Dr. Devesh Singh:

I thank the Senator for the question. We will see additional costs because, not only will the tiered payments be higher, but we will see an increase in applications, which would be natural behaviour. On the new assessments, the question is whether we have the capacity to conduct the volume of assessments. I accept that we currently may have a shortfall in the number of medical assessors but when this comes in we will be in a position to assess what additional capacity we need and I am confident it can be resourced through our current procurement.

The second query related to the projected assessments for the customers we currently have on disability allowance and invalidity pension. This will not be done immediately. We will assess the new claims and during the subsequent five years - it will be approximately that timeline - we will look retrospectively at the customers who are currently on disability allowance and invalidity pension. We will not have to assess them all. We already have a significant amount of information, especially medical information, about those customers. I can visualise cohorts of people who have serious medical conditions. We captured those codes under ICD-10, which indicates they can go onto tier 1 directly. It will be substantial work but I am confident we can do it within the timeframe.