Ms Corona Joyce:

We welcome Senator Murnane O'Connor's point in support of looking again at age eligibility. Looking at the figures, it is interesting to note the impact it had in 2015 when the number of payments fell by almost half year on year. That is something on which further analysis would be beneficial as well.

The Senator mentioned hospital appointments. There were 142,400 patients on delayed discharges from public hospitals in quarter 3 of 2017. Obviously, not all of them were related to adaptation and having suitable homes to go home to but it is probably easy to speculate that a significant proportion of them were related to that.

A related issue which is coming through strongly on our phones and our helpline is that of persons not being able to make hospital appointments and related transport issues. There is a large increase in the volume of those physically not being able to get there and leave their homes. That is something that would merit further examination too.