Mitch Fifield (Victoria, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Bushby for his question. I guess I can surmise why he is asking the question—because of his failure to hear my answers because of what was coming from the other side in response to Senator Polley's questions.

Senator Bushby asks for the reasons for the design failure of the scheme. I would have thought those opposite would know, but clearly they do not. Let me share it with them. The reason why the blow-out occurred was because of serious design failures. Let me be very specific about what they were. As a result of the design of the former government, there was no validation process to check whether or not the claims were for those people the scheme was designed to support—that is, 2,000 people with dementia exhibiting severe behaviours—and there was no validation process to check whether or not it was effectively supporting management of those severe behaviours.

I know my colleagues had difficulty hearing the statistics I referred to before, so I will repeat them. The previous government in the last financial year budgeted $11 million for the scheme. It came in at $110 million. Over the forward estimates, they budgeted $52 million. On a constant policy basis it would have been $780 million, and over 10 years it would have been $1.5 billion. The design of those opposite was meant to see 2,000 people qualify, with aged-care providers to receive that supplement. At the end of the last financial year it was 29,000 people, not 2,000—29,000 people. As I have said in answer to probably three or four questions in this place on the dementia and severe behaviours supplement, although we were not the people who created this problem, although we were not the people who created this design flaw, it nevertheless fell to us to address the situation.