different 

meanings for different individuals. So we take a risk based approach to identifying a set of criteria and we do not 

simply use one criterion; we use quite a large set of different criteria to identify people who may be in scope for 

review. In the more recent budget measure around the additional medical reviews that you are aware of we have 

since undertaken additional review of the initial risk profiling and the initial set of selection criteria we developed 

to further refine our initial take. We have now looked at developing a second process of looking at the criteria we 

developed to try to particularly identify additional criteria which could indicate someone who is already 

manifestly eligible for DSP which the initial set of criteria might not have readily picked up. So, to answer your 

question, no, we do not publicly publish the selection criteria, because there are quite a number of them and the 

effect of them will differ according to a particular person's individual circumstances. And we are continually 

looking at reviewing them and trying to improve them to much better profile and target people we think might be 

most appropriate for medical review and try to avoid inaccurately or inappropriately targeting people who are 

more likely to be, for example, manifestly eligible. 

Mr HILL: In picking up on your risk based approach, could you advise us of how targeting people who are 

living in full-time state supported residential care for a review of their DSP status—and we have had a number of 

submissions that that is what is occurring—fits with your published advice that the department will use a risk 

profiling based approach to select people for review? What particular risks are being engaged in these instances? 

Dr Charker: I think the challenge that your question points to is that when we develop a set of selection 

criteria and we apply that to all the records of current DSP recipients that we hold we are of course dependent on 

the quality of the information in the systems. There are instances in which people have been in receipt of DSP for 

a number of years and often who commenced DSP before newer electronic systems were developed where we 

simply do not have complete information about a person's circumstances. For example, we may not know that 

they are in nursing home care. We may not know that they have a particular condition that might make them 

manifestly eligible, as being in nursing home care would, or a number of other characteristics of their condition 

would make them manifestly eligible. 

Mr HILL: I understand that. You have mentioned nursing homes. What about full-time state residential care, 

given that there have been a number of cases in the media in recent months and in submissions? 

Dr Charker: I would have to check with a colleague of mine on that. 

Mr HILL: We are talking about 24/7, multiple years, fully paid for by the state. 

Dr Charker: I understand. 

Mr HILL: There is a pretty high bar to jump before you get to that point. 

Dr Charker: I appreciate that. 



Ms Toze: We actually do not capture the state based accommodation in our system at the moment, which is 

why you will find that some of those people— 

Mr HILL: That is surprising to me, because in Victoria in 2013 the then Liberal government, the minister, put 

through some legislative changes, effectively to screw rent assistance out of the Commonwealth, and my 

understanding is that now for people in state residential care in Victoria you pay rent assistance to the Victorian 

government for their care. So, can't you identify that from your system? 

Dr Charker: As we said, no, we cannot, I am sorry. 

Mr HILL: So you do not know who you pay rent assistance to? You could not do a search on everyone who 

has paid to the Victorian government and triage it that way? 

Dr Charker: I am sure that in a separate component of the system or a separate system which manages that 

we may have that capability. But in the context of identifying the recipients of DSP and their characteristics, we 

are unable to do that. 

Mr HILL: So, if you persist with reviews of people living in state residential care as part of this risk managed 

process, would it be more efficient and reduce anxiety for recipients and wasted reviews—because there seems to 

be a lot of waste in these instances—if other approaches were trialled, such as doing some data sharing with the 

state governments that you pay rent assistance to, visiting residences, conducting preliminary assessments and 

having a human being walk around these places? You can tell with a glance or by having a GP with you that these 

are obvious. 

Dr Charker: It may well be. I would seek some advice from my policy colleagues in DSS, who clearly own 

the policy around this, as to their views on an appropriate way to implement. We would normally work with them 

very closely. But, to the extent that there were the policy authorisation for such an approach, then clearly DHS 

would look at doing that and implementing that. 

Mr HILL: One of the issues coming up in the audit, in your answers and in some of the submissions is this 

line between 'manifest' and everything else. Understandably the legislation at the moment defines 'manifest' quite 

tightly and specifically, but there were suggestions in the audit—I am paraphrasing—that people could be better 

tracked based on their information and prioritised review and so on. How do DHS's systems and procedures allow 

for serious and non-treatable but non-manifest conditions to be identified and recorded and—the second part 

would be—the prioritisation or scheduling of periodic reviews graded according to the seriousness of the 

condition or likelihood of recovery? The point of those questions is: if you read all the submissions and have a 

look at what is going on, there will be a cohort of people who may not, under the current definition, fit 'manifest', 

but blind Freddy knows they are not going to get better. Yet they seem to be undergoing regular reviews, running 

up Medicare costs and wasting their own time to produce prove the bleeding obvious. 

Dr Charker: I will give you an initial couple of thoughts on that and then I might ask a colleague for some 

detail. It is certainly true that many people who are in receipt of DSP are not manifestly eligible according to 

those criteria, as you pointed out. It is also true that many people in receipt of DSP, however, do have some sort 

of severe disability or impairment that is preventing them from functioning and working more than 15 hours 

every week. The current process for that to be assessed and then recorded on their file essentially involves the 

person—let us say that they are being reviewed—submitting raw medical information to the department at the 

initiation of the review process. We will write to them and explain to them that we are doing the review. We will 

provide them with a medical evidence fact sheet, a treating health professional consent form et cetera. When they 

provide us with that raw medical evidence, that is actually reviewed by a DHS-employed health professional or 

allied health professional. Part of that initial assessment is to say, 'Based on that initial set of info, is this person 

likely to be manifestly eligible?' Clearly, if they are, the case is finalised and the DSP payment would continue. 

If, however, that is not the case, which goes to your question about things that are not manifestly eligible, the 

department will then undertake the job capacity assessment that you have touched on. That is where severe 

conditions which are not going to meet the manifestly eligible criteria but are severe, and also other conditions, 

will be assessed under the current 2012 impairment tables. If the result of that job capacity assessment is that a 

person obtains at least 20 points under the impairment tables, particularly under a single impairment table, they 

are likely to be classified then as having a severe disability. That, combined with standard income and assets 

testing, which of course the DSP also involves, is likely to lead to them being in receipt of it. Importantly, as I 

understand it, those conditions which have been articulated which have led to that severe impairment assessment 

will be recorded on their file going forwards. Essentially that is the process by which we will assess severe 

conditions which are not necessarily meeting the criteria for being manifestly eligible. 



Mr HILL: On the medical evidence requirements, on that part of the process, we have heard from some 

submitters that the evidence, as stated on the review letters and the sheet, appears extensive and detailed and more 

than is necessary. Why can't people then obtain a medical certificate or something confirming, from the treating 

doctor, their eligibility? 

Dr Charker: This is where I will ask a colleague of mine to provide you with a bit more detail, but just as an 

initial comment: about 18 months ago, that process was changed—to your point. We now ask people to provide, 

in effect, all the raw medical evidence that they have. That is then assessed by the DHS-employed health 

professional or allied health professional that I touched on before, in the context of a job capacity assessment, or 

potentially then referred to a government medical officer, a doctor, for completely independent review of all the 

evidence. The difficulty that we have is: from a medical certificate or from a condensed report, it is actually very 

difficult to get a sense sometimes of the functional impact of a particular condition. So, sometimes two people can 

have a similar disability medically by way of diagnostic condition, but functionally that can actually affect them 

in different ways. I will ask Ms Toze for a bit more detail about why that has changed and why that process was 

adopted. 

Ms Toze: In terms of the raw medical evidence, as discussed before, the removal of the previous medical 

report occurred from 1 January 2015 and was progressively implemented for new claims until 1 July 2015. When 

we are assessing a claim for disability pension or, in these cases, the reviews of disability pension, a medical 

certificate from a doctor will go some way to helping that assessment of eligibility for disability support pension. 

What we are looking for is information about the diagnosis of the condition and the prognosis and treatment the 

person has undertaken for that particular condition or conditions. We have actually established a triage team of 

health professionals, particularly for these reviews—and I will talk about those first—who look at the conditions 

that we have recorded on our system for people and make an assessment on— 

Mr HILL: Just to clarify and check that I heard you correctly, so, on 1 January 2015 the process was changed, 

whereby you need to now provide all the raw medical evidence they have—your words, I think— 

Ms Toze: Yes. 

Mr HILL: And that can be assessed and triaged and so on. A medical certificate may go some way but it is 

not sufficient, because you need to get the functional impact. Minister Tudge said on Today Tonight on television 

last Friday that: 'In many cases it will be as simple as going to the doctor and getting a certificate and informing 

us of that.' So how do you reconcile your advice that you actually need to provide raw medical evidence with the 

minister's claim that you do not? 

Dr Charker: Both things may well be correct. Depending on the nature of the condition the person has, 

whether the person has extensive previous medical testing, medical history, or not, it may well differ. It may well 

be that a medical certificate potentially is required, if that is the totality of the raw medical evidence. Or it may 

well be that there is additional medical evidence that needs to be provided, as well. 

Mr HILL: From the submissions and the cases it seems to be very confusing, because DHS officers—and this 

has happened in my electorate office and in submitters; we have all heard it—are consistently telling clients that 

they have to provide everything on the sheet I am holding, and there is no discretion. I have spoken to a 

Centrelink manager and he said, 'I have seen the medical file and I know this family. This kid has been in state 

care for 15 years. No, you have to go to the neuropsychologist and you have to get specialist reports,' and you 

have to waste time and run up Medicare bills. Yet it does not reconcile with what you are saying, and the minister 

says something different. 

Dr Charker: I am sorry, but I can only reiterate what the process is that we administer, which is that where 

someone has a particular condition they believe is relevant to their claim to DSP, or if they are being reviewed for 

the continuation of DSP, we ask them to provide all the relevant medical raw evidence that is relevant to their 

claim. The extent of that will clearly differ from person to person. 

Mr HILL: Where does the delegation sit within DHS? What discretion do officers have to vary the level of 

evidence required for those undergoing reviews, or to accept a lower level of evidence than set out on the sheet? 

Dr Charker: I would have to check that. 

Ms Toze: The delegation is certainly with officers at the front line and also through that job capacity 

assessment process, as well, to make a decision about whether the evidence presented—not an exhaustive list— 

meets the requirement to be able to assess eligibility for DSP. To give an example, with somebody with a mental 

health condition—which I think was referred to earlier—who may have been out of contact with a psychiatrist for 

a short period while they have been on DSP, we can actually ring and verify medical evidence if we were to 



receive a medical certificate. So we do not need reams of medical evidence in all cases. We make contact with 

doctors and treating health professionals. 

Mr HILL: But you said at the outset that they need to provide all the raw medical evidence they have, which 

is then assessed. 

Dr Charker: Relevant to their claim, that is right. 

Mr HILL: I can understand why the general community is confused. I have got more questions, but we will 

share the call around. 

CHAIR: Mr Hehir, would you or any of the officials of the audit office like to make any comments on the 

evidence you have heard thus far from the Department of Human Services? 

Mr Hehir: No. 

Ms Wilson: Perhaps there is something that I should clarify about manifest grants and what the status of those 

and the criteria for those are, which might be of some assistance to the committee. It is probably quite important 

to understand that the terms and criteria around manifest grants are not in fact legislated. It is a policy guidance. 

As my colleague, Dr Charker, identified, there can be variability from person to person. But in terms of current 

policy, for the purposes of DSP, the term 'manifest grants' means grants made where policy allows a DSP claim to 

be determined based on the presenting of medical evidence without the need for further assessment. So, it is to 

short cut the process for those where it is clearly evident that they have and would have, under any circumstances, 

an entitlement to DSP. 

Manifest grants may be made where a person: 

has a terminal illness (life expectancy of less than 2 years with significantly reduced work capacity during this period), 

has permanent blindness (meets the test for permanent blindness for social security purposes), 

has an intellectual disability where supporting evidence clearly indicates an IQ of less than 70, 

has an assessment indicating the person requires nursing home level care, 

has category 4 HIV/AIDS, or 

is in receipt of a DVA disability pension at special rate (totally and permanently incapacitated (TPI)). 

Two lists of medical conditions are available to help decision makers determine whether a person falls within some of the 

above manifest categories— 

Which I have just mentioned. For example, how do I assess whether somebody has a terminal illness, what 

nursing home level of care is involved and/or the intellectual disability or IQ criterion? 

Those processors were improved and clarified around 2002 in response to some recommendations from the 

Commonwealth Ombudsman, which the Department of Social Services and Centrelink took on board in updating 

and providing more guidance to decision-makers about whether or not somebody meets the manifest criteria. 

Within DHS, and my colleagues have already mentioned the health professional advice unit and the health 

professionals that they employ within DHS, that unit is available to help decision-makers with considering those 

criteria as to whether somebody meets the manifest criteria under policy and does not need to proceed to further 

assessments. I just thought that might be of some help to the committee. 

CHAIR: If I could just turned to the implantation of the audit recommendations. Dr Charker, could you just 

give us an update in terms of where the implementation of those recommendations are up to and any additional 

work that Department of Human Services has thought necessary arising from the implementation of those 

recommendations? 

Dr Charker: There were, of course, four recommendations, as the committee would be aware. We fully 

accepted and have fully or partially implemented all four of them. A couple of them related only to DHS; a couple 

of them are joint between DHS and DSS. Of course, my DSS colleagues can provide their input into those which 

pertain to them. In relation to recommendation 1, which was the DHS to review the guidance that we provide to 

assessors on the level of detail included in job capacity assessment reports and requiring delegates to clearly 

specify any changes that they make to job capacity assessment reports, we advise that this audit recommendation 

is now fully implemented by DHS. 

We have implemented and published training and revised procedures which clearly outline the level of detail 

required in job capacity assessment reports. We have updated several of our internal so-called operational 

blueprints, which are quite detailed internal instructional material, to ensure that our job capacity assessors have 

clear and current guidelines on assessing work capacity using the impairment tables and undertaking a job 

capacity assessment. The assessors receive regular training— 



CHAIR: I will have to attend a division in the Senate. I would like you to continue but this is the point I 

would like to make. I am curious to know why the Department of Human Services thought it unnecessary to make 

a submission. I acknowledge it is not mandatory but this is exactly the sort of information that would have been 

very useful for our deliberation and the following seven to 10 minutes could have been used on other issues. 

Please continue. It is useful; it is necessary. But I would like an explanation to the deputy chair why the 

department thought it unnecessary to make a submission. 

Dr Charker: I apologise for any inconvenience that has caused. To continue in outlining the progress against 

the audit recommendations, recommendation 1B, which was requiring delegates to clearly specify any changes 

they make to job capacity assessment reports, has also been fully implemented. We have provided instruction on 

the requirement for people to clearly document any changes that they have made. We have developed a training 

package to advise delegates of the steps to follow should they disagree with a job capacity assessment report and 

the action to be taken should they need to override it. 

Recommendation 2 was for DHS in conjunction with DSS to include options in risk profiling to better identify 

recipients whose medical conditions have a greater prospect of improvement. We also have fully implemented 

this recommendation. We continually work with DSS closely to ensure risk profiling and review processes are 

appropriate and we continually work to refine these in light of the current risk based medical review activity. 

To implement this recommendation, we have actually got two separate activities which are relevant. One is that 

we run a departmental wide— 

ACTING CHAIR (Mr Hill): I will just check with the members. Clearly you are reading so you could table 

this in follow-up. Would you prefer to ask another question or use up government time on this? It is up to you. 

Because I know both of you had questions. 

Ms FLINT: I am waiting for a response because otherwise I may well be asking questions that are going to go 

precisely to these points. 

ACTING CHAIR: I can go to one of you after you have finished and then we can go back because the chair 

and I agreed we would share time rather than alternate people between government and opposition. 

Dr Charker: In relation to recommendation 2, there are two separate activities which are relevant to 

implement this recommendation. The first is that we run at department wide customer compliance program which 

looks at risk indicators across all our programs. Work has been done in recent months to refine indicators used to 

identify non-income related potential risk to payment integrity. The second stream of activity is the current budget 

measure which was announced in the 2016-17 budget about medical risk based reviews of DSP recipients. We 

drew on the results of the previous under 35 2014-15 budget measure work as well as expertise in service 

profiling from our service colleagues to identify a set of what we think are more sophisticated risk indicators to 

identify recipients suitable for review. 

Recommendation 3 was that DSS and DHS develop a more complete set of external and internal performance 

measures for the effective delivery of DSP and that we both agree a more consistent approach to the collection 

and publication of income support recipient data. We have partially implemented this audit recommendation 

because it is joint with DSS so we are working with DSS to implement it. I will defer obviously to DSS 

colleagues to talk about that. 

On 3A, we are working to develop new internal operational and management information reports. We are 

developing a revised key performance measure for DSP claim timeliness with DSS to take into account the recent 

changes to the DSP assessment process which have been canvassed already today. A task force which looked at 

the end-to-end DSP claim process has recently concluded and we are now implementing some of its 

recommendations, which include centralising the reporting function, developing DSP productivity targets and 

identifying required staffing levels to manage DSP inflows. 

Recommendation 3B is about the more consistent approach to the collection and publication of income support 

recipients data. This recommendation is also partially implemented at the current time. We are continuing to have 

bilateral discussions with DSS on that specific element of the recommendation, looking at trying to expand the 

range of data which is publicly available on data.gov.au. We have also agreed business rules around the manifest 

data. 

ACTING CHAIR: That was covered in the DSS submission. Is there anything else to add before you address 

the chair's question before he left? 

Dr Charker: The last thing was a brief update on the final ANAO recommendation, recommendation 4, 

where we have part of partially implemented—that is, a joint action item—with DSS as well. In relation to the 

chair's question, the specific question around why we had not provided this and tabled it in a submission, we 



formed a view—which I accept may not have been ideal, from your perspective—that the policy lead for the DSP 

is the Department of Social Services. We would simply follow the policy directions, which are set by government 

through the Department of Social Services for implementation in our department. 

ACTING CHAIR: Who made that decision? 

Dr Charker: Within the department, we made that decision. 

ACTING CHAIR: Was the minister's office or the minister consulted? 

Dr Charker: I believe we advised the minister that that was our intention. 

ACTING CHAIR: From the committee's point of view at least, from my point of view and, I think, judging 

from the chair's comments, that was regrettable or an error of judgement in that the policy-led submission waffled 

around and outlined a bit of the process and they set policy, but a significant part of this committee's role and the 

audit report goes to the administration, the delivery, the efficiency, the effectiveness—which is clearly in your 

basket—so I do not know how you could have expected the policy lead to actually address half of these issues. 

Dr Charker: Just to be clear, we did not expect DSS to address service delivery issues. We simply wanted to 

clearly remain focused on the fact that DSS is the policy lead. For submissions around aspects of a particular 

program we would normally defer to the policy department. 

Mr GEE: I had a question but I think you have largely answered it. I would echo those comments that have 

been made. It is regrettable that the submission to this committee was not made. I think you should have. 

Ms FLINT: I wonder if DHS or DSS could comment on a few of the ANAO findings or statements that the 

DSS reports little or no information 'about the efficiency, effectiveness and economy' of the DSP or processes, 

such as job capacity assessments—this is in relation to recommendation 3—and that DHS and DSS have been 

publishing different figures, with a lack of consistency, on a number of DSP recipients. I wonder if you agree with 

those statements or whether you want to comment, generally, on them? 

Dr Charker: In terms of a couple of comments, I suppose, we do not necessarily meet our own claims 

timeliness key-performance measure, and we noted that the timeliness result in quarter 1 of 2016-17 was 66 per 

cent against a provisional benchmark that we aim for of 70 per cent for new DSP claims processed within 49 days 

of the claim being lodged. 

We noted that the ANAO did acknowledge the complexity of assessing DSP eligibility and that we assess over 

100,000 claims each year. From our perspective, we are continually trying to do what we can to improve the 

timeliness. It is a very complex assessment process. Of all the claims that we administer in the department, DSP is 

one of the more complex, partly because of the enormous variability and the amount of information required for 

the department to establish whether a person is actually eligible for a claim and, as we have talked about before, 

there can be a number of steps in that. There can be an initial assessment. It can often lead to a job capacity 

assessment, which is done by the department. If that is still not yielding a clear ability for the assessor to 

determine eligibility, it will proceed to a government contracted doctor independent medical assessment. So the 

timeliness aspect, there, can be quite challenging. 

We noted the ANAO's comment about opportunities for the department to analyse the accuracy of eligibility 

decisions and understand the reasons for changes to decisions and improved decision-making. We certainly agree 

with that. We pay great attention to outcomes of review processes, whether they are internal reviews in the 

department or they are done by the AAT. We pay attention to the outcome of those processes, particularly where 

they have resulted in a change to the initial administrative decision which was made. We clearly pay attention to 

what has changed and whether that means we could have improved processes in some way. 

To your final point, the ANAO articulated that DHS and DSS publish different numbers of claims assessed 

each year in the annual report. That is because the two departments capture different sets of information relevant 

to their particular area of focus. DSS is more focused on program and customer outcomes, as is entirely 

appropriate. For DHS the focus is on service delivery. In other words, we pay particular attention to the 

transactions process, through the process, not the outcomes for a particular customer, though the difference 

between the two is about one per cent. 

ACTING CHAIR: Did you have any further questions on that point? 

Ms FLINT: No. 

ACTING CHAIR: I will go back to the opposition questions. There are a series of questions around the time 

and the cost burden being imposed on recipients being reviewed to gather medical evidence. We have had a 

number of submissions on that point. To start with, is 21 days the standard time frame that is given to all people 

being reviewed to respond with requested information? 



Dr Charker: Yes, it is. When we write to someone who is selected for review, we do ask them to provide that 

information in 21 days. 

ACTING CHAIR: Who decided on that time frame? 

Dr Charker: I presume the department. It would be a standard process, a standard that we use. 

ACTING CHAIR: Take that on notice about where it was decided. 

Dr Charker: Certainly. 

ACTING CHAIR: Does the time frame take into account the delays in Australia Post letters being received? 

It is from the date of the letter, and we had a number of submissions pointing out that letters are received often 10 

days later now with delays, particularly in regional and rural areas. 

Dr Charker: My understanding is it would need to include any delay that is experienced in the mail system. 

ACTING CHAIR: So in setting that time frame—whether it was you, the minister, consultation or however it 

was set; you can come back to us and outline precisely where that was approved—how did DHS factor in the 

number of reports, costs and time for people with disabilities to arrange reports in the program design phase? 

Dr Charker: In terms of the intent of your question, I do not think we could say that we had an algorithm to 

come up with a magical figure of 21 days and allow for a particular number of reports. There is clearly not that 

level of sophistication in a statement of 21 days. What is really important to note though, which can get lost, is 

that we really recognise that for a number of people that time frame does not work, so we have options to support 

people for whom it does not work. We can actually extend the time frame, which is the most helpful one. We can 

directly contact treating health professionals for a person. Often that is actually quite helpful. So instead of their 

having to act as the intermediary, if you like, we can directly contact, with their agreement of course, the treating 

health professional ourselves. We can use our own medical practitioners and our own allied health professional 

workforce as well to expedite some aspects of the assessment process if we can. So we would simply ask that if 

someone is really concerned about the 21-day limit that they contact us within that period on the main number— 

13 32 17 or whatever it is—and there is a particular option 3 on that line that will put them straight through to a 

special DSP support team to deal with this issue. 

ACTING CHAIR: It is good to hear and to have on the record those other two options, because I have not 

heard them promoted before. I have never been advised of them in the multiple cases I have raised with 

Centrelink so that is good to know. With that being a standard time frame, do you actually believe, or is there any 

evidence, that people can obtain and attend appointments with medical specialists and obtain a specialist report 

within that period of time? 

Dr Charker: I do not have evidence to that effect one way or another, other than to note that there certainly 

are people who provide us with the medical evidence that they may already have on hand in many of those cases. 

To illustrate, we have commenced nearly 13,000 medical reviews this financial year under the medical review 

measure. We finalised almost 2,000—let me get the exact number for you. We finalised about 2,000, who have 

been reviewed and assessed as remaining eligible; another 1,100 were finalised without a job capacity assessment 

or disability medical assessment et cetera. Clearly, of the ones that have been initiated to date, a number of people 

have been able to provide what we need. 

ACTING CHAIR: Do you have a percentage of the people sent a review letter who seek and are granted 

further time to respond? 

Dr Charker: We would have to take that on notice. 

ACTING CHAIR: Certainly some of the submitter experience and our experience suggest that a significant 

percentage—I do not know if you would say the vast majority—seek further time to respond. I am mindful of the 

previous audit report that shows the Centrelink phone waiting times have blown out. That is an issue, that people 

have to sit there on hold, chewing up your phone queue time to get an automatic extension to an unreasonable 

time frame. It does seem to be something that is worthy of a recommendation that would just take some wasted 

effort out of the system by giving people a more reasonable time. 

The other issue I wanted to raise is the criticism we have received from a number of medical specialists. There 

are a number of letters I can table or, if they are deemed confidential, share with you, which you probably have on 

file. What response does DHS have to the criticism of medical specialists regarding two points: the lack of 

targeting of reviews, which is seen as a complete waste of time for all concerned and a traumatic exercise for 

families, and, again, the advice from medical specialists of the clear impossibility of obtaining specialist 

information within 10 to 15 days? 



Dr Charker: On the latter, if there is really significant concern about getting information that a person does 

not already have—noting that some people already have this information—then I would just restate the comments 

I made before about really encouraging people to contact us to seek an extension or find another way for us to 

help them get that information. 

On the first issue, which is really around the targeting: as we touched on earlier, we have been doing quite a lot 

of work to try to refine the targeting. We started off with an initial set of criteria and then, based on just an initial 

set of cases that we have commenced this financial year, we went back and have now improved a lot of the 

targeting. We still struggle with the issue that I touched on before, which is that our targeting is as good as the 

information that we have on the system to support the actual selection process. So if we do not have indicators on 

the system which indicate, for example, that a person may in fact be manifestly eligible because of a particular 

attribute that their condition has or that they have, then we may, unfortunately, pick up a small number of them, 

but we are looking to try to find other indicators which together might indicate that someone is actually quite 

likely to be manifestly eligible, and we then undertake additional checks of that person before we then initiate the 

review. 

CHAIR: Thanks, Acting Chair Hill; I am back now. 

Mr HILL: You said some people have this information on hand. I am looking at the medical evidence 

requirements sheet and, again, the submitter experience. The advice from DHS/Centrelink to people continues to 

be that it needs to be current medical evidence—that they will only give weight to medical evidence within a 

recent time frame, even if it is close to a manifest condition. So, again, that seems to be misunderstood and to 

contradict—and we have dealt with the previous point about a medical certificate versus real medical evidence— 

the consistent signal sent out, which is: you have to get current medical evidence; you have to go to your doctor; 

things have to be done recently. The dot points are voluminous: 'formal diagnosis'; 'When was each medical 

condition diagnosed?'; 'The name, qualification and contact details of the professional who made the diagnosis'— 

which is kind of difficult when you are talking about conditions that are 20 years old and the doctors have died or 

retired. We have had these cases come in. So, again, what you are saying does not seem to reconcile with the 

advice which you write and give to people. 

Dr Charker: Was there a question that you wanted me to respond to in relation to that? 

Mr HILL: Yes. I guess the question is: can you think of ways which could help clarify this? You said that 

some people have this info, and yet the advice that submitters are giving is that they do not have the information 

because it is not current, because why would you have gone to the doctor in the last two years to prove you still 

had Down syndrome? 

Dr Charker: Indeed, which would typically be a manifestly eligible condition. 

Mr HILL: So is Down syndrome considered a manifestly eligible condition? 

Dr Charker: It typically would be, would be my understanding. To the extent that it is associated with 

intellectual impairment—with IQ of less than 70—then that would be regarded as manifestly eligible under 

current policy settings. 

Mr HILL: And do IQ tests have to be recent, or would you take one from 15 years ago? 

Dr Charker: I would have to get advice on that, I am sorry. 

Ms Toze: We can consider IQ tests done, for instance, at a special school, or contact with a special school 

principal as well. There is historical medical evidence which is relevant to the review measure and which we will 

consider. 

Mr HILL: It sounds like there is room to perhaps clarify things. 

Dr Charker: Sure. 

CHAIR: My apologies if I traverse some questions that have been asked in my absence. Towards the end of 

the questioning of the NGOs, we took some evidence from them about what further improvements could be made 

to improve the transparency et cetera, and we will ask you to respond to those on notice at the conclusion. But I 

am interested in getting some specific information about what you are doing in regard to the performance 

measures that are being developed and if there is some information you can share with us in regard to that. 

Dr Charker: I am actually wondering whether I might be able to ask my policy colleagues— 

CHAIR: It might be Ms Wilson? 

Dr Charker: because that is a joint issue. 



Ms Wilson: We are currently doing joint work on updating the performance information between the two 

agencies that is collected and would then flow through to reporting for disability support pension. At the moment, 

we have a range of reporting. In the annual report, we report on duration on payment; the percentage and number 

of recipients who have employment income; the percentage and number of recipients who are on a part-rate due 

to the means test; the number of recipients; the expenditure; the payment accuracy; and, I guess, a measure 

against the population—so the rate of receipt of DSP against the Australian population and the percentage and 

number of estimated population of people with a disability who receive payment. They are high level, if you like, 

outcome expenditure and customer trend patterns that are reported every year in the annual report. 

As well as that, we currently have quarterly data that it is released on data.gov.au, which again tends to be 

geographic—the customer count at a quarterly point—and duration on payment and medical condition. We are 

looking to improve and refine that. As my colleagues have identified, we monitor the outcomes of appeal and 

review data and we will give some consideration to furnishing that publicly, because it is something that, between 

the two organisations, we look at and we monitor trends both in internal review processes and in external and 

tribunal review and appeal processes. That is something that we could potentially report on. We have some issues 

currently in distinguishing at the level of the AAT those reviews that were initiated by recipients versus reviews 

that were initiated by the department on behalf of the secretary. We need to find a way of capturing that in a way 

that is meaningful, so we will work further on that. Timeliness clearly is something that is of ongoing interest. I 

am not sure what else we are exploring currently. Do you have any further information? 

Ms Halbert: We are generally just discussing with DHS what the most useful information is for us to be 

reporting on, as Ms Wilson said. Those discussions are happening at the moment. 

CHAIR: It does not sound like there is a coherent internal project being done to look at what the Auditor- 

General's report called inconsistencies around the reporting of data. 

Ms Wilson: I do not know that I would characterise it like that. 

CHAIR: What—the lack of consistency? That is not my word; that is the Auditor-General's comment. 

Ms Wilson: We are currently reviewing our bilateral management agreement between the two agencies. That 

goes to reporting on the outcomes in the different payment spaces, including for DSP. That work is on foot 

currently. We have a bilateral management agreement that is signed off by the heads of the two agencies—the 

policy agency and the delivery agency. That is currently being reviewed. That will focus— 

CHAIR: Is there a time line on the completion of that? 

Ms Wilson: Early next year. 

CHAIR: How long has that work been going for thus far? 

Ms Wilson: Probably since the middle of the year. We commissioned someone to do some work for us, 

looking at our BMA, and that external review was provided to us, I think, in about August. We are working 

through what is possible to capture currently and where we can improve the reporting in a way that is meaningful 

for both agencies, to respond to things like the ANAO report but also, I guess, get a better handle on the things 

that are meaningful in a performance sense for the bilateral management arrangements between DHS, as the 

policy agency, and DSS, as the delivery agency. 

CHAIR: Mr Hehir, would the Audit Office like to make some comments? This hinges around the third 

recommendation that was made in the report, about the lack of consistency in some of the data that was reported. 

Ms Kairouz: We did mention in the report that there was scope to enhance the performance information and 

we did give some suggestions in that respect. That included: to better analyse the accuracy of eligibility decisions 

and to better understand the reasons for changes to decisions and for improvements in decision making. 

We felt that there was scope to better evaluate the operational efficiency of the processes and identify which 

service improvements could be made. We made a number of suggestions in table 5.4 which go to things like the 

operational efficiencies. At the time of the audit, we were unable to obtain from DHS a unit cost on things like the 

reviews and the job capacity assessment processes. We felt that, if there was a net cost known, there could have 

been some assessment of the benefit of additional reviews versus the costs of providing someone with income 

support. We did have some suggestions in there in respect of improvements to performance measures which 

might assist in government then making decisions on disability support pension policy. 

CHAIR: There were four particular areas that were identified in table 5.4. Ms Wilson or Dr Charker, can you 

give us an update against each of the four results areas—the service delivery, quality of decision-making on 

eligibility, operational efficiency and best use of human service resources—or are all of those four being captured 

by the work in the renegotiation or redrafting of the bilateral? 



Dr Charker: From my perspective, that is in fact intrinsic to the new agreement that is being developed 

between the agencies and how it is actually measured going forward in terms of the measurement of the service 

delivery aspect of it. 

CHAIR: Ms Wilson? 

Ms Wilson: I concur with Dr Charker. Perhaps the other thing that I could also identify is that we are in the 

process of a review of the government contracted doctors component of the assessment process, and we have a 

post-implementation evaluation in respect of the review. We look to capture transactional, process and 

performance data and also to look back at what the anticipated results were of a government initiative and what 

has been the process against those results. We do that through an evaluation activity. 

CHAIR: Mr Hehir, why is the cost per customer for each program criteria important? At the footnote of table 

5.4 it makes the reference that the cost per customer is not reported to DSS. 

Ms Kairouz: At the time of the audit, we found that the cost per customer was not reported. The reason that 

we felt it was important is that we considered that DSS was required to make decisions around whether or not 

there would be value in more review activity. We took the view that, where it is not efficient or effective to 

review all of DSP recipients, there was scope to target that. Given people stay on DSP for very long periods, if 

they no longer meet the criteria after a certain period of time, there may be value. For the cost of an assessment, 

you could then get a person off DSP—perhaps forever. We thought that there was certainly more required or 

needed so that DSS could then advise government on whether or not there was benefit in expanding review 

activity or targeting it better. 

CHAIR: This goes to the core of the cost-benefit analysis. 

Ms Kairouz: Yes, it does. 

CHAIR: Ms Wilson, do you have a response? 

Ms Wilson: Certainly the outcome of the activity against the anticipated expenditure related to it is something 

that the evaluation will focus on. I guess it is also worth identifying that, when new policy proposals are put to 

government, such as the additional review activity, the cost that DHS incurs in respect of that activity is 

scrutinised, monitored and agreed by the Department of Finance. DHS is separately directly appropriated. Its 

funding does not come through our agency. The Department of Finance will scrutinise and agree those costs and 

provide government advice on whether, as part of the expenditure review committee deliberations, that is an 

appropriate level of expenditure and resourcing for the activity. 

I would note that the overall measure was in fact a cost measure to government, not a savings measure, and that 

one of the significant elements of the additional investment related to the measure is around employment 

assistance and other supports that people who are found to be no longer eligible for the disability support pension 

receive, if they are cancelled and transferred to the Newstart allowance for those who are eligible for the Newstart 

allowance. So it wasn't a savings measure per se, and I think that is important for the committee to understand. 

CHAIR: Dr Charker, would you like to make a comment at all. 

Dr Charker: No, nothing further; I am in complete agreement. 

Ms MADELEINE KING: Thanks for coming in and thank you for your work of course in the service of the 

public. I want to quickly talk about the new medical assessments, and I might just make a comment about 

submissions and follow that up with a question. It is primarily directed at DHS but, obviously, I welcome any 

input from others. 

The submissions contend the decision to discontinue receiving reports from treating doctors in the introduction 

of medical assessments by government contracted doctors, which is only for certain claimants, has reduced the 

efficiency of DHS, compromised the veracity of the process and led to some administrative errors. 

The submissions also reminded us that policies, guidelines and procedures should foster the correct decision at 

the earliest possible stage. The A NAO report indicated that a significant proportion of rejected claims were later 

approved on appeal. 

DHS advised that: a primary reason for successful appeals was a provision of new information. Multiple 

submissions state that the new process substantially reduces the medical evidence available and makes it more 

difficult for claimants to provide the required information the first time. 

We also heard growing concerns from the NGOs that were in the room earlier, and I also note the concerns of 

Financial Counselling Australia that saw that the delays in some of the assessments were leading into increased 

risks of eviction and potentially for people to slide into homelessness. It is obviously a fair concern. 



Given these growing concerns and—in relation to the new medical assessment process, including the delays in 

obtaining a disability medical assessment appointment—what we see to be a waste of resources in successful 

appeal, is the DHS proposing to conduct an independent assessment to determine value for money for the 

taxpayer and identify potential improvements in its system? 

Dr Charker: If I could just make one brief point and then I might ask my colleagues—I will come back, if 

that is okay. My brief comment was: if someone is approached for a medical review, as we have been discussing, 

it is really important to note that their DSP does not stop while that process is underway. So any concern that they 

might suddenly lose payment through that process is not the case and, in fact, to date, in the entire medical review 

processes that we have started—and we have initiated about 12,000—no-one has been cancelled from DSP for 

medical reasons at all. 

Ms MADELEINE KING: I will clarify—and that is my fault: Financial Counselling were pointing out that 

this was also the review process when people potentially move from when they first hit a disability issue from 

Centrelink onto the DSP and it added impact. Pardon me, if I have confused the matter. 

Dr Charker: Not at all, I just wanted to make sure that there was no clarification. 

Ms MADELEINE KING: I understand that is fine. Please continue. 

Dr Charker: I might actually check with my colleagues about the main part of your question and about 

whether we are planning any particular review of the process. We certainly do ongoing reviews of all our 

processes in the interests of— 

ACTING CHAIR: The question was about an independent assessor that has just been suggested to us by 

multiple submitters. 

Dr Charker: In that case, I do not think we have—no. At this minute in time, there are no plans or proposals 

for that. I would just check with my colleagues at DSS, however. 

Ms Halbert: We will be undertaking an evaluation of the government contracted doctor and the disability 

medical assessment. That is underway at the moment. 

ACTING CHAIR: That part of the process or the entire process? 

Ms Wilson: That is the process that is specifically new. 

ACTING CHAIR: I will go back to Ms King, because we are following the same thread. What we heard 

earlier repeatedly in written submissions—and VLA's was particularly clear on this and I think the Auditor- 

General's report might be able to assist—and the Auditor-General's report suggested that one of the primary 

reasons for the very significant overturn rates at each stage of the appeal system, as we understand them, was that 

the right information was not available to the decision maker at the right stage—the early stage. I am happy to be 

corrected, but that was our understanding of what has been heard from the NGOs. 

Ms Wilson: If I could note something, with the data that I have for affirmed versus set-aside rates—I guess it 

is a matter of opinion as to whether it is a considerable rate—around 75 per cent of regional decisions are 

affirmed at the first level of the AAT and 18 per cent are set aside. As I understand it, across the two tiers, tier 1 

and tier 2—which previously used to be the SSAT and AAT but now is all contained within the AAT—there has 

been a significant change in rates over recent years. So it has varied, I think, between the 75 and 80 per cent 

affirm. So I just wanted to provide that information to the committee. 

ACTING CHAIR: The question that we are getting to, though, and Ms King mentioned it at the start, if there 

is a sensible principle—I am sure everyone would agree that the right decision should be made at the earliest 

possible stage in the interests of the claimant, and the department has then wasted resources from overturning 

decisions—then you need good information. Our understanding from the Auditor-General's report and submitters 

is that the primary reason that decisions are not being made correctly at the early stage is that the right 

information is not available to the decision maker. Is that a— 

Ms Wilson: I think it is fair to characterise that the reasons for decisions being set aside when they go to 

external appeal are primarily around additional information being provided that was not available to the original 

decision maker. 

Unidentified speaker: I concur with that. 

ACTING CHAIR: We have heard a number of submissions. I encourage you to have a close look at the 

submissions of Victoria Legal Aid and the National Welfare Rights Network in particular, suggesting that, if you 

could improve the information available to applicants at the outset on websites, on application forms, and provide 

some reasons for rejection that people can understand, as opposed to gobbledegook letters that do not actually 



give any specifics, then you could reduce the number of appeals by getting people to give you the right 

information at the outset. Do you agree with that? 

Dr Charker: We would certainly agree with the principle that it would be in the interests of the DSP 

customer, as well as, of course, the department and the broader cost-effective use of resources to try to get all the 

information that is relevant to the decision process as early as we can. 

ACTING CHAIR: Perhaps we could ask you, given the time, to study those two submissions and provide a 

response back as to the points you agree with and what action you can take to improve the information available 

to customers. 

Ms MADELEINE KING: Or how they might be mistaken themselves. 

Dr Charker: Sure. Thank you. 

ACTING CHAIR: Were there any final questions there? We can table some of the more detailed questions, 

because I think some of the point data in the report related to initial grants, but we did not have a good sense of 

the appeals data—it sounds like it is available. I am just almost done. Just going back to the earlier point around 

this line between manifest—which I was interested to hear you say was a policy judgement not written in stone in 

legislation. 

Unidentified speaker: No, it is not. 

ACTING CHAIR: The repeated concerns that we have from submitters and public experience is that people 

with Down syndrome get sent a letter every two years to see whether it is being cured. Does the department agree 

that Down syndrome is not going to be cured? 

Dr Charker: I am not a medical practitioner, I am sorry. I could not provide you with any sort of informed 

view. I think from our point of view what is important to note is that where we know that a person—and we have 

information on their record—is manifestly eligible then we keep track of that information over time and we do not 

go back to them for medical reviews. That is what is really important. 

ACTING CHAIR: So the 'manifest' category—there is a box that you tick; go 'manifest', not doing a medical 

review, income assets fine—might change? 

Dr Charker: Effectively. 

ACTING CHAIR: So with someone with Down syndrome—to follow that example, because we had a 

submission—you cannot provide a comment on whether that may be cured or not. 

Dr Charker: I would not be arrogant enough to do, so far as not being a medical practitioner of any sort. 

ACTING CHAIR: Has anyone from either department heard of Down syndrome being cured? 

Ms Wilson: No. 

ACTING CHAIR: So we are not aware of any cases. You would not think that they would be a high priority 

for medical review, even if for whatever reason they had an IQ of 71, for argument's sake? Do your systems allow 

you to simply mark a flag—'We're not going to do a medical review because it would be a stupid waste of time'? 

Dr Charker: I would have to take advice on the specificity within the system in terms of being able to tick 

boxes to rule people in or out. What I do know is that, whenever you apply a set of criteria to a number of people 

trying to target, it is not a perfect science, and it is impacted by the quality of the information we have on the 

systems, but it is also enormously impacted by the fact that, even for a given condition, the functional impact of 

that condition from person to person can be really variable. In people with condition A, for some that may be 

functionally really severely impactful and they may classify as having a severe impairment and clearly be eligible 

for DSP. For others, the same condition may have a very different prognostic trajectory; it might impact them 

differently. It is quite difficult to specify, for a particular condition, what is going on. We do all we can with the 

information we have, where it is very clear, and we try very hard to refine the risk profiling, as you have heard 

this morning. But it is not going to be a perfect science. It is reliant on the information we have in the systems. 

ACTING CHAIR: Did the Auditor-General's office have any final comments or observations? The context 

for that is that, apart from what has been heard, we have also heard a lot of evidence, including in submissions, 

that the processes for assessment have changed, in some cases substantially, since the audit was conducted. 

Mr Hehir: We certainly have not looked at those processes since our audit has been undertaken. 

ACTING CHAIR: There might be some follow-up areas where we could ask you to do some further work 

with the departments. 

Ms FLINT: I have a general question that you could take on notice. Over 820,000 Australians were in receipt 

of DSP at the end of June 2014. What does that mean in terms of overall management? That is a very large 



number. To my mind, it seems very similar to the conversation we had with the Department of Immigration and 

Border Protection on Friday at our hearing. They dealt with a huge number of people in a short period of time. 

Obviously this is an ongoing issue, but I would be grateful for any reflections from both DHS and DSS on what it 

means practically to manage that huge caseload. 

Dr Charker: Briefly, from our perspective of service delivery, it means a bunch of things. It means that we 

need people in our department who are properly trained to be able to work through this process and take people 

through the assessment or the review process, and it means continual vigilance around accuracy of payments, 

timeliness. It means that the service delivery network in our department, who are the people who man the phones, 

who process claims, who are physically there in a Centrelink office when you walk in—our continual investment 

in their training and capability is incredibly important. I suppose from a service delivery aspect, they are probably 

all the responses you would need. It means considerable resource investment in the department. 

ACTING CHAIR: In relation to the removal of the treating doctors report and the introduction of the DMA 

assessment, could you summarise what prompted the change in evidentiary processes? What were you hoping to 

achieve? My understanding—I am happy to be corrected—is that DHS continued to use a similar treating doctors 

report process for the other medically complex payment, being carers payment. So why the difference? 

Ms Wilson: I think it is important to recognise that the government was concerned, as successive governments 

have been, about the numbers of people receiving DSP and wanted to ensure that those who had a capacity to 

work were on a payment that recognised a capacity to work and that the eligibility criteria—which I would note 

were tightened when the impairment tables were updated in 2012—were being met in respect of individuals 

claiming DSP. The addition of a disability medical assessment by a government contracted doctor was initiated to 

complement the existing assessment processes. It is important to note that those government contracted doctors 

performing disability medical assessments only apply to a small proportion of all claimants of the disability 

support pension. 

A large number of people are—in order to ensure that the process works efficiently, the things that would 

exclude a person from being eligible for the disability support pension on non-medical grounds are screened first. 

Then there is a tiered process where it is assessed whether a person requires a job capacity assessment. After a job 

capacity assessment there is a consideration made as to whether or not the person requires a disability medical 

assessment. The disability medical assessments are applied to a small proportion, I think 10 per cent, of all DSP 

claimants. 

For example, in the period between 1 July 2015—it is a bit over 10 per cent; I beg your pardon—and 30 June 

2016 there were 83,566 DSP claims finalised. Of those, 11,041 recipients included a disability medical, a 

claimant disability medical assessment. 

ACTING CHAIR: So the disability medical assessment applies to people who were assessed in the earlier 

stages as having been recommended for a DSP. 

Ms Wilson: That is correct. It is a further screening. 

ACTING CHAIR: And it does not apply to those who have been rejected. 

Ms Wilson: No. 

ACTING CHAIR: I guess the final— 

Ms Wilson: I beg your pardon, it could be a consequence of the disability medical assessment that someone is 

rejected— 

ACTING CHAIR: I understand, yes, but if you are— 

Ms Wilson: so it is the final step in the assessment process. 

ACTING CHAIR: But if the initial officers say, 'We do not think the medical evidence stacks up,' which may 

not be undertaken by a fully qualified medical practitioner— 

Ms Wilson: They are Allied Health practitioners who perform the job capacity assessments and— 

ACTING CHAIR: Sure. So raw medical evidence gets provided to the department. Then someone who may 

or may not be a fully qualified medical practitioner forms a judgement. If they say the judgement is no then that is 

it, there is no DMA assessment. 

Ms Wilson: That is correct, that DMAs are only performed for those people at the end of the chain. 

ACTING CHAIR: The final question is, and it goes back to the tenor of the discussion and your advice, that 

the procedure was changed, in effect, to crack down on people in DSP. 



Ms Wilson: It was to strengthen the integrity of the claims process and it was one of a number of changes that 

took place under successive governments over about a five-year period. 

ACTING CHAIR: I understand. One of the submitters made the point to us, and it is a values based point, I 

suggest, that for an entitlement program where there is statutory criteria and the department's job is to provide the 

right payment to anyone who meets the criteria, it is just as grievous an error or omission to deny a payment to 

someone as it is to grant the wrong payment. It was an interesting point that I had not thought about. Would you 

agree with that? 

Dr Charker: As you have pointed out, that is a values based question. 

ACTING CHAIR: The department, presumably, has an ethos and a set of values about how it administers. Is 

that a point you agree with? 

Dr Charker: Our set of values is that we will do all that we can to make the right decision and grant people 

the correct payment in as far as practicable that we can for their circumstances. 

ACTING CHAIR: I now close the public hearing and thank everyone for their submission. I think you can 

note and convey back to your secretary the committee's earlier expressed disappointment—which is 

unprecedented, our committee secretary advises us—that a department asked and agreeing to appear in an inquiry 

does not do us the courtesy of providing a submission or an opening statement. 

I would remind members, as per our resolution earlier, that further questions on notice can be lodged via the 

secretariat. I ask a member to move that the opening statement made by the ANAO be accepted as evidence for 

the inquiry into the Commonwealth risk management authorised for publication. Thank you, Mr Hart, for moving 

that motion. 

Committee adjourned at 10:43

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