Ms Teresa Leonard:

On that issue, it really goes back to the point that we have no Government decision. It is up to the Government to decide. What we have done is preliminary work on the matter, given there are three basic areas that would require exploration when moving in this direction. One I mentioned earlier pertains to policy issues, which include consideration of means testing and what would be part of a means-tested scheme. As Ms Mangan pointed out, the parents of approximately 48% of children involved in child benefit are already in receipt of a means-tested payment and this issue would require examination. I stress the point that this is just an initial view of the issue but I suggest those who may already be in receipt of payment from the Department would automatically have an entitlement to the second tier or within parameters. Second, as for the other proportion of persons who would have a possible entitlement to the second tier, members should recall that I am talking in a vacuum here. We would be obliged to put in place a method whereby we could collect data from them to assess their entitlement for the second tier. In a personal rather than an official comment, I note that one of course would seek to put out information that would identify clearly to people whether they were not in the category. The Senator herself noted it bothers her when she hears of people with bank sector incomes and so on. Such people evidently would learn very quickly that they were not in the second tier and, consequently, I would expect not to be getting applications for second-tier payments from that category. Consequently, by default, the numbers again would start to moderate back to a manageable piece within an income range. We would be obliged to give consideration to building technologies to allow us to automate, as much as possible, that process. Again, this is for a future decision and once such a decision was forthcoming, we would work at that particular area.

That is roughly how we would do it and how we would manage the doing of it, but in addition there would be a requirement, should a decision be made by the Government, to introduce legislation to support this particular change. There also would be a requirement on the Department to develop technology to support it because, as was identified earlier, we have had backlogs in particular areas about which we recently have done a lot of work to clear. However, we do not wish to end up in a position where the introduction of a measure such as this had the consequence of parents suffering a further additional backlog. Consequently, the Department would be obliged to do a lot of work. I cannot give the finer details to the Senator because they do not exist at this point.