Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

What I'll do before I answer that is respond to some of the assertions that you made. Imagine if we came here with a predetermined outcome. Imagine if we came here with an outcome in relation to what the needs assessment process was going to be. Imagine, if we advanced that proposition, what the chorus of complaints would be. Imagine that proposition. What we have set out here in the bill is a process for co-design of the needs assessment process that was asked for in the review of the legislation. That is what has been determined. It is absolutely proper—and it would indeed be very strange if it were any different, if the government were to say anything else—that decisions about the scope of payment, the response to that co-design process, will be a future budget decision of the government at the appropriate time. Now, if the response of our political opponents out here is to try and describe that perfectly reasonable outline in the florid and scaremongering terms that I've just heard, they ought to take responsibility for the kind of language that they use here, the kind of misrepresentations that they make in relation to these questions and the impact that has upon people.

Senator Steele-John, you said, through the chair, that there are deficiencies in the way that the agency conducts some of these assessments. You said that people, participants, sometimes—I'm not sure whether it's sometimes or often—have to pay a considerable amount of money to provide additional information in their assessments. Senator Reynolds said 'hear, hear' as if that hasn't been occurring for the last decade.

We as a government are establishing a process to develop a needs assessment framework that will apply to every participant.