Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Minister for Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

No, the money has been allocated but the projects have not yet been announced other than the $180,000 so it is not true to say that the money has not been allocated. But because those grants and the trials are done in cooperation with state and territory jurisdictions, they rely on a bilateral rather than unilateral announcement of those projects. I think that covers off those matters that you raise.

In respect to the member for Bass, you put some assertions and raised some questions. Effectively your question was whether or not carers payment will be subject to any of the types of processes that DSP payments are presently subject to and then you determined to misrepresent the processes that the DSP payment are subject to. Let me describe to you what is with the DSP at present. There are in the vicinity of 30,000 reviews a year. The member for Bass, the reason that those reviews are being conducted is because your government in 2012 changed the disability assessment criteria for the DSP such that people who were assessed post that change in late 2012, 2013 and subsequent years, were assessed to the new criteria that you developed. That of course meant, as a matter of practice, that many people had been included into and assessed into the DSP according to criteria which are no longer used and are outdated. It seems a perfectly fair and reasonable measure to go back and reassess those, and of course you need to do that in an appropriate and fair way, which we are endeavouring to do. The one example that was raised, I think, in question time yesterday was an indication of the person who received a letter. Information was sent back, and the review—if you can call it that—ended at precisely that point. But those reviews are continuing. (Time expired)

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