Cost of Living Concession

Ms BEDFORD (Florey) (15:02): My question is to the Minister for Communities and Social Inclusion. How is the government's cost of living concession supporting low income households?

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) (15:03): When faced with cuts from the commonwealth, state governments require leadership. They require a strong voice to advocate for our state and a leader who stands up for its most vulnerable citizens. After the federal Liberal government cut the funding for the old council rate concession, our Premier acted to look after South Australian pensioners and low income earners who were left significantly worse off, and we as a government picked up the tab by introducing the new Cost of Living Concession.

It was disappointing to see that, rather than work with the government to get the commonwealth to reverse its cuts, the opposition sought to play politics with people's concessions. More than 150,000 home owner-occupiers received the Cost of Living Concession in 2015-16. The government also extended the concession to tenants, not just to homeowners. That meant that in 2015-16 nearly 29,000 South Australian households received support they could not receive through the former council rates concession.

I am pleased to inform the house that the government has already paid this important concession to more than 142,000 home owner-occupiers and retirement village residents for this financial year. Of this number, more than 119,000 households received their payment by EFT. Applications from new home owner/occupiers will be processed by the end of December 2016, and tenants will receive their COLC payment by March 2017.

The government has made significant changes to the concession to make it even easier for recipients to receive and access the concession. Under the changes, people who received the concession last year did not need to reapply and received their payment automatically, as long as their circumstances had not changed since 1 July 2015. From July 2017, all payments will be made directly into recipients' bank accounts to make it faster for people to receive their concession.

I urge you all to remind your constituents that new applications for the cost of living concession must be submitted by the end of October to be paid for this financial year, which I am sure you did before the end of October. This government is committed to supporting low-income households with the cost of living through a number of concessions, including the COLC payments. In fact, this state government provides $170 million worth of concessions every year to seniors and low-income earners.