Concessions debacle: No record of Minister’s briefings
The State Government’s assurances that over-payments of concessions are less than that estimated by independent consultants appear to be based on little or no information.
A Freedom of Information request has revealed that the minister responsible for the administration of seven concessions on energy, water and other bills has received no written advice on estimated or actual over-payments.
Tony Piccolo, Minister for Communities and Social Inclusion, moved last week to hose down InDaily’s exclusive report on an internal government review that found that 21 per cent of 174,306 concession claims on energy bills were ineligible.
“That report is now five months old,” Piccolo told FIVEaa’s Leon Byner last week.
“It may have been accurate at the time, but we believe its not accurate now.”
But just how the Minister came to that conclusion is a mystery, says shadow treasurer Iain Evans.
He filed a Freedom of Information asking for “any documents that indicate the estimated or actual total over payment of concessions for any of the financial years 07/08, 08/09, 09/10, 10/11, 11/12, 12/13”.
The answer came back last Friday that “no documents were identified”.
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“This FOI means that he has never received the original report the (InDaily) articles refer to – or any (written) briefing on it,” Evans said today.
“The minister needs to confirm that he has never asked for, or received an estimate of the level of overpayment of concessions.
“If he has, how does that reconcile with his office having no record to release under FOI?”
The concessions scheme has been queried by the Auditor-General for the past five years as being “unable to confirm the concessions provided by SA Water, Revenue SA and energy providers were complete and made only to eligible customers”.
InDaily revealed last month the results of an IT consultant’s testing of more than 174,000 concession claims.
The leaked internal report to the government department which oversees the system, the Department of Communities and Social Inclusion (DCSI), estimated one in five concessions are made to ineligible householders.
A spokesperson for Piccolo did not answer InDaily’s questions about whether the minister had received a written brief on the internal report, nor did he reveal on what basis he had made an assessment of the level of overpayments, apart from “the Department’s advice”.
“As previously advised, the department is still working through the data matching process to determine the extent of any ineligible concession payments and, as previously advised, the department anticipates some ineligible payments will be found,” the spokesperson said.
“However, the total value of those payments will not be known until this process is completed.
“As previously advised, the Department’s advice to the Minister is that there is no evidence to suggest the total value of any ineligible concession payments is in the tens of millions of dollars.”
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More than $600 million worth of concessions have been paid in the last five years using the flawed computer systems which DCSI has spent five years trying to fix – a project initiated in 2008 by then Minister for Families and Communities Jay Weatherill.
Failed attempts to fix the over-payments have attracted the ongoing attention of the Auditor-General who warned in successive annual reports that he had “again found the Department was unable to confirm that concessions provided by SA Water, Revenue SA and energy providers were complete and made only to valid eligible customers”.
On the basis of the leaked document’s estimate of 21 per cent ineligibility, the over-payments amount to $126 million over the last five years – $28.8 million in the 2012 financial year.
In July InDaily revealed the interstate company first hired to fix the database problems, Endpoint Pty Ltd, had gone into liquidation.
One of Endpoint’s former directors and one-third shareholder, Wolfgang Schumacher, revealed the extent of the “real disaster” that he said “would be an enormous catastrophe for the taxpayer” if it’s not addressed.
“It will end in disaster,” he told InDaily in an exclusive interview.
“The Concessions and Seniors Information System (CASIS) project has been hampered from the beginning because the department didn’t draw up a ‘requirements document’, so there’s nothing to measure progress against.
“It’s like going to a car yard and asking for a car, wanting a VW and then having a Bedford truck delivered.
“This project has been wandering along, out of control for some time.
“The bureaucrats keep telling the Minister there’s no problem, but there is.
“It’s been estimated by the software designers that around $50 million has been paid in concessions to ineligible recipients.”
Last financial year DCSI administered $138 million worth of concessions for water, sewer and council rates, electricity, transport charges and various levies.
Concessions on SA Water bills totalled $35 million, council rates $32 million, energy bills $30 million, transport services $31 million and other charges $8 million.
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