Mr. John McKeon:

I gave the update in our letter. We have been working hard on this issue over the past year. Last year, we acknowledged that medical claims, in particular for carer's claims, were a source of difficulty for us. In the previous year, we had worked closely with the various disability and advocacy groups to redesign our claim forms and try to ensure that we captured as much information as possible up front and in a timely manner. That yielded some benefits, but they clearly did not go the full way.

During the year, we have increased the number of medical assessors by four - it went from 30 to 34 - and added staff to our carer's and disability claims processing areas. We have also undertaken a scheme review. As of October, all of the schemes in question were at or below our performance target level. We expect that, by this year's end, the average processing time for carer's claims will be approximately 12 weeks over the full year. It started off at 17 and is currently just under ten. We expect to maintain or slightly improve that. We would like it to be better, but they are complex schemes. For example, an issue we have encountered may need to be considered from a policy perspective. As we deal with process and staffing issues that clear out many of the difficulties, we are left dealing with the complexities of getting times down from ten to eight weeks. As I may have mentioned last year, we are encountering issues. I fully understand why if someone has a carer's or disability claim, the advice from the disability advocacy groups - they are absolutely right - is to get that claim in as early as possible because that establishes the person's entitlement date. Often, however, people submit claims when they do not have their full medical reports. We must then make decisions on incomplete claims, which delays the process. From a policy perspective, we may need to think about whether we should change the entitlement date.