Dr. Karina Doorley:

There is actually emerging literature on the cost of living for people with disabilities, including the Indecon report, that suggests the weight we give to those households should be different from the weight we give to other households because they have these unavoidable expenses. If indexation was being considered, the first step is the benchmarking process and asking at what point do we want to benchmark all these different tax and welfare payments. If the Government was particularly concerned about the level of disability payments, it might be an idea to look at how the consumption of households containing people with a disability is different from the consumption of other households. That would give an idea of what kind of extra weight should be given to their payment compared to another household. There is a bit of ongoing work on this. It is something we might be working on a bit later this year as well. Obviously, that will all be made public if we publish a report on it. The place to start is by asking what the correct benchmark is. I am guessing that there is going to be in international literature the level at which disability payments should be set relative to, let us say, core welfare rates. Given that starting point then the indexation process could start.