Seymour David; Parker DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Is he satisfied with the administration of the first tranche of cost of living payments on 1 August and if not can he detail for the committee what improvements he has made to the administration of cost of living payments since 1 August and what results those improvements will have for the people receiving the payments and for the taxpayers who are paying for the whole thing? Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Revenue): As has already been well traversed in question time over a number of days in this House the Government faced a choice. Given that we wanted to give some extra support to people who were facing cost of living pressures—bearing in mind that we were already assisting with decreases in road-user charges and excise duty on petrol as well as our halving of public transport fares—we thought something additional was necessary. One of the criticisms that's been made by Opposition parties is that most of the support that the Government has offered through the likes of the winter energy payment has gone to households in receipt of Government transfers. We thought there was something in that and we wanted to give some income support to modest to middle income earners who weren't in receipt of Government assistance. So we proposed a payment that was paid in three tranches each of about $116 and we were then faced with a choice as to what process we ran around that. Would we run an application process or would we pay on the basis of set criteria? We were advised and accepted the advice from Inland Revenue that you couldn't run an application process within that period and also that an application process would cost a lot of money relative to the amount that was being paid out and it would also result in a lower rate of uptake because some of the people who were entitled to it wouldn't know that and wouldn't apply. So we chose instead to use a system based on pre-set criteria—which have been traversed previously and I won't detail that and take up too much time—and have paid out on the basis of those. I have said previously that I think that will be roughly 99 percent accurate and that the cost of using a more accurate system which relied upon applications and assessment on a case by case basis would have both not met the requirements of getting the money out the door but would have cost more money than has been saved. Am I satisfied that the outcome of that has been as we intended? Yes. Have there been instances that we would prefer not to have occurred? Yes but the only alternative to that was an application scheme. DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Can the Minister rule out the Government's extending the cost of living payment beyond the first three months of payment on the first day of August September and October or will this policy be extended just as the discounts on road-user charges fuel excise tax and public transport have already been extended twice? Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Revenue): We have no current intention of extending it. I have no policy—David Seymour: Can he rule it out? Hon DAVID PARKER: Well you can never prove a negative. So there is no positive intention to extend it we have no work under way to extend it and I am not party to any discussions with any Minister for it to be extended and were there contemplation of that I would expect that those discussions would have commenced by now. So I can pretty much give the member the affirmation that he wants.