Sue Boyce (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In speaking on the Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs annual report for 2008-09 I would first like to congratulate Dr Harmer and his staff for the timeliness of the publication of this report. It was one of the very few annual reports from departments that arrived in time to be of value to the opposition during estimates. We have certainly formed the view within the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee that it is time to look at the deadlines for the publishing of annual reports and the timing of estimates. Something has to be changed. You could get the impression that some of these deadlines have been deliberately set in such a way as to make it difficult for the opposition to use estimates to raise accurate queries around the functioning of the departments and the use of policy by the government.

I would like to compliment FaHCSIA as well. As they state in their annual report, they have the highest percentage of staff with a disability of all the APS agencies, with 5.3 per cent of their workforce identifying as a person with a disability compared with the Australian Public Service average of 3.1 per cent. In August this year, they started offering five traineeships of 18 months each for young people with an intellectual disability. I would like to compliment the department on this. As I understand it, and we heard evidence around this, this program has been very successful to date and is going well. There is a hope that, once these people have been trained within the department, they will go on to full-time jobs.

Whilst I think the department has done a very good job in this area, I would like to contrast that with the unfortunate experience that Australia’s 24,000 disability support pensioners aged under 21 have received at the hands of this government regarding the pension increase. Ministers Macklin and Bowen wrote to all disability support pensioners some time ago, telling them about the increase that was to come through. They sent this letter along with a form setting out what the increases would be to all disability support pensioners, including those under 21—the whole 24,000 of them. This, rather stupidly it turns out, led the disability support pensioners under 21 to think that they were going to get a pension increase. But that just proved how foolish they were. We had a bizarre exchange in estimates, where I asked:

So ‘all disability support pensioners’ does not mean disability support pensioners under 21?

Dr Harmer replied:

No, and I am about to explain the reason that it does not.

Dr Harmer said:

They would well know that they are on a different rate. They are on the allowance rate. They are not on the pension rate. While they are called ‘disability support pensioners’ because of the nature of their position they are on an allowance rate, not the pension rate.

How foolish of those 24,000 young Australians to think that, because they were called ‘disability support pensioners’, they were actually on pensions! And to think that, having received a letter from Ministers Macklin and Bowen, they would actually be entitled to it! Another official from the department went on to say:

We understand that the under-21 DSP group was sent a letter. The letter was telling them about their rate and, included in that letter, was a pamphlet about the pension reform changes that, confusingly because it was included with their letter, did not apply to them so it may have confused them.

Well, it did confuse them and it confused their families and their parents as well. These people are going to have to wait and wait and wait for the Henry review. Quite why tax is relevant to disability support pensions, I do not know, but these people have been left with no apology and continuing confusion.

Question agreed to.