Sepuloni Carmel: Social Security (Commencement of Benefits) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSepuloni Carmel: Social Security (Commencement of Benefits) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 17 November 2015. Volume:710;Page:8206. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour—Kelston): I have got a few questions for the Minister the Hon Anne Tolley and a few responses to some of the stuff that she has just said as well. Firstly I just want to raise the issue around the fact again because the Minister may not have heard this earlier argument that actually this technical error was committed in 1998 when this bill went through under urgency in a similar way to what we are seeing now. So is the Minister concerned that when we rush through legislation like this as was done in 1998 these errors do occur because of the fact that we do not have anyone looking over it we do not have any of our officials giving us advice and the Auditor-General has not had an opportunity to look at it? Is she concerned that that may happen again? Really we do not want to be back here in 17 years’ time correcting a technical error that happened 17 years beforehand to correct a technical error that had happened 17 years beforehand whilst the bill went through under urgency.The Minister has brought up the number of people whom they think may have been impacted by this. She said it was 2.7 million. She has not mentioned any fiscal cost but we know that this was highlighted in the departmental disclosure statement. It says basically that provisions in the bill have retrospective effect and that the retrospective provisions can be justified because of three different things including apparently financial costs to the Crown but we have no figures. Actually even in this departmental disclosure statement it points out the fact that there are no numbers or no figures around what this could potentially cost.The Minister has said that 8500 people have made claims so far. I guess with that in mind what is the rate of application that has gone on here? I know that really the applications started to be made after the Government started to pay out. I know that there was an increase in the number of claims that were being put forward once people knew that they could actually get paid out. So I just want to know from the Minister what that rate of claim has been. Have they been getting a thousand a day since then? Then we could maybe anticipate 6 weeks down the track if they were to delay the commencement date as I have asked for in my Supplementary Order Paper potentially what the cost to the Crown would be. But at the moment we are going blind because there is nothing here that we can see with regard to costings or anticipated costs for the Crown if they were to open it up so that all of those people could make a claim or as we suggested have that small window of opportunity for people to make a claim.The Minister talked about the reason why there is no regulatory impact statement and has cited the fact that these are technical changes as a reason for not having a regulatory impact statement. I just want to point out that I did look this up because I was interested to see where there would be a rationale for not having a regulatory impact statement. What I have found is—3.1 “Exemptions” says: “The value of completing even a modest Regulatory Impact Statement (RIS) is likely to be limited in some circumstances such as those where the potential proposals would result in little or no change to the status quo legislative position or would have no or very small impacts outside of government.”That makes me question the Minister on what she was saying. Actually this does not have no or very small impacts outside of Government. This has huge impacts outside of Government because of the number of people—2.7 million people—whom the Minister cited as having gone on or gone through a stand-down period to go on a benefit over the last 17 years. So I think it is not fair to say that the Government is justified in not producing a regulatory impact statement because I do not think any person in this room would think that the potential to affect 2.7 million people outside of here is something that would not have an impact.So I really would like the Minister to speak to that. Again I would like her to answer the question around the rate at which the claims have been coming in so we can get some idea of potentially what that 6-week window of opportunity would mean for those people in terms of cost. I would like to know at this stage what the average amount is that people have been claiming for or what they have been eligible to receive. So the Minister would know in terms of those who have already been paid out what the average amount is that is being paid out there. How many days have they been claiming for? Has it just been the one day that the Minister mentioned?