QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE

Senator McALLISTER (New South Wales—Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme) (14:59): Well, there is a lot of misinformation about the approach that the government is taking, and it is worth getting some of the facts on the record. There are people involved in every single step of the assessment process. The assessment is conducted by trained assessors—human beings—who are highly skilled, who work with older people to understand what their functional needs are and what the evolution of those needs might look like so that we can make determinations about the sort of care that will be appropriate for those people.

Of course, there is an opportunity at the end of these processes for a person to look at the result. A second person looks at the outcome of the assessment. That person is called the assessor delegate.

They look at that outcome to make sure that it is right before the outcome is signed off. And there is now a further safeguard whereby delegates can send assessments back to assessors if it is clear that there has been an error in the inputs during that assessment. (Time expired) Senator Wong: President, I ask that further questions be placed on notice.