Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The issue here, as I articulated yesterday, is that we still may have vulnerable jobseekers who get to this point if they haven't disclosed. In effect, what we've got is people being able to access the first appeals process, the departmental appeals process and then the AAT. For a start, we know the AAT takes quite a long period of time—certainly more than the four weeks. Well, it's seven weeks, but the maximum one-time suspension is four weeks, and it certainly takes longer than that.

I've got a couple of questions. What is the time it takes for the departmental review? Following that, if somebody has appealed and they do their four weeks—say it's the four-week one—what happens if they're still under appeal? Do they still go back? If they are still appealing—say it's an AAT or departmental one, but it's more likely AAT because they take longer—do they go back to the start of the process? What happens if they are still under appeal? Is that clear? So they've appealed and they've actually done their four weeks off income support—you've just said they would not be receiving income support. Do they then go back to the start, as everybody else does? What happens there?