Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) | Hansard source

Thank you, Minister. I appreciate you're busy, and nor are you likely to look at the detail of my speech on the second reading debate, but the Greens did go to some lengths to try and get the issue of insurance payouts that we're dealing with here today quantified for these cohorts—for the under-25s and the under $6,000. The PBO costing that we got, which I hope you're aware of, assuming the bill passes unamended, would see 25-year-olds and people with low account balances missing out on up to $5.8 billion in payments over 10 years. The PBO was able to get the actuarial data showing that there have been payouts of $5.8 billion. We quantified that as a simple average of $600 million a year. Firstly, do you think that's a reasonable estimate of the at-risk cohort here? In other words, young Australians and low-income Australians are going to miss out on the safety net that John Howard brought in to provide them with. And, secondly, have you applied any kind of analysis across historic payments to determine how many of those payments were made to workers in so-called high-risk occupations and how many were made to workers outside high-risk occupations?