Shanks Katrina: Social Security (Benefit Review and Appeal Reform) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Shanks Katrina: Social Security (Benefit Review and Appeal Reform) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:656;Page:5732] 
KATRINA SHANKS (National) 
: 
 It is my pleasure to stand and speak to the Social Security (Benefit Review and Appeal Reform) Bill tonight. First of all I would like to acknowledge Sue Bradford who has put this member’s bill forward. I have worked on the Social Services Committee with Sue for the last 2½ years and I can tell the House that she is extremely passionate about beneficiaries and about the most vulnerable people in our society. I admire her for being their greatest advocate and for always having them at the forefront of everything she does at our select committee to ensure that we produce the best legislation that we can for them. I admire what Sue Bradford does and I think she is leading the way for many members in the House by doing what she believes is absolutely right and standing by it. So I wanted to acknowledge her first. 
This will be a quick call. I will touch on what the bill proposes to do what the current law is and why we think it could be improved. The bill proposes changes that are focused on the review and appeal rights of benefit recipients as set out in the Social Security Act 1964. The bill intends to provide a benefit review system that is independent of the Ministry of Social Development and converts the current review process into an independently contracted quasi-judicial review. 
That is really important and I did not realise there was a big issue around the benefits review committee. I personally had not heard about that but I am a relatively new member of Parliament so I have not been exposed to as much as Sue has in terms of beneficiaries. There is a process that people go through and I realise that there is one community person on that committee. But I was not aware that in many instances those people have been former Ministry of Social Development staff and have in effect the inside-running on how the system works. That is why this debate is so great—we hear a lot of new viewpoints. That is what we are here to do; to hear viewpoints on members’ bills that deal with concerns out there in the community. 
The bill seeks to change the way the benefit reviews are conducted and to award costs to both successful and unsuccessful applicants. I can understand that. I understand that it can be intimidating for people to go before a benefits review committee. It is expensive to go through that process to be represented at the committee and to seek advice before the committee. This bill is about beneficiaries and beneficiaries do not have a lot of money. Many of them do not have the skills to go before those committees themselves. We should be trying to get the committee right to begin with to ensure it is delivering what it should be delivering to beneficiaries in the review process. I am sure these committees do try to get it right and maybe it is something we should look at anyway outside of this bill to make sure that the committees are working. 
At this time we are trying to keep down the cost of everything that is happening including the cost of the awards that can be given because the process is meant to be a low-cost process. The other constraint on this is the fiscal constraint around independent contracting. The proposal would require the ministry to engage reviewers on contract which would incur substantial administration costs well in excess of costs currently paid for community members of benefits review committees. 
The bill proposes that the ministry would be responsible for meeting all the costs incurred by a reviewer in conducting a review. One full-year cost for benefit review committee adjudicators—if the reviews are to be heard by an independent contractor—is estimated to be around $4.45 million. So we are talking about a significant amount of money. I understand that about 5 million letters are sent out every year in relation to appeal rights and only a small proportion of these come back to the review committees. That indicates to me that most of the time we do get it right. 
I think that the Work and Income people are committed to ensuring that beneficiaries do get the correct amount of benefit. Obviously it is not always right. We do have a process in place and maybe that is something we can look at separately. I congratulate the member on bringing this bill to the House and letting us have this debate. Thank you very much. Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker.