Source document: https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/1697629969517.pdf (Australia)
COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES SENATE Official Committee Hansard COMMUNITY AFFAIRS LEGISLATION COMMITTEE Reference: Social Security Legislation Amendment (Parenting and Other Measures) Bill 1997 MONDAY, 10 NOVEMBER 1997 BY AUTHORITY OF THE SENATE CANBERRA 1997 Monday, 10 November 1997 SENATE—Legislation CA 185 SENATE Monday, 10 November 1997 COMMUNITY AFFAIRS LEGISLATION COMMITTEE Portfolios: Health and Family Services; Social Security Members: Senator Knowles (Chair), Senator Lees (Deputy Chair), Senators Denman, Eggleston, Forshaw and Synon Substitute members: Senator Bartlett to substitute for Senator Lees for the committee’s inquiry into the provisions of the Social Security Legislation Amendment (Parenting and Other Measures) Bill 1997 Senators in attendance: Senators Bartlett, Denman, Eggleston and Lightfoot The committee met at 3.55 p.m. Matter referred by the Senate: Social Security Legislation Amendment (Parenting and Other Measures) Bill 1997 NAUFAL, Mr Roland John, State Manager, Service Development, Association for the Blind, and ex-Executive Director, Association for Children with a Disability, 7 Mair Street, Brighton Beach, Victoria TAYLOR, Mrs Sue, Deputy Executive Director, Australian Council for the Rehabilitation of the Disabled Ltd, 33 Thesiger Court, Deakin, Australian Capital Territory CHAIR—I declare open this public hearing of the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee.
The committee is taking evidence on the Social Security Legislation Amendment (Parenting and Other Measures) Bill 1997.

I welcome representatives of ACROD.

Witnesses are reminded that the giving of evidence to the committee is protected by parliamentary privilege.

I also remind you that the giving of false or misleading evidence to the committee may constitute a contempt of the Senate.
The committee has before it submissions from ACROD and the National Federation of Blind Citizens and the Association for Children with a Disability.

Do you wish to make any alteration to these submissions?

Mrs Taylor—No.

Mr Naufal—No.

CHAIR—I now invite you to make a statement which summarises your views, at the conclusion of which I will invite senators to ask you questions.

Thank you.

Ms Taylor—My comments relate to the changes proposed to the child disability allowance.
ACROD members support the overall thrust of the new assessment tool and its focus on the functional ability of the child and therefore the effect on the family.

The list of manifest disabilities is also welcomed as it will relieve parents of children with severe disabilities of COMMUNITY AFFAIRS CA 186 SENATE—Legislation Monday, 10 November 1997 the stress of completing forms and having to prove that their child has a disability that meets eligibility criteria.
ACROD’s major concerns include the omission of deafblindness as a manifest disability under the tool.

Members feel this may have been an oversight, but believe it must be corrected before the disallowable instrument is tabled in parliament.

Members have expressed concern that only children with intellectual disability who also have severe behavioural problems will be eligible for the CDA.

Many parents spend a lot of time and energy working to better manage their children’s behaviour.
It is to be hoped that this effort will not disadvantage them in their eligibility for the CDA.

Concern has also been expressed about the use of an IQ less than 50 for a child with an intellectual disability resulting from an unknown cause to be eligible under the manifest list.

It is understood that an IQ of 70 or less is the common entry point for government support services for these children.
Parents of children with other disabilities, particularly deafness, stand to be disadvantaged by the efforts they put in to increase their child’s independence.

These children are often required to attend regular appointments for assessments, specialist intervention and often require specialist equipment.

The demands of communicating with deaf children are generally far greater than for other children.
Parents will often have to learn sign language to communicate with their child and, more importantly, to assist their child to communicate outside the home and family.

Moderate and severe disabilities resulting from acquired brain injury should also be added to the manifest list.

Those with a milder disability should have eligibility determined by the assessment process.

Finally, ACROD members continue to oppose the reduction for arrears payments for the CDA from 12 to six months.
This is a harsh decision for families who are often initially preoccupied with obtaining a clear diagnosis of their child’s condition and seeking practical support to assist them with caring for their child.

Equally, it is not unusual for parents to take time to mentally adjust to the realisation that their child will require specialist support for the rest of its life.

CHAIR—Mr Naufal.

Mr Naufal—Sure.

I would like to briefly outline what the Association for Children with a Disability is.
I will be brief.

We are a state wide information support and advocacy organisation for families of children with a disability.

We have over 2,400 members in Victoria, which makes us by far the largest membership based disability organisation in Australia.

Given that we are representing families of children with a disability, I think that it gives a good imprimatur to be talking today about changes in the child disability allowance.
We have been involved in the changes that have gone on since its inception.

We have been involved in the consumer reference group, and are strong supporters of where the department and where the consultants have taken the child disability allowance to.

The main reason we are so supportive is that the change in child disability allowance is moving towards trying to measure the child’s disability.
Currently, if you are a parent of a child with very mild asthma and manage to qualify for the child disability allowance, you get the same as the parent of a child with severe cerebral palsy, with challenging behaviour and all kinds of other things, which is $72 a fortnight.

That is clearly manifestly bad social policy.


COMMUNITY AFFAIRS Monday, 10 November 1997 SENATE—Legislation CA 187 If we could get a tool that measures disability and allows those with higher needs to get a greater payment, that would be an appropriate outcome.

These measures are not yet getting to that stage; they are a first step in what we hope will be a measurement of disability so that we can get greater recognition and greater payment for those in higher need.
We do not have lots of concerns because we have been involved through the process, and the department has listened to the concerns as we have brought them up.

Of the ones we currently have, the most significant one which comes through all of the submissions that I have seen is the change in waiting period to six months from 12 months.

That is manifestly a bad decision by government.


The families of children with disability who have waited six or seven years to get a diagnosis, who have waited three to four months to see a paediatrician, who have borne all the extra costs and all the extra problems of having a child with a disability, were given a back payment which was small recognition by government.

Twelve months at $72, whatever, a fortnight is not a lot of money.

The reduction to six months is not a good decision.
The other things are in the detail.

We are concerned that children with high levels of challenging behaviour may miss out, but we are assured by the department and the consultants that the tool will work for those children.

We echo the problems that the manifest list is too short, too narrow and needs to be a flexible, ongoing process for including new children that come up with new and rare syndromes and for including children that are not currently included.
There are problems with the current tool for children under six months and for children under three years.

It is not a wonderful tool for measuring those children’s needs.

But, if we accept that the tool is a first step in a developmental process in better social policy, then I think those things can be refined.

That then leads me to our conclusion, which is that the tool is a very positive step in a direction we need to go—but it is only a step.
It will need ongoing community consultation, ongoing review and monitoring processes.

If the government lets it go at this stage and finishes here and lets the tool go, that will not be a good outcome.

Those are my opening statements.

Thank you.

CHAIR—Thank you very much.

Senator BARTLETT—My apologies for making you cool your heels for so long.

You indicated that your organisation is predominantly an advocate group.
I want to clarify—I think I have got a fair idea—just the primary focus of ACROD is about.

Mrs Taylor—I am sorry.

We are the national industry association for disability services.

Our members are service providers, but we do also have a lot of advocacy groups as members of ACROD.

Senator BARTLETT—Right, okay, so you are like— Mrs Taylor—Parent groups and— Senator BARTLETT—An umbrella body as well.

Mrs Taylor—We are an umbrella body of peak—national, sorry.

Senator BARTLETT—Sure.


I am getting the general impression from both of you that you support the overall thrust of where this change is going.

Obviously, as I understand it anyway, the nature of the changes with the child disability allowance will lead to a reduction in the number of people that qualify for that extra payment.

You are comfortable with that change?

Mr Naufal—Yes.
Mr Naufal—Yes.

COMMUNITY AFFAIRS CA 188 SENATE—Legislation Monday, 10 November 1997 Senator BARTLETT—Is that basically because you felt, for those people who in effect will now not qualify for it, it was not an appropriate payment or was there too great a gradient between the ends of the spectrum in terms of the degree of disability?
Mr Naufal—For us it is the latter, Senator Bartlett, in the sense that probably everybody who is getting a payment has some need for the payment but, if the government is in the business of supporting those in the most need, then there is a need for the rationalisation of the program to those in the greatest need.

After identifying those, our hope is to give them greater assistance further down the track by making the economies of taking off those in lesser need—and there is clearly a group in lesser need.
Senator BARTLETT—Right.

Mrs Taylor—Another reason was the announcement that the children at the bottom will still qualify for a health care card, which is often really what they need, particularly with a medical condition, and that will be of great assistance.

We may be a bit more concerned if that had not been in place.

Senator BARTLETT—Okay.


Again, I am getting the impression—and I want to make sure my impression is correct from your submissions as well as what you have said—that you are reasonably happy that there has been an adequate level of consultation as part of the formulation of these tables?

Mrs Taylor—Yes, we have not been as closely involved as Roland’s association but that is a member of ACROD.

We have been very involved in the consultation on the new tool and our members feel quite satisfied with that.
Senator BARTLETT—Okay.

Do you feel that any children or families will unjustifiably lose eligibility for the allowance as a result of the new tables?

Mr Naufal—There is a possibility that there will be some subgroups disadvantaged, but that is part of what we were talking about earlier, the need for ongoing monitoring.

You will need to quickly identify if the tool has imperfections and fix them up.
But at the moment the concerns we have raised about subgroups have been addressed within the tool, so there should not be significant groups of people who miss out who, in our belief, are in higher need and require child disability allowance.

Senator BARTLETT—Apart from the deafblindness?

Mr Naufal—Even with the deafblindness thing, there are two sets of things we are talking about.
It is really the department’s role to talk about the technical detail but where we are talking about deafblindness it is a manifest.

It says you are entitled, you are past the post, you do not have to fill out the form.

If a child with deafblindness went through the process of filling out the form, it would get it.

We are saying we should make it quicker, easier and nicer for those with deafblindness.

It would still qualify for child disability allowance in my understanding with the way the table works.
Senator DENMAN—Perhaps the department would be a better person to ask about this, but could you define deafblindness please?

Is it legally blind and what percentage of deafness?

Mr Naufal—I can give it a go because I work for the Association for the Blind now with the department’s— Senator DENMAN—I may not be here when they come on.

Mr Naufal—All definitions of disability depend on who you ask.
From the World Health they will all give you a different answer; Organisation through to local government, COMMUNITY AFFAIRS Monday, 10 November 1997 SENATE—Legislation CA 189 deafblindness is no different.

No-one these days says blindness is not being able to see.

It is about visual acuity, how much distance you can see and peripheral vision.

Then you combine that with a messiness around what is deafness.
When you put the two together, you have got two shifting definitions of what is deafness and blindness.

It is up to people in the department to come up with some technical things that they are satisfied with and that you are satisfied with that meet the criteria.

It is not an answer, because there is not really one.
Senator DENMAN—That means if, perhaps, your percentage of blindness is greater than the percentage of your deafness—the deafness is down there and the blindness is up there—it is still defined as deafblindness?

Mr Naufal—If you choose as a person or organisation to define it that way, yes.

Senator DENMAN—Thank you.

Mrs Taylor—I think the major concern for us about deafblindness is it is a combination of the two.
It may be that a child may fall just below the definitions, but the combination of the two is required.

That was why we made the suggestion to the department that someone with deafblindness should be diagnosed by a multidisciplinary team.

They have used that for some other disabilities.

Senator BARTLETT—Do you think the proposed tables closely reflect the real life experiences of families that care for children with disabilities?

Mrs Taylor—The functional bits?

Senator BARTLETT—Yes.


Mrs Taylor—I think that is so for most people.

We have made a few comments to the department.

Some were picked up.

I think that they do look at the functional disability, which is generally considered in the disability field to be the important measurement.

Senator BARTLETT—Right.

I guess, in terms of the sorts of experiences that both of you have with affected families, you would have had a fair bit to do with people who have to go through the process of applying for payments.
Do you think that the overall package of changes is going to make things easier for those people?

It can be a bit of a stressful experience, I would imagine, in various circumstances, having to work through all that.

Some of that is unavoidable, but— Mr Naufal—The forms were almost submission based in the past.

You had to write an essay virtually to get child disability allowance.
Now you tick a box to get child disability allowance but, at the end of the day, these people are going to get $72 something a fortnight.

The change is not going to be a greater recognition of their needs in that respect, so it is not going to make a huge difference in their lives.

It is going to make this estimate process easier, which they say is important.

Mrs Taylor—I think the manifest list has certainly made that difference for children with severe disabilities.
They will not have to go through that process of assessment.

That is an important thing.

I suppose our concern is that there are a few groups that somehow have not got onto that list that we believe should be there.

Senator BARTLETT—Right.

But are you having ongoing negotiations with the department getting those sorts of things addressed?

Mrs Taylor—We have been putting submissions to them.

Senator BARTLETT—Okay.


The message I am getting from you is that the changes are good; that they are going in the right direction.

They still have some way to go.

Particularly COMMUNITY AFFAIRS CA 190 SENATE—Legislation Monday, 10 November 1997 in the level of support that is provided the current payments are not really adequate to meet the needs of some families at least.

Is that right?
Is that right?

Mr Naufal—If you want to look at it from a federal point of view, 30 or 40 years ago children with severe disabilities, and some with milder and moderate disabilities, were put in institutions and became a total government responsibility.

It is now true in Victoria—and becoming increasingly true around Australia—that hardly any child is in an institution or even a group home.

Increasingly children with multiple and severe disabilities are at home with families.
I realise I am being incredibly repetitive, but the Commonwealth government’s recognition of the strain that that puts on families is $72 a fortnight.

We do need to make a significant change in the way the Commonwealth understands the impact of a child’s disability on a family’s life in the 1990s.

It is different from what it was 30 or 40 years.

The only way we can do that is to begin to understand the disability, its context on the family, measure it and provide greater recognition.

That is one step.
That is one step.

Mrs Taylor—It is interesting to note that in Victoria, where the family breaks down and a child is put into foster care, the foster family are paid up to $22,000 a year to look after that child.

It is a great pity that a bit more does not go into the birth family to assist.

Senator DENMAN—Are there any special provisions made for child care within the birthing family when parents are looking after children with severe disability?
Is there any special concession made for respite to give parents a breather?

Mrs Taylor—If they can get it.

That was one of the positive things.

We have not listed all the positives of these changes.

In fact, the respite care is going out from 46 to 63 days a year.

Some people would argue that is still not enough.

I saw somewhere that, if the parents had the child in respite every weekend for the year, it would still be 80 days.
But the major concern for respite care is whether people can get it or not.

That is funded, of course, from a different source.

Senator DENMAN—And is there no help within the home just for a couple of hours a week for mum to have a break?

Mrs Taylor—There can be.

Mr Naufal—It varies from state to state.

Mrs Taylor—They have what they call in-home or out-of- home respite.
Senator BARTLETT—I got the impression—again, from your opening comments—that you are hoping that, as part of providing greater support, there would be a narrowing-down of the criteria for children or families that would be eligible for this payment in recognition of those that have particularly severe needs, and also that those with higher needs will then get greater payment down the track.

How confident are you of that, from the impressions you have got from negotiations to date?
We have got to the stage where we have narrowed down the range of people who can get the payment, without making the payment any bigger.

Have you had reasonably strong indications that the other parts are likely to follow and that the payments will actually go up somewhere down the track?
Mr Naufal—The true answer to that is no, but we would have liked to have seen a three- tiered system where the bottom tier would get a health care card, the middle tier would get a child disability allowance, and the top tier, with the most severe needs, would get an enhanced child disability allowance or carer’s payment and all the benefits.

The department has moved to a proposal which is two-tiered, which is positive, and it is a health care card and a child disability allowance.
COMMUNITY AFFAIRS Monday, 10 November 1997 SENATE—Legislation CA 191 Senator BARTLETT—So it is basically just a belief of yours that this would be a desirable policy rather than being something that you have got some indications of from the department or the government?

Mr Naufal—Yes.

Senator BARTLETT—Okay; I am sure they will take it on board anyway.

I just wanted to clarify that.

Mr Naufal—I am being unfair there.


The department has always said that they would like to support more appropriately those children who have more severe disabilities.

But this package is not doing that.

Senator BARTLETT—Okay.

Perhaps this is a question for Ms Taylor, more specifically.

I do not know, but I guess that, as part of the role of ACROD in working as an industry representative, there will be a reasonable number of people employed in related fields linking to disabled children, et cetera.
Are there any particular effects from the industry’s point of view or from the workers’ point of view as a result of these changes, either positive or negative, that need to be factored in, in considering these measures?

Mrs Taylor—I think they are fairly positive.

As Roland mentioned, there has been a major shift in the support of families with children with a disability.
Whereas most of our current members would, 20 years ago, have run hostels or even nursing homes for severely disabled children, they are now actually supporting children in their homes.

So they actually do see the effect on the family, and I think that their comments on the effects on the family and the need for a payment like this are very genuine.
Senator BARTLETT—Obviously, the moves to change the method of assessment have been going on for a while, and that consultation that we have touched on before has been happening for a while.

You have indicated that you think that has been adequate.

In terms of the legislation itself that effects these changes, are you happy enough with the level of time you have had to examine that?

Mr Naufal—I am personally, yes.

Mrs Taylor—Yes.

Senator BARTLETT—Are there no final incisive questions from the chair?
CHAIR—No.

I am very grateful for your attendance today.

Between your submissions and your comments, you have certainly enhanced the debate about the whole subject that we have before us.

Thank you very much for coming along.

I apologise again for delaying you.

Thank you.


[4.20 p.m.] ARCHER, Ms Lee, Policy Officer, Geelong Welfare Rights Service, Geelong Community Legal Service, 257 Moorabool Street, Geelong, Victoria 3220 CARMEN, Ms Brenda, Policy Officer, Geelong Community Legal Service, Geelong Welfare Rights Service, 257 Moorabool Street, Geelong, Victoria 3220 CHAIR—I welcome our witnesses, who are giving evidence to the committee by teleconference.
I do remind witnesses that evidence given to the committee is protected by parliamentary privilege.

I also remind you that the giving of false or misleading evidence to the committee may constitute a contempt of the Senate.

The committee has before it your submission.

Do you wish to make any alterations to that submission?

Ms Archer—No.

COMMUNITY AFFAIRS CA 192 SENATE—Legislation Monday, 10 November 1997 CHAIR—Thank you very much.

I invite you to make a statement which summarises your views.
At the conclusion of that, I will invite senators to ask you questions.

Ms Archer—I will make a brief statement.

Geelong Welfare Rights is part of Geelong Community Legal Services and is affiliated with the National Welfare Rights Network.

We conduct casework services for Centrelink clients and we are actively involved in the analysis of social security legislation and policy.
We have particular expertise in the child disability allowance, due to our practical experience and our findings in our research paper, ‘The ups and downs of child disability allowance’.
While we wholeheartedly support the government’s commitment to addressing the complex problems associated with child disability allowance and to making a simpler and less subjective payment, we believe that there are major issues that need to be addressed for there to be a successful completion of the reformation of this payment.

Some of the problems we would like to address today are as follows.
Firstly, we are concerned that the assessment tool has been designed to exclude the illnesses that have been traditionally more controversial and problematic under child disability allowance, such as juvenile diabetes.

Secondly, we believe that the tool needs to be expanded further, particularly in relation to the special care component.

Thirdly, we have had difficulty evaluating the assessment tool, because the scoring system has been unavailable to us despite several requests.
We are concerned that this will lead to a hidden system which is contradictory to other Centrelink practices.

Fourthly, the concept of negative scoring is a flawed one.

We do not believe that, in any way, an area of ability outweighs the impact of a disability.

Fifthly, we applaud the introduction of awarding qualifications to parents with more than one disabled child who does not meet the child disability allowance criteria.
However, we believe that, from what we know of the assessment tool, it will be extremely difficult to meet the qualification of having an aggregate score of at least one, and it should be amended to the child requiring care and attention because of that disability on a daily basis.

CHAIR—Can I interrupt for half a second?

Ms Archer—Yes.

CHAIR—We are getting a little microphone feedback here.

If you could just speak a little more slowly, it might be a little easier for us to understand.

Thanks.
Thanks.

Ms Archer—Sure.

Sixthly, the issue of residence and non-qualification when a child is away from home receiving education, training or treatment has not been properly addressed, and it needs to be addressed according to our submission: that is, the child should remain qualified for the payment when away from home.

Seventhly, the qualification for a health care card is too strictly applied.
We believe that the qualification should be that the child has a medical condition that is permanent or likely to be for an extended period.

This is because the card can only be used for medication and is therefore only going to be used in direct relation to the child’s health care needs.

Eighthly, we are extremely pleased to see that clients will be safe from the review until 2003.
However, we are concerned that this will interfere with proper evaluation of the legislation, since only new applications will be reviewed.

That finishes my opening remarks.

CHAIR—Thank you very much.

Ms Carmen, do you have any further comments you wish to make?

Ms Carmen—No.

Lee has said it all for both of us.

COMMUNITY AFFAIRS Monday, 10 November 1997 SENATE—Legislation CA 193 CHAIR—I now invite Senator Bartlett to ask questions.
Senator BARTLETT—In those opening statements you were concerned about how it may lead to some contradictions in the treatment or assessment of disability, et cetera.

Could you elaborate a bit more on some of those situations you feel may arise?

Ms Carmen—One of the concerns that we have is that none of the questions in the actual tool itself deal with the issue of self-medication.
Therefore, when you look at the issue of young children and young people with diabetes, there does not seem to be any area within that tool that deals with any child who has to self-medicate or any of the issues that might come from that.

This is also in connection with things like allergies to food.

We know for a fact that many of the conditions require families to do special shopping for food, or that children may need to eat particular types of product.
None of those sorts of things are covered within the actual tool.

There are also no questions around the emotional state for parents to answer.

When you compare the parent’s questions and the doctor’s questions, there is not an additional section there on emotional state, which the parent does not get asked about.

When you consider that both the doctor and the parent’s answers to their questions are meant to be given equal weight, they should be given similar sorts of questions.
Those are some of the issues that we see with regards to some of the conditions which might be left out.

Another example in relation to the issue of juvenile diabetes is that it is not even mentioned as a chronic medical condition.

Our meetings with the diabetes foundation branch in Geelong have indicated they have major concerns that the new tool has actually been designed to exclude their particular group of children and young people.
Senator BARTLETT—How much involvement has the centre had in the consultation process in developing the new assessment tool?

Ms Carmen—We have pretty much had no involvement whatsoever.

We were not invited to participate as a representative on the group.

We had already started our research locally when we discovered that the assessors at the time were investigating the child disability allowance.
We kept in contact with Anthony Bartolo to pretty much get as many of the reports and trials at the time when they were happening.

We tried to keep ourselves informed with the actual tool, with its progression.

We also took that tool into our own community and consulted with parents and organisations, but in terms of the Centrelink process, we basically were not invited.

Senator BARTLETT—Is that applying to Geelong in particular, or to the welfare rights network in general?
Ms Carmen—The network in general.

Senator BARTLETT—Concerning the issue of reducing the arrears period from 12 months to six months, your main contact would be with people who were applying for child disability allowance and having trouble getting the payment, or with assisting them to make claims, or with making appeals against decisions?

Is that right?

Ms Carmen—That is totally correct.

We see people at every particular level.


Many have no information at all about child disability allowance, appeals, reviews, or all the policies that come out.

We also deal with a lot of the parent support groups for children with disabilities.

We pretty much do it all from a casework and community education development perspective.
COMMUNITY AFFAIRS CA 194 SENATE—Legislation Monday, 10 November 1997 Senator BARTLETT—Concerning the issue of the reduction of that arrears period from 12 months to six months, that links to the fact that often parents do not get around to applying until they have got a fair way down the track in terms of identifying a disability or working through appropriate treatments for it, et cetera.
Would that be true in your experience, that often parents have been struggling to deal with the child’s disability for a long period of time before they actually get around to applying?

Ms Archer—Absolutely, we have clients that come in and have had the child with the disability for two or three years and properly, of course, a parent has been focused on meeting their child’s health care needs.
The other problem is that there has not been a great deal of knowledge about the child disability allowance within the community.

That has complicated the fact that there has been a great deal of time elapse before they apply for the child disability allowance.

We think it is very unfair that the arrears period should be limited to six months.

Originally, with the first handicapped child allowance, it was linked to when the person first applied for the family payment, and that is a lot longer.
We think that 12 months is the absolute minimum it should be able to be backdated to.

The only other way you could get around that problem is for DSS or Centrelink to more widely advertise the payment.

That could be done through family payment updates which are done yearly.
It would not take much to add a couple of paragraphs to alert people by asking, ‘Have you got a child who has a disability?’ To more widely advertise that payment would mean that there should be a reduction in the number of people who need child disability allowance but who are affected by the arrears problem.

Senator BARTLETT—Perhaps if there was a better education campaign there might be less of a problem to have those arrears reduced.

Would you agree?

Ms Archer—Absolutely.


Senator BARTLETT—Would it be fair to say that your experience with people in relation to this payment is the same as many other people who are trying to access a particular payment, you do not particularly link in much to addressing the caring needs of families?

Ms Archer—No, that is outside our expertise.

We have a two-pronged involvement with child disability allowance.

One is the more hands-on experience of assisting people through appeals.
We assist people with appeals up to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.

The other area we have been involved in is basic community education.

We try to prevent people from getting into the appeals system by informing them of what their rights and responsibilities are and how to properly complete the form.

Concerning their care needs, we only refer people as we see fit.

Being in a rural area, of course, there is often not the community organisations around to address those needs.
Senator BARTLETT—The current wording of the legislation in relation to this area talks about care and attention needed by the young people being ‘substantially more than’ that needed by other young people.

The new tool obviously tries to make things a little bit more precise than a phrase such as something being ‘substantially more than’.

Are you broadly in agreement that tightening things up is a desirable way to go in that area?
Ms Carmen—Yes, we do believe it is a desirable way to go but we are extremely concerned about how the scoring system will work.

Again, as we have said earlier, we have not been able to access the actual scoring system.

We do think that it is a better way to go but we are quite concerned that it could become exclusionary with particular types of disabilities.
COMMUNITY AFFAIRS Monday, 10 November 1997 SENATE—Legislation CA 195 We also feel that if it is going to be tightened up then everything will have to be tightened up.

For example, we are quite concerned that ‘substantial care and attention’ is still in the legislation.

It is suggested as being in the legislation for a health care card.

We feel that if you are going to remove ‘substantial care and attention’ out of the legislation for CDA then it also should really apply to the health care card as well.
We think it will end up complicating the whole system for the public and you could end up with a whole lot of appeals on different issues.

One might be an appeal on the actual score, and another appeal would be for the health care card and debating what is ‘substantial care and attention’ all over again.

We have quite a few concerns about that.

Our recommendation would be to remove ‘substantial care and attention’ from the health care card, for example, and leave it quite simple.
The same would apply with the aggregate scoring where you have two or more children with a disability.

Our suggestion would be to get rid of the aggregate score and just keep it simple.

If you have a disabled child who requires attention for an extended period and has care and attention on a daily basis, you should basically be entitled to the equivalent of one CDA payment or, again, the health care card without getting into the scoring system or ‘substantial care and attention’.
Basically, we are saying that we think that we are moving towards a better system.

We are concerned though about the scoring and about the aggregate scoring for a parent with two or more children with a disability.

We are also concerned about the use of the wording ‘substantial care and attention’ with regard to the health care card.
Senator BARTLETT—One of the earlier witnesses from the disability sector suggested some degree of support for the concept of having a two-tiered set-up, where a broader range of people get access to the health care card and a smaller pool with a greater degree of disability or caring need get access to income support payments.

Obviously, they would like to see a higher level of payment, as people always do.
Do you think that that type of two- tiered approach is a good way to go, recognising the large spectrum that you can have in terms of the degree of need required?

Ms Archer—I think that it is a very complex issue.

Inherently, within a two-tiered system there would be problems with appeals and confusion among the general public.

Essentially what is being proposed is a three-tiered system which, of course, will multiply that even further.
Yes, we think it is a good idea that a health care card will be awarded to people who are not qualified for child disability allowance, particularly because a lot of our clients have identified cost as being one of the main problems relating to children with disabilities.

However, we would not want to see the awarding of health care cards for those people at the exclusion of the proper entitlement to a child disability allowance.
I feel that it is really easy to underestimate the effects a disability has on a family.

For example, a child with attention deficit disorder often needs to have hours of tutoring or speech pathology.

There are a million different things—even care assistance for parents who are trying to get respite.

Often attention deficit disorder is one of those illnesses that gets overlooked.

Yes, we think it a good idea, but not at the exclusion of a proper payment for people.
Senator BARTLETT—This probably repeats a question I asked earlier, but I have thought of a clearer way to ask it in relation to contradictions and the manner of assessment for child disability allowances, as opposed to disability support pension and potential discrepancies in relation to that.

Do you see the changes widening or reducing those types of discrepancies?

Am I asking an irrelevant question?


COMMUNITY AFFAIRS CA 196 SENATE—Legislation Monday, 10 November 1997 Ms Archer—That is a very good question.

The way that the legislation is being drafted at the moment creates a whole lot of different problems from the current ones that exist with the present legislation.

In a nutshell, the problems with the current legislation are the subjective decision making about what is a normal child, and what is substantial care and attention.
I am sure that you are well aware of those issues.

The contradiction that this legislation brings up that I can envisage is that it is a three-tiered system.

I can imagine parents coming with their child to apply for child disability allowance, having difficulty in filling in the form and the child getting knocked back for some reason.

If there is another child with a disability, they apply for the next level which is for two children or more.
They get knocked back for whatever reason and they then move onto the health care card.

The problems within the appeal system are going to be enormous if that kind of discrepancy is not picked up.

Ms Carmen—Just let me add to that.

The one thing with the disability support pension for the public is that they know what they are actually fighting.
If their application is rejected, they understand that it is rejected according, for example, to the impairment tables—they do have a particular percentage for a particular condition.

They know what it is that they are appealing and have a sense of how to gather evidence to support their own application and appeal.

With child disability allowance, I think that it is going to be a bit more difficult for families to actually understand and be able to say, ‘I have a score of negative 1.
What does that actually mean and how do I prove my case to win my appeal?’ I think that is where we are going to end up with difficulties.

We know that the issue of substantial care and attention is problematic and that the public have trouble understanding what we mean by ‘substantial’, but they understand it in terms of the time that they put into their child on a day-to-day basis.
When we move towards this new tool, I believe it might become a bit more confusing for the public in terms of carers saying, ‘How do I fight this when I have a negative 1?

How do I move towards a positive 1 and how do I prove it?’ I think those will be some of the problems that the public might have with this area.

Again that is why we hope that this legislation does not become exclusionary where it is impossible for people to appeal and win their appeals.
Senator BARTLETT—One final question, which is more broad than the specific legislation but is about the way things are operating at the moment in the field of child disability, the department and the changes that have been going on there in recent times.

There is often a requirement—although, not always—that social workers come into play with people applying for child disability allowance depending on the circumstance.
Have you noticed any changes— for the good or the bad—in relation to that area over the last year or so in terms of people’s ability to access that type of expertise?

Ms Carmen—Again, I think it depends on how available and how resourced the local Centrelink offices are.

If you only have one or two social workers, and they have to deal with every other payment, benefit and issue, it is unclear to us how easy it will be for people to access the social work department within Centrelink.
We have seen Centrelink social workers work very well with families in assisting them with their application for child disability allowance.

But with the changes that are coming within Centrelink, to a whole lot of payments, we are really unclear as to what is going to happen to the people who require social work support.

If anything, there may be a need for Centrelink to increase the number of social workers within each regional and local office.
COMMUNITY AFFAIRS Monday, 10 November 1997 SENATE—Legislation CA 197 Senator BARTLETT—You have noticed any particular decline in the availability, in general, of that sort of assistance, following the recent changes to Centrelink, et cetera?

Ms Archer—Social workers, when they are available, are found to be very useful for the client.

They sort things out pretty damn quickly and always with a good result.

However, it seems to me that they are a port of absolute last resort.
Clients get to them only when we raise our hands and carry on and say that this person needs to see a social worker to assist them.

Then it happens and they are fantastic.

But it does not seem to be something that Centrelink offer as a matter of course when a client is in difficulty.

Senator BARTLETT—I am assuming from your submission, which focuses solely on the child disability allowance, that you do not have any other comments on the changes relating to the parenting allowance payment?
Ms Carmen—No, I do know that the network will be sending in a response to the whole parenting payment bill.

CHAIR—I have a point of clarification.

On page 2, the last paragraph there talks about the reduction of the arrears period from 12 months to three months.

That should, of course, be six months.

Would you care to have that correction made in your submission?

Ms Carmen—Yes, we would.

We apologise for that mistake.

CHAIR—That is fine.
CHAIR—That is fine.

I thought it might have been an oversight and that you would want it corrected.

Ms Archer—Absolutely.

CHAIR—Thank you for your time today.

Ms Carmen—And may we say thank you very much for thinking about a teleconference.

CHAIR—It is a pleasure.

It saves a lot of trouble, doesn’t it?

Ms Archer—Yes.
Ms Archer—Yes.

[4.44 p.m.] FISHER, Mr David Stephen, Senior Researcher, Carers Association of Australia Inc., PO Box 3717, Weston, Australian Capital Territory 2611 MIOCHE, Ms Anne Marie, Executive Director, Carers Association of Australia Inc., PO Box 3717, Weston, Australian Capital Territory 2611 CHAIR—Welcome.

You are reminded that the evidence given to the committee is protected by parliamentary privilege.
I also remind you that the giving of false and misleading evidence to the committee may constitute a contempt of the Senate.

The committee has before it the submission from your organisation.

Do you wish to make any alterations to that submission?

Ms Mioche—No.

CHAIR—I now invite you to make a statement which summarises your views and at the conclusion of that senators will ask you questions.

Mr Fisher—Thank you.


We should say by way of introduction that the Carers Association of Australia advocates on behalf of a very wide range of carers in Australia.

Carers in this context means unpaid family carers as opposed to the paid care sector.

That of course includes carers not just of children but of people of all other ages—spouses, parents and so on.

In our work, we see a very wide range of situations that require community care like this.
We therefore have a great interest not just in this particular child disability allowance before this committee now but all the other payments that may involve carers.

The other ones of COMMUNITY AFFAIRS CA 198 SENATE—Legislation Monday, 10 November 1997 particular interest are the domiciliary nursing care benefit and carer payment, paid by Social Security and Health and Family Services.

We have had an interest in this payment for a while as, indeed, I think, have all the parties in the parliament.
The child disability allowance program has been growing quite rapidly over the years.

In fact, I think it now amounts to close on $200 million per year.

It is paid to a very wide range of people at the same time that a number of other carers are unable to be paid under the other programs.
We make the point in our submission that there have, in the past, been payments made to parents for children with disabilities at what could be called relatively lower levels of disability while carers in some other situations, say, under the DNCB, have not been able to be paid even though the level of disability of those people requiring care has been much higher.

So there are issues here about relative payments across programs.
We make the point that, taking all these things into account, we think the changes that have been proposed are relatively reasonable and fair, particularly given that health care costs for those affected will be met if these changes are implemented.

We see that as being particularly important because we understand that quite a lot of research has been done, particularly into the groups who will be affected by these changes, if they are implemented.
The meeting of the medical costs is one of their prime concerns—that the often expensive medical costs associated with, say, attention deficit disorder or diabetes or some other conditions that are really at the margin of where this payment is made will in fact be met.

There is also, of course, the provision that this will not be a retrospective change and just apply prospectively to new people.
It is a change that will come in relatively gradually, if implemented, and will therefore give families that might be affected in the future some time to adjust to the new provisions.

We should also say that, if some minor savings are made from this program, we would hope that they would not just be lost totally but that, at some point, the government might continue the work it has been doing to try to enhance what can be paid to carers under other programs.
We were pleased to see increases announced in the last budget to the DNCB.

Those come into effect in July and we see that as a positive step but really one of many that need to be taken for carers into the future.

I will leave it there as an opening statement.

CHAIR—Ms Mioche, are you relaxed about that?

Ms Mioche—Yes.
Ms Mioche—Yes.

Senator BARTLETT—Just double-checking again the understanding I am getting from your submission and what you are saying—you are broadly happy with the direction these changes are going in.

You have been involved in the consultation process in terms of the development of this assessment tool.
Mr Fisher—We have been involved with assessment tools in a range of carer payments— including this one—which is why, coming back to what I said earlier, we tend to see this probably in a slightly broader perspective than this one particular payment.

The answer is, yes, we have been involved.

Senator BARTLETT—Is that as adequate as one would hope for?

Mr Fisher—We suspect so.

We have not seen a lot of public disquiet about these measures.
There obviously have been some comments made, both publicly and more privately, that we are aware of, particularly by the groups that would be affected.

But, by and large, the measures seem to have gone by without a lot of public comment, which is in contrast to some other things that are happening at the moment.
COMMUNITY AFFAIRS Monday, 10 November 1997 SENATE—Legislation CA 199 Senator BARTLETT—One of the things that is always an issue with social security legislation is the discrepancies, or anomalies, between all the various different types of payments, particularly when you are getting into assessing things as complex as the level of disability.

Do you think these changes go some way towards reducing those sorts of discrepancies?
Mr Fisher—Yes, we do, which is really why, as a principle, we support what is attempted here, which is to try and bring slightly closer together the levels of disability that can be required, the minimal levels of disability that are required, in order for carers, of children, spouses or parents, or other people, to actually receive a cash benefit.

Prior to these changes, if they are implemented, there are some quite marked differences in eligibility criteria.
Senator BARTLETT—The existing criterion for child disability allowance of a child requiring substantially more care and attention—or something like that—is obviously fairly subjective.

You believe that this way of having a more specifically defined set of criteria is a better way to go?

Mr Fisher—I think it is probably trying to, in a way, codify a bit more clearly what is the minimum requirement to be paid.
There are of course many people for whom eligibility is very clear, because the disability is so manifest and so severe it is not a problem.

Yes, it is trying to make it clearer what are the minimum standards for eligibility.

This program will still be reasonably accessible to parents of children with disabilities.

I have mentioned before this contrast—I perhaps ought to spell it out.
The domiciliary nursing care benefit paid for carers of people over 16 requires a nursing home level of care, and the actual rate of payment for that benefit at the moment is lower than for the child disability allowance.

So we have on the one hand a program for children that is more accessible and paid at a slightly higher rate and another program for other people that requires a very high level of disability and a very high level of care in order to be paid.
We would like to see these two programs brought somewhat closer together so that the comparability across programs, so to speak, is a bit more consistent, and so that we do not have missing out completely families who are in fact providing very high levels of care with almost no reward or recognition at all.

CHAIR—I will adjourn for 30 seconds to have a quick private meeting, because we need to do an administrative thing.

Sitting suspended from 4.54 p.m. to 4.55 p.m. CHAIR—We will resume.
Mr Fisher—I would like to say something.

We must admit that we have not actually been able to read the draft legislation that would be before this committee.

Our remarks are based on the intentions of the government, as put down in the budget.

We assume that the legislation does in fact reflect what was said at that time.

The other comment I should make is that we are in no way trying to downplay the needs of people who might be affected by these changes.
It is just a question of relative priority, I think, as I was saying before.

We believe that the great part of their needs can be met by having their health care costs met, as suggested under the proposals.

Ms Mioche—The other thing that we might mention is the seriousness of the policy implications if this does not go ahead.

For many years now—about four years—we have actually been working towards this alignment.
We worked with the previous government and, in fact, most of these ideas were first discussed with the previous government.

If they do not COMMUNITY AFFAIRS CA 200 SENATE—Legislation Monday, 10 November 1997 go ahead, you will have remaining a situation where you have a different level of payment for different levels of disability and, basically, a continuation of the current payment system for carers, which has been a complete mess, does not work, and is very inequitable.
If you are looking towards formulating policies in the future that encourage community care and that provide good recognition for those people who do the majority of the work—those are carers—then these changes need to happen now.

It is a vital plank to any future policy development in terms of future policy—carer payments.

It is actually a very important change to us.

Senator BARTLETT—Could you perhaps elaborate a little bit more—when you say the current set-ups are highly inequitable.

Ms Mioche—Yes.
Ms Mioche—Yes.

What David was talking about was that you have the domiciliary nursing care benefit, which is paid to people who care for someone who would otherwise be in a nursing home.

That is worth $29 a week.

You have the child disability allowance, which is paid to parents of children with comparatively minor disabilities.

They get more money; they get $38 a week.

It is nonsensical.
It is nonsensical.

Carers are actually aware of these discrepancies and get very annoyed and basically feel that they get lost down this siphon.

What we have been trying to do is work towards a system where this allowance that is paid, and that is not income tested, is paid to people at a more defined level of disability, perhaps lower than what the domiciliary nursing care benefit is paid at now, but higher than what the child disability allowance is paid at now.
We, in the future, would work towards seeing that allowance being paid at a much more substantial level than it is being paid now.

At the moment, there are a lot of carers who cannot get the carer payment.

That amount of money is the only amount of money that they get, and it is peanuts.
That particularly is applicable to the many married women whose spouse might have an income and who, basically, might themselves have been in the work force, might never have been supported by their partner, and all of a sudden find themselves living literally on $28 or $29 a week.

It is just not acceptable.

It is not good policy and it will not be good policy in the future.
Senator BARTLETT—My next question was going to be about reviews on the adequacy of existing payment, but I think you probably pretty much anticipated that one.

Mr Fisher—Let me just say on that, though, the difficulty with these payments of course, in terms of adequacy, is that they do not really relate to the level of disability involved.
There is a threshold level that brings you into the programs at a qualifying point, but from then on, from relatively mild levels of disability currently, up to very, very major levels of disability, it is all at the one rate.

We actually have a lot of comment from carers, some of whom look after children with, say, very profound disabilities, who say, ‘Why is it that I am in this really terrible situation?

It is a completely full-time job.


There are enormous costs arising from this disability: wheelchairs, special feeding, all sorts of equipment, clothing, and so on, and I get $29 a week’—or whatever it is; $30 a week—‘while somebody who has got diabetes gets $30 per week.’ These types of comparisons of course get thrown in our faces—a carer organisation representing them.

We actually come across these comparisons all the time and they are very hard to justify really.
CHAIR—We have to apologise; we are sitting while the Senate is sitting.

We have just now got a division, so we have to go down and have our heads counted.

We shall return.

Sitting suspended from 5.00 to 5.09 p.m. COMMUNITY AFFAIRS Monday, 10 November 1997 SENATE—Legislation CA 201 CHAIR—I apologise again for the break in our proceedings.

Senator BARTLETT—I have a few more questions.

You have not commented on this in your submission, but I am interested in your view.
One of the other changes that the legislation makes is in reducing the amount of back pay that people get when they apply for child disability allowance from 12 months to six.

Have you any comment on that change?

Mr Fisher—We would see that primarily as a cost-saving measure.

Whether or not it is fair really depends, I guess, on how well known the provisions of the various payments are.
It would probably affect people most if those provisions were not well known and they were only to discover them later.

The child disability allowance is a program that has been running for quite a long time.

Certainly I believe that where children are born with significant disabilities, or where serious accidents might happen or conditions emerge that require contact with hospitals and so on, that payment is often mentioned as a possible recourse to go to.
Six months is not a really long time; it is a reasonable period of time.

Some social security payments cannot be backdated at all.

This one is now six months, if this is passed into law.

I guess it is like all these things—you would like it to be longer, but if you have to make a relative choice of where money is spent, it is probably not too harsh a provision to have.

Six months is a reasonable period.

Ms Mioche—The domiciliary nursing care benefit is not back paid at all, nor is the carer pension.
Senator BARTLETT—Your organisation, I presume, would have a reasonable degree of experience with families who are actually applying for the payment.

In your experience, how long would people normally have been dealing with the disabled child and the issues arising from that before they get around to applying for a payment?

Mr Fisher—I think that is quite variable, depending on the family.
Where they come into contact with the health care system or with advocacy groups or with support groups where people with similar types of situations may say, ‘This has been my experience and this is what I did,’ then, depending on how quickly that happens, they would probably learn about the existence relatively quickly.

We did a study last year covering all these payments for carers.
It was interesting that the one most commonly criticised in relation to that aspect which relates to back payment and knowledge of the existence of the payment was, in fact, domiciliary nursing care benefit, which attracted a lot more criticism, relatively, than did the child disability allowance.
That is probably partly because the CDA—the child disability allowance—is paid through the social security network, which is much more accessible to people around the country, whereas to date the domiciliary nursing care benefit has been paid through the Department of Health and Family Services and its existence has been much less well known.

So, in terms of our efforts on those payments, we have seen the DNCB as a greater problem in that regard than the child disability allowance.
Senator BARTLETT—Do you have any views on why there has been such a rapid growth in the CDA in recent years?

Mr Fisher—I do not feel well qualified to answer that well.

One thing that I have actually done in another capacity is to be a teacher and I notice that perhaps in the younger aged group we see more of these types of problems coming into the schools with, say, things like ADD and those types of conditions.

Just why that is happening is an interesting question.
But some of those children affected are now, or have been to date, ending up on the CDA, whereas COMMUNITY AFFAIRS CA 202 SENATE—Legislation Monday, 10 November 1997 previously that was quite a rare condition—or maybe not rare but perhaps not diagnosed.

Maybe they are just being better diagnosed; I am not sure.

But I do not think I can comment in any great depth on that.

Senator BARTLETT—That is okay.


The first witness we had today talked about how they were supportive of the idea of having a tiered set-up, that the way this will take things will be having a larger group of people with access to health care cards and then a group of people, with a bit of a higher threshold, getting an income support payment.

You would think that is a good way to go?

Mr Fisher—Yes, indeed.


We might provide you with a copy of a report that we published earlier this year called Caring enough to be poor.

It covers a lot of our thinking on all payments that relate to carers.

One of the key recommendations in it is that payment ought in some way be related to the level of disability.

We have talked about having a tiered payment, with a high level of payment for that high tier of disability and cost that goes with it.
We have not spelt out fully the details of that as more work would need to be done, but we are broadly in agreement with that proposition.

Senator BARTLETT—I have a general question about changes in recent times with the department and Centrelink.

Do you feel that there has been any change in availability of access to social workers and other sorts of specialist assistants for families in this sort of situation?
Mr Fisher—I am not sure I am well enough placed yet to comment on access to social workers and so on.

One thing we have noticed though in our dealings with Centrelink—and just observing around us, as I am sure you all do—is that there seems to be quite a lot of additional effort going into promoting the existence of their services and the support that is available.
In fact, Centrelink has been actively involved with the Carers Association in trying to make the existence of the carer payments better known within the community.

We all think that is very helpful for carers and probably likely to lead to fewer problems in back payments, along the lines that we were talking about earlier.

We think that is a good step.

It is early days though.

We will have to wait and see how it pans out.

Ms Mioche—Yes, it is too early.

In six months we will have a much better idea.


CHAIR—Thank you very much.

Thank you for giving us your time.
[5.19 p.m.] BARTOLO, Mr Anthony John, Assistant Director, Carers Section, Department of Social Security, Tuggeranong Office Park, Greenway, Australian Capital Territory 2900 HERSCOVITCH, Mr Andrew, Assistant Secretary, Disability and Carer Programs, Department of Social Security, Tuggeranong Office Park, Greenway, Australian Capital Territory 2900 RAYMOND, Ms Judy Elizabeth, Assistant Secretary, Parenting Branch, Department of Social Security, Box 7788, Canberra Mail Centre, Australian Capital Territory 2610 WANNAN, Mr Ian, Acting Director, Parenting Research and Evaluation Section, Department of Social Security, Box 7788, Canberra Mail Centre, Australian Capital Territory 2610 WILSON, Ms Serena, Director, Carers Section, Department of Social Security, Athllon Drive, Tuggeranong, Australian Capital Territory 2900 CHAIR—Witnesses are reminded that the giving of evidence to the committee is protected by parliamentary privilege.
I also remind you that the giving of false or misleading evidence COMMUNITY AFFAIRS Monday, 10 November 1997 SENATE—Legislation CA 203 to the committee may constitute a contempt of the Senate.

You will not be required to answer questions on the advice you may have given in the formulation of policy or to express a personal opinion on policy matters.

The committee has before it the department’s submission.

Do you wish to make any alterations to that submission?

Mr Herscovitch—Yes.
Mr Herscovitch—Yes.

There is a small error in attachment D. There is a numbering error for the treating health professional questions on special care needs and emotional state.

It is only a technical error and it has no impact on the content of the submission.

We will forward a corrected page if that is all right.

CHAIR—Thank you.

Would you like to make any comments on the evidence you have heard today, at the conclusion of which the senators will ask you questions.
Mr Herscovitch—There are a couple of points I would like to emphasise at the outset.

Firstly, the process that has led to the development of the child disability assessment goes back about four years.

In October 1993, the department released a policy discussion paper about the future of CDA and sent it out to something like 1,200 community organisations.

The overwhelming response was that the program was in need of reform and that really started the process which has led to where we are.
The development of the tool has been accompanied by extensive consultation.

A steering committee which comprised departmental representatives, a member from the Australian College of Paediatrics and one from the Australian government health service oversaw the development of this process.

We also had three reference groups: one of customers, one of treating health professionals and one of what were then DSS staff but are now Centrelink staff.
There has been extensive field testing of the tool and, after the announcement in the budget of May 1997, we went back to the wider community seeking further submissions from them.

Many of the suggestions which came through that process have been taken on board and we will be continuing to seek community feedback on the implementation of the tool after its implementation in July 1998.

About the tool itself, what we are seeking to achieve through it is a more objective process of assessing disability.
The present system tends to put a premium, if I can put it that way, on the ability of parents to explain the situation that they face.

The new tool provides for a more objective series of questions that need to be answered by both the parent and the treating health professional.

We expect the tool to lead to somewhat less inequity.
In the existing system a very wide range of disabilities is covered—some quite mild and others quite major and very severe—and they attract the same level of allowance under the existing arrangements.
The new tool will involve both the parents and the treating health professional in the assessment process and will include, as previous speakers have mentioned, a list of manifest and chronic medical conditions which will provide fast-track entry into the payment to avoid some of the intrusive processes that would otherwise take place.

The only other point I would like to mention at this stage is a number of related measures which need to be kept in mind when looking at the tool.
The first is that no-one in the present population of child disability allowance recipients will lose as a result of the measure.

Anyone who is still qualified at 30 June 1998 when the new tool comes into force will keep that entitlement without medical review for the next five years.

The second is that alongside the introduction of the tool will be the introduction also of a carer payment for parents of profoundly disabled children under 16.
In a sense, that provides the sort of third tier that earlier witnesses were talking about.

The final point is that people who would meet the existing test COMMUNITY AFFAIRS CA 204 SENATE—Legislation Monday, 10 November 1997 of eligibility for child disability allowance will be entitled to a health care card under the new rules so, to that extent, they are protected anyway.

I would also like to make a couple of comments on the proposed change in the entitlement to arrears from 12 months to six months.
The government in the 1996-97 budget sought to reduce that period to three months.

In the light of quite significant community reaction, it has now changed that to six.

It has brought back the same measure, but doubling the period originally in mind.

The most important issue there is the integrity of the existing system.

It is very difficult, in assessing entitlement to child disability allowance, to go back 12 months and establish that the entitlement existed 12 months ago.
As six months is a much more reasonable period for doing that, the government has settled on that period.

Is this an appropriate place to address points raised by earlier speakers?

CHAIR—Certainly.

Mr Herscovitch—Representatives of ACROD raised the issue of deaf-blind children.

The big problem here is establishing a suitable definition.
It is fairly certain that the sorts of people they have in mind will qualify under the broader child disability assessment tool, but finding a definition which can operate effectively in the context of the list of manifest conditions is much more problematic.

We have that under review at the moment.

It may well be that we can find a solution to that before the disallowable instrument, which will contain all the details of the measures, is put in place.

That is all I want to say at this stage.


Senator BARTLETT—As you may be aware I relatively recently arrived in this spot.

I want to make sure about a technical issue or two in relation to the legislation with this tool.

It is not contained in the legislation itself; it is a disallowable instrument that is tabled separately.

Is that right?

Mr Herscovitch—That is right.

But the submission that you have in front of you includes the details of what that will contain.

Senator BARTLETT—That is fine.


I just wanted to clarify that.

Has it been tabled yet or will that be done upon passage of the legislation?

Mr Herscovitch—That will be done after the passage of the legislation.

Ms Wilson just pointed out to me that it cannot be done earlier.

Ms Wilson—Because the bill is enabling legislation.

There is little point in tabling something which has not yet been enabled.

That is the relationship between a disallowable instrument and the government.
Senator BARTLETT—But will it be what is in your submission?

Ms Wilson—There are some final issues we are trying to clarify, including the deaf-blind issue that ACROD raised.

There is one area also on emotional state where we are possibly thinking of taking a slightly different approach.

We are still trying to finalise the detail of that, taking the emotional state questions, which essentially are asking for a clinical diagnosis of a psychiatric problem, and including them in the manifest list.
We are working with our consulting team and psychiatrists to try to do that.

What you have in the submission is the proposed tool, as it stands, subject to those further enhancements that might be made in response to submissions that we have received.

As soon as any decisions are made on those changes, we would supply the new draft.
COMMUNITY AFFAIRS Monday, 10 November 1997 SENATE—Legislation CA 205 Senator BARTLETT—Do you have any comments to make specifically on conditions raised earlier, such as behavioural and emotional state or the diabetes issue?

Mr Herscovitch—The only general comment I would make is that no condition disqualifies anybody from child disability allowance.

It is a question of the severity of their condition and whether the child has other conditions as well.

That is about all there is to be said about it.


There is no one condition being singled out that says that person cannot get it.

There is no doubt that effect of the new tool will be to make it harder for children with some conditions to get access.

Ms Wilson—The tool is attempting to measure the impact of the condition or disability on a child’s functioning.

Therefore, apart from the chronic medical conditions and manifest lists, the particular diagnosis does not matter.
It is trying to measure what that impact is in terms of the child’s disability and abilities.

Mr Herscovitch—I would like to add one other point there.

In the early stages after this had been announced, there was some sense that people who are currently on the allowance would actually lose their allowance.

As I said earlier, anyone who has an entitlement under the existing rules as of June next year will keep the allowance for five years after that.
Senator BARTLETT—With regard to that two-tiered set-up that is now going to apply with the health care card for people who meet the existing criteria, you would expect that broader health care card entitlement to be continued for the foreseeable future?

Mr Herscovitch—There is no reason to believe otherwise.

The health care card entitlement will be based on the existing substantially more care and attention test, and the intention is that it will just continue.
Senator BARTLETT—And then obviously the implication of the new tool is that it is somewhat more than substantially more care and attention.

Mr Herscovitch—Not necessarily.

The field testing we have done suggests that some people who currently cannot get access to the allowance will, in fact, qualify under the new tool.

It is quite a different method of assessment.

I do not think that one could make that statement categorically.
Ms Wilson—One of the problems in the current system which Roland Naufal mentioned is that to some extent it relies on a parent or a carer being a very good advocate and quite articulate about the impact of his or her child’s condition in terms of substantial more care and attention.

They have to answer in quite a detailed way fairly open questions.
Whereas by focusing on the impact of the condition or disability on a child’s functional ability and just ticking boxes which best include the descriptor that matches that child’s ability, the parent is not having to tell such a story, and people for whom telling that story is difficult may find it easier to qualify under this system and would be less put off than under the current system.
Senator BARTLETT—In working to achieve the broader goal of trying to develop a social security system that is a bit less complicated and with fewer internal anomalies than the current one—and obviously it is hard to avoid them totally—do you feel that these changes are a positive move in that direction?

Mr Herscovitch—Very much so.

The process of assessment of the child disability allowance will be easier.
In conjunction with the Department of Health and Family Services we are doing some work on redeveloping the eligibility criteria for domiciliary nursing care benefit and we are a fair way from completion of that.

We hope to get a greater degree of alignment between the two.

COMMUNITY AFFAIRS CA 206 SENATE—Legislation Monday, 10 November 1997 Senator BARTLETT—In terms of this new tool, once it is in place—assuming it is—have you got any review mechanisms in place for assessing it?
I guess that would happen automatically anyway, but is there any particular timetable in terms of reviewing it after it has been introduced?

Mr Herscovitch—It would need a period of bedding down before you could really make a considered assessment of how it is going, but after 12 to 18 months we certainly would be hoping to have a considered view of how it is going.
In the meantime, we would obviously be listening to community feedback and, in fact, we are putting in place some structured mechanisms for dealing with that.
Ms Wilson—We are intending to maintain a smaller reference group, if you like, of treating health professionals and certainly we would intend to maintain the involvement, if they agree, of the College of Paediatrics in monitoring the implementation of the tool so that we have on hand expert advice if issues come up during implementation, or after implementation, so that they can be responded to quite quickly.

We also, obviously, keep in touch with community reaction.
The department, in conjunction with Centrelink, has a committee called the disability customer service reference group which also includes representatives of the Carers Association and that is one of the mechanisms that we will be using for monitoring implementation and getting feedback about how it is going in the field.

Senator BARTLETT—Okay.

And if a particular problem arose fairly quickly, you would be in a position to be able to look at finetuning?
Ms Wilson—That is certainly the intention and that is why the tool is proposed to be in a disallowable instrument so that it is much more responsive in terms of any need for change that might be— Senator BARTLETT—Not subject to those terrible delays that the Senate keeps putting on things all the time!

Mr Herscovitch—The Senate can disallow the instrument.

Senator BARTLETT—Okay.


If a family that puts in an application for the allowance are initially judged to be ineligible, how often can they be reassessed?

Mr Herscovitch—The standard review procedures will apply.

There is no change in that.

Senator BARTLETT—That is just in terms of appeals and things, but— Mr Herscovitch—Yes.

There is nothing to stop them reapplying tomorrow, theoretically, but obviously the more sensible course would be to take it up as an appeal, in the initial stages.
And certainly if the child’s condition changes it would not be at all difficult to reapply.

Senator BARTLETT—This might be a bit of a leading question.

Certainly from a lot of the evidence today there are broadly supportive feelings amongst carer groups, et cetera, to these changes and they are reasonably happy with the level of consultation, which is good to see, and I congratulate the department on that.

Welfare Rights did not necessarily share that same view.

Have you any views on why that might be?


Mr Herscovitch—The particular group that were witnesses from the Geelong Community Legal Service centre have in fact had some extensive discussions with us on an informal basis, so they have been well aware of what is going on.

But they have not been part of the more formal consultative processes.

I guess it is impossible to cover absolutely every organisation in the country.
COMMUNITY AFFAIRS Monday, 10 November 1997 SENATE—Legislation CA 207 The customer service reference group that Ms Wilson referred to a little while ago includes a representative of Welfare Rights and they have been kept across the change process.

I guess it is fair to say that the Geelong group may not have heard about this as soon as they would have liked.

But, as I said, we have not been able to get to absolutely everybody, and you have to have a reasonably focused group to be able to work with.
There has certainly been no intention to keep any of this under wraps.

The call for submissions after the budget announcement in May was very widely disseminated.

My own view is that there has been every opportunity for community groups to have an input, and they certainly have responded.

Ms Wilson—Geelong Community Legal Service was not one of the official members of the customer reference group that we are developing, the tool.
That was made up essentially of peak disability organisations and groups such as the Carers Association, so we were looking for representation at a national level.

But Geelong certainly received a copy of the consultation document and my staff have spent many hours on the phone talking to Lee Archer and her staff about these issues during the development of this tool and after the budget announcement.

Senator BARTLETT—Okay.


I have a final question on the child disability stuff—and I will actually ask some questions about the parenting payment.

I take on board what you said about the change from 12 months to six months in terms of the difficulty of assessing back that far.

I guess it would depend a bit on the condition as to how difficult that might be, but I will take that on board.
Do you have any information or indication in relation to the issue that I have asked a couple of people about, that is, how long it often takes parents or families to get around to applying for this payment after they have gone through addressing and getting disability assessed and that sort of thing?

Mr Herscovitch—If a parent wants to claim child disability allowance, they do not have to provide all that information right away.
That is quite a crucial point—they do not have to have all that information in.

Ms Wilson—There is no requirement to have a specific medical label in order to claim child disability allowance.

Perhaps that is one of the things that is not well understood.
With anyone who has contact with a children’s hospital, as Mr Fisher indicated, where a child is born with a disability which is obviously going to be permanent or where there has been a major trauma, such as an accident, the paediatric social workers just about always disseminate claims for child disability allowance and many paediatricians also keep them in their rooms.

It is probably more in the broader community that the need to be aware of the payment exists.
The department, through Centrelink, is certainly advertising it broadly.

It was suggested that we should include information in letters that go to family payment recipients.

In fact, through one of the publications that goes to every family payment recipient in Australia, You and your family, the program is advertised at least once a year.

Similarly, the officers of Centrelink undertake outreach activities.

We believe that the program is very widely known and widely recognised in the community now.
All of the support groups seem to be well aware of it, so there is no reason why parents should not be making a claim soon after hearing about the payment.

They do not need to wait for a specific label for their child’s condition and they do not need to wait for all the papers to be complete.

The medical report can be forwarded later.


COMMUNITY AFFAIRS CA 208 SENATE—Legislation Monday, 10 November 1997 Mr Herscovitch—The rate of growth in child disability allowance numbers would certainly suggest that the payment is well known, that people do know about it.

If you went back five years or a bit more, that might not have been true, but it certainly is now.
Senator BARTLETT—The figures that you provided in answer to a question on notice asked by Senator Faulkner—I presume it was at an estimates committee—indicated that with this measure of limiting the payment of arrears to six months, 4,500 people were expected to be negatively affected.

Is that just the total number of people you are expecting to claim, so they will only get six months, or is it 4,500 people who will claim between that six- and 12- month period?

Mr Herscovitch—It is the latter.


That was an estimate of the number who currently receive arrears for more than six months, between six and 12 months.

Senator BARTLETT—I will move on to the parenting payment, which has not been addressed by any of the submissions the committee has received but I do have some interest in it and would like to ask a few questions about it.

I may ask some questions which give away the fact that I am only just moving into this role.
There was legislation that recently went through—it has certainly been in the chamber and I think it was passed—in relation to the 25 per cent average weekly earnings issue.

Has that gone through?

Ms Raymond—Yes.

Senator BARTLETT—This parenting payment will not be pegged to that 25 per cent mark?

Ms Raymond—My understanding is that the single pension rate of parenting payment which applies to lone parents will be subject to those provisions—of the 25 per cent AWE.
It is a continuation of a pension type of arrangement for lone parents under this payment, but partnered parents will still be subject to the allowance rate.

Senator BARTLETT—So that will be one of the differences between the two categories?

Ms Raymond—Maybe in the future, yes.

Senator BARTLETT—I guess there are still a few of those with this; you now have the common name but still, in effect, two separate groups.

Ms Raymond—Two separate groups—that is right.


Senator BARTLETT—One of the thing I am interested in is that, broadly speaking, I think it is a good idea to try to merge things together more and have fewer of these different types of things all over the place.

Obviously, as part of doing that, I am always keen to see that the merging process does not bring people down to the lowest level of payment, rather than the other way around.
I notice that in your submission you have said that this structure is part of a desire to move towards more of a generic payment set-up.

Then you say that many of the elements which remain different for lone and partnered parents are also issues for other income support payments and therefore warrant more careful consideration, such as concession cards and income testing.

Can you give me any indication of what sorts of things you might be considering in that regard?
Ms Raymond—At this stage all I would like to say is that there is pressure for the system as a whole to become less complex and less categorical, if that is possible, but there are big differences between pensions and allowances.

Any move would have to be considered very, very carefully.

COMMUNITY AFFAIRS Monday, 10 November 1997 SENATE—Legislation CA 209 Senator BARTLETT—That distinction between pensions and allowances is obviously still distinct, even if you are having a common title in this area.
Ms Raymond—That is right.

The government made the decision that we would retain some fairly big differences between the two groups.

I think that is quite manageable.

Senator BARTLETT—Apart from the general benefit of removing the stigma associated with the sole parent pension name, can you outline what specific benefits lone parents will get from this change of payments?

It is obviously detailed in the submission to some extent.

Ms Raymond—Yes, I think they are.


One of the big problems has been the transfer between sole parent pension and parenting allowance.

We have thousands of such transfers occurring each year.

I cannot remember the actual figures but they are one of the most substantial groups that move between payments.

By having one payment and one claim form, it will certainly improve processes for people in these circumstances.
In the case where overpayments have arisen, in particular, in the past people would maybe lose qualification or eligibility for the sole parent pension and have to repay the whole amount.

In the future they will only have to pay the difference between the rates.

So if they are in a marriage-like relationship or living as a de facto couple, the differences between parenting allowance and sole parent pension would be all they would have to repay instead of losing complete eligibility for the payment.
We think that is quite a significant, positive step.

We also think it will be a much smoother transition between the status of partnered or single.

In the past, depending on when you lost eligibility for parenting allowance and had to put in a new claim for sole parent pension, there might have been a gap of three weeks in payment before you picked up your new sole parent pension.
With one payment we think the transition will be much smoother and there will not be this gap in payments that quite often occurred.

Mr Wannan—There is also a change in the residence requirement.

At present the period is five years but that is being reduced to two years for lone parents.
Ms Raymond—It will be the same period of time for both partnered and single parents in terms of residence in Australia unless, of course, the person became a sole parent in Australia and then eligibility would be immediate.

Senator BARTLETT—You have listed in that information provided to the estimates committee the winners and losers in this one.
They are just raw figures but there are a reasonable number of losers compared to winners, which might be the way life is, but there are negatives there which affect people.

Ms Raymond—The biggest group is the 7,300 new claimants which we are saying would lose eligibility for the payment for a period of, say, two weeks.
This is because we are aligning the income maintenance provisions, which have recently been introduced for parenting allowance and newstart allowance, and they were introduced in September.

Nobody will lose a current entitlement under that provision.

It will be a deferring of eligibility for people who have ceased employment.

They have to have ceased employment.

It is just dependent on income testing arrangements.
Senator BARTLETT—Is this amalgamation going to affect things like the pensioner concession card?

Ms Raymond—Not at the moment, no.

There is no intention to remove pensioner concession cards to the single group under parenting payment.

Senator BARTLETT—Okay.

I guess the underlying concern with this amalgamation is the downgrading of the pensioner entitlements.

Are you aware of any further proposals coming forward at this stage in relation to all that?
COMMUNITY AFFAIRS CA 210 SENATE—Legislation Monday, 10 November 1997 Ms Raymond—No.

But it will be subject to government consideration.

Senator BARTLETT—Have you had much consultation with, or feedback from, pensioner groups or sole parent groups?

Ms Raymond—The two major groups that have expressed particular interest in this measure are ACOSS and the Council for the Single Mother and Her Child.
Both of them are supportive in terms of the overall direction of removing stigma and making it easier for people to transfer from a married status to a single status where there are children.

Certainly they have picked up on the points that you have made, and they are a little worried about the future direction of the payment and the fact that people will be brought down to the lowest common denominator.

That is where their concerns have been.


Senator BARTLETT—One other particular component I am wanting to clarify relates to the income maintenance period, which revolves around the waiting period based on level of annual leave, et cetera.

At the moment, do sole parent pensioners have to serve any waiting period before they start receiving their payments?

Mr Wannan—Not in relation to those lone parents who cease employment and have an entitlement to leave payments as a result of ceasing employment.
This is a new measure for them.

But those who have leave entitlements and whose employment is continuing would currently have their leave payments assessed under income test arrangements.

Senator BARTLETT—Often, lone parents can only undertake casual work or part-time work on and off, because of family needs.

Does that mean that potentially they could be hit with an income maintenance period each time they leave a job and reapply?
Mr Wannan—The unused leave entitlement will be assessed under income test arrangements for the period that the leave payment represents.

Ms Raymond—In those cases, I would imagine that the leave entitlement would be fairly small.

Generally it would only be for those who have had continuing employment and who would have accumulated a fairly substantial amount of leave.

CHAIR—There being no further questions, I thank all the officers and Hansard.

I declare the meeting closed.


Committee adjourned at 5.53 p.m. COMMUNITY AFFAIRS