Proof Committee Hansard

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
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