Proof Committee Hansard

Page 8 House of Representatives Wednesday, 30 November 2016
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
PUBLIC ACCOUNTS AND AUDIT COMMITTEE