Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

That is a gripping question from the opposition. It is good to see they have workshopped something of that kind. The simple fact is there were six who came forward with constructive suggestions, compared to zero sitting ALP members. Those figures are quite evident. I encourage members to embrace the proactivity of the six who did. It is a very good example about how a local representative can draw from a broad range of experience and provide some useful input, and I encourage my colleagues to embrace that kind of approach.

Focusing solely on the time taken to process a claim for compensation can be and is misleading. My department concentrates not only on the timeliness of our decisions but also on the quality of them to ensure that there is consistent, legitimate decision-making across what is a very comprehensive system that can be quite complex. Nevertheless, it is our goal to constantly improve the timeliness and the quality of those decisions, and a number of measures have already been taken to embrace that ethos since my appointment as minister.

I was asked a question before by the opposition in relation to my earlier comments. It is simply ridiculous to draw a conclusion about turnover performance in a claims area for a new system that has been introduced for the first time where, in its first year, two claims were determined to establish the benchmark against which full-year operation statistics are compared. Most people would realise that that is simply nonsense. As the claims numbers have increased through the Military Rehabilitation and Compensation Act pathway, so have the department’s resources. Those resources have expanded to accommodate and address the processing load that is coming through those various systems. I would encourage the opposition spokesperson to actually come to grips with these issues. Another area that he draws on relates to claims under the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Act.

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