State Government Concessions

Dr McFETRIDGE (Morphett) (14:59): My question is again to the Minister for Communities and Social Inclusion. Can the minister inform the house how much the mismanagement of concessions payments has cost taxpayers? In the Auditor-General's Report handed down yesterday, the Auditor-General identified some validation issues for energy concession payments over the six-year review, as follows:

$11.79 million where DCSI did not approve an energy concession application for the applicable period;

$5.03 million without sufficient validation of eligibility with Centrelink;

$2.81 million where DCSI had no record of the client;

$1.82 million where the client had not registered an energy concession application;

$1.25 million where the Centrelink data indicates that the client was ineligible;

$930,000 where DCSI cannot fully match the energy records to a client; and

$7.4 million for the abandoned CASIS IT system.

The Hon. Z.L. BETTISON (Ramsay—Minister for Communities and Social Inclusion, Minister for Social Housing, Minister for the Status of Women, Minister for Ageing, Minister for Multicultural Affairs, Minister for Youth, Minister for Volunteers) (15:01): I have always acknowledged that we have some systemic issues in the concessions area. In my time as minister, I have always been full and frank to say that we need to improve our validations and our reconciliations, and we have done so. Over the six-year period that the Auditor-General looked at, more than $845 million of concessions were distributed to South Australians—concessions for water, sewerage, transport, energy, council rates, ESL and more. This is an incredibly important part of how we support vulnerable South Australians.

Mr Pisoni interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Unley is warned for the second and final time.

The Hon. Z.L. BETTISON: With the question here, the Auditor, who we have worked very closely with, and I talked about previous audits that we have done where we have improved our reconciliations. We have implemented a semiautomated system, and I spoke yesterday about our intention to have a fully automated system with COLIN.

Ms Chapman interjecting:

The Hon. Z.L. BETTISON: We have put an additional 12 FTEs in energy concessions to fix this up.

Mr Marshall interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The leader is warned for the second and final time, and the deputy leader is warned for the first time.

The Hon. Z.L. BETTISON: We know about 200,000 South Australians receive the energy concession each year. We also know about 25 per cent of these people change. They may change energy retailer, if they are a beneficiary of Newstart they might come in and out of eligibility, or they might be a new customer. Compared to our other concession areas, this is the area of most complexity.

But always I have taken on board what the Auditor-General has said and we have changed what we have done. We have had to make some difficult decisions in the past, in the way we could have improved. That did not work how we thought it would, and that has been disappointing. But my focus will always be about being accurate and correct, and that will be my endeavour as we move forward.