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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2024-10-15 Daily Xml
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Human Services Department

378 The Hon. H.M. GIROLAMO ().28 August 2024). Can the Minister for Human Services advise:

1. Does the Department of Human Services have a savings target for FY2024-25 and/or years beyond?

2. Why did the commonwealth sourced revenues decrease from a budgeted $95 million for FY2023-24 to $42 million?

3. Why is the department now only budgeting for $23 million in commonwealth sourced revenue?

4. Regarding non-current assets, why does the department have nil listings of investment properties, land, plant, and equipment?

5. As part of grants administered under DHS, why has the budgeted outflow for Charitable and Social Welfare Fund, Concessions, Gamblers Rehabilitation Fund, and Personal Alert SA, all had a budget decrease from FY2023-24 to FY2024-25?

6. Why was only $127 million of the budgeted $190 million for the energy bill relief plan in FY2023-24 spent, what caused the underspend, did eligible businesses and households miss out on the plan, and was the plan adequately marketed considering the underspend?

7. How will the $25 million budgeted for the energy bill relief plan FY2024-25 align with the commonwealth energy relief?

The Hon. C.M. SCRIVEN (Minister for Primary Industries and Regional Development, Minister for Forest Industries): The Minister for Human Services has advised:

1. DHS is subject to existing savings measures from the 1 per cent efficiency dividend on salaries and wages and 1 per cent efficiency dividend on net cost of services which are across government savings policies that are applied each year and increase the savings requirement across the forward estimates.

2. Administered Items for DHS reported a net decrease in the commonwealth sourced revenues of $42.3 million from 2023-24 original budget ($95.4 million) to ($53.2 million) recognising lower than originally budgeted levels of activity under the jointly funded National Energy Bill Relief Plan.

3. Commonwealth sourced revenues in the administered items for DHS are specifically related to the jointly funded National Energy Bill Relief Plan (NEBR). Reimbursements under the scheme are anticipated to conclude during the first half of 2024-25.

4. In relation to its administered non-current assets, a sale process was conducted by Renewal SA for the land and facilities, on behalf of the Minister for Human Services as trustee for the Home for Incurables Trust. Following the sale of Highgate Park there are no further non-current assets held for the administered items for DHS from 2023-24 onwards.

In relation to its controlled non-current assets the Department of Human Services reported a total non-current assets of $116.7 million in the 2024-25 budget, from land and improvements ($92.9 million), plant and equipment ($22.7 million) and intangible assets ($1.0 million).

5.

Concessions—decrease is largely due to the impact of the once-off additional COLC payment in 2023-24.

Charitable Social Welfare Fund—primarily due to expenditure in 2023-24 of underspends from previous years.

Gamblers Rehabilitation Fund—primarily due to expenditure in 2023-24 of underspends from previous years.

Personal Alert SA—primarily due to additional funding in 2023-24 for the Personal AlertSA 4G Transition Strategy.

6.

DHS supported the delivery of the state and commonwealth-funded 2023-24 Energy Bill Relief Fund (EBRF) rebate for households and small businesses. This rebate was applied to eligible clients paid in quarterly instalments directly on electricity bills relating to their 2023-24 electricity usage by electricity retailers. DHS reimburses electricity retailers for rebates applied to eligible customers electricity bills. Expenditure on the EBRF in financial year 2023-24 was lower than budgeted due to lower than anticipated demand and the timing of reimbursement claims received from electricity retailers.

DHS directly advised electricity retailers of eligible state energy concession recipients to ensure that they received the 2023-24 ERBF on 2023-24 electricity bills.

The state government expanded the EBRF eligibility to include small businesses on an embedded network.

7. Under the 2023-24 ERBF, electricity retailers apply rebates to eligible customers accounts and then seek reimbursement from DHS for the value of rebates provided to eligible customers. The $25 million budgeted in financial year 2024-25 reflects the expected timing of reimbursement claims from electricity retailers for 2023-24 ERBF rebates.

The commonwealth is separately funding energy bill relief on 2024-25 electricity bills under an extension of the ERBF for households and eligible small businesses. The amounts included in the 2024-25 budget do not reflect payments related to electricity bill relief under the 2024-25 ERBF.

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