CBDA Utilisation

Question

Senator STEELE-JOHN: Gosh. No wonder you're working it through-the administrative impact of that many people coming to you requesting reassessment. In relation to scheme integrity, Allied Health Professions Australia raised in their submission to the joint standing committee and stated in their evidence on 21 May that The planned 10 per cent cut to capacity building funding will have downstream effects on other supports. For example, OT hours are crucial for getting properly fitted for a wheelchair and cutting those hours could result in serious injuries from poorly fitted assistive technology. That was their evidence to us. How will the support determinations take into consideration these kinds of downstream effects? Ms Rule: Firstly, I'd like to acknowledge the submissions that have been received. We're still working through them and analysing them. One of the things that we do need to do is advise the minister on the safety considerations when making the determination. So I expect that there'll be information in those submissions that we can draw upon, such as the one that you've just referred to. Senator STEELE-JOHN: But there's nothing in the legislation that is a permanent safeguard to ensure those types of considerations. Ms Rule: There is a requirement in the legislation for the minister to consider safety when making the determination. Senator STEELE-JOHN: But it is only to consider it; it is not to have act in line with it. You can just kind of think about it and then make the decision. Ms Wood: We can look at the precise wording. I can't quite recall it, but I suspect that a court interpreting that would require a consideration to be meaningful. Senator McAllister: We talked before coming here as a group about how to approach the fact that this bill is actually presently before another committee inquiry, and our general posture, as I hope has been evident over the course of the day, has been to try and answer around policy intent as thoroughly as we can. I think if we're at a point where we're asking about submissions to the other inquiry or particular provisions in the legislation, we might be getting into a level of depth-for example, I would have brought all of my bill materials had I known we were going to do that kind of examination today. Can we try and stick around policy intent? I apologise, because we have attempted to be as forthcoming as we can be, but we're probably getting into a level of detail that's beyond what we imagined for estimates. Senator STEELE-JOHN: I hear that and understand it. I wasn't asking for a comment on the nature of the submission. I totally understand that's for next week. It was more on the policy intent in relation to the downflow of effects. Senator McAllister: Understood. Mr Comley: I just want to make a point about CBDA which is in the impact analysis. Obviously, the reduction that's being envisaged here is 10 per cent. The other thing that is in the impact analysis is that the average utilisation of CBDA is actually 61 per cent across all participants. Quite obviously, there will be some people who have 100 per cent utilisation of their CBDA. But for those people who have utilisation of 90 per cent or below, there is not actually a change in their capacity to purchase CBDA supports. Senator STEELE-JOHN: You make a good point, Mr Comley. Would you be able to take it on notice so that we can understand as a committee the state of play in a little bit more detail. Could you, or whoever is required to do it, provide us with a breakdown of that utilisation rate by cohorts of participants so we can understand, beyond the averages which you've quoted there, what it actually looks like for different cohorts of participants within the scheme. Then if that breakdown could further touch on state and territory differences that would be appreciated. Mr Comley: We will take on notice how much detail we can provide. Maybe we might also bear that in mind with the inquiry next week.

Answer

Please see attached answer.

Documents

• Question with answer (PDF) (opens in a new tab)
• DHDA SQ26-004557.pdf (opens in a new tab)