I rise today to speak in support of the Social Security Amendment (Australian Government Disaster Recovery Payment) Bill 2023.

And I do so, on behalf of my communities in the Gilmore electorate, that have a lot of experience with natural disasters.

The 2019-2020 bushfires saw 72 per cent of the Shoalhaven burn’t; 919 houses, facilities and outbuildings were destroyed, with a further 455 damaged.

There were 27,099 applications approved for the Australian Government Disaster Recovery Payment and an additional 10,597 applications for the additional Payment for Children.

Together, these payments totalled: $35.48 million.

In the Eurobodalla, 81 per cent of land was burnt.

1,472 houses, facilities and outbuildings were destroyed, and a further 603 damaged.

In theEurobodalla, there were 15,820 applications approved for the Australian Government Disaster Recovery Payment and an additional 5,018 applications approved for the additional payment for children. Together these payments totalled: $19.78 million.

Deputy Speaker, no one cannot not be impacted by the Black Summer Bushfires.

Our local Rural Fire Service fire fighters and those firefighters that came from near and far away, are our true heroes.

As are the many emergency services and volunteer organisations, like our police, SES, Ambulance, Fire and Rescue, Marine Rescue; our surf life saving clubs.

And the many local businesses, organisations and individuals that helped.

But people needed urgent financial support.

When your power goes off, your food rots….. When you’ve lost all your clothes, your school items, your food, the need for assistance is real.

I advocated quickly for the disaster declaration which kickstarts the opening of applications for the Australian Government Disaster Recovery Payment.

The Australian Government pays $1000 per eligible adult and $400 per eligible child – delivered by Services Australia.

It’s mean’t to be immediate financial assistance, to help overcome some of the financial burdens.

My staff and myself did everything we could to advertise this payment and to support people with the application process.

I thank our Services Australia staff who worked around the clock to support people.

But there were definitely some system problems and people contacted my office for help.

When a constituent contacted me in disbelief that her application had been rejected because her area wasn’t supposedly bushfire affected, she asked for help. It was a simple problem that the town name wasn’t recognised as part of the Shoalhaven disaster declared area – something we were able to get fixed.

And many examples of where people have lived and worked for years and contributed to our communities, but because of the criteria were ineligible for the Disaster Recovery Payment.

It is upon us all to improve the system for the Disaster Recovery Payment.

And this is what this Bill will do.

This Bill seeks to amend the Social Security Act 1991 (the Act) to introduce additional objective qualification criteria for the Australian Government Disaster Recovery Payment to support quicker decision-making.

The Bill supports faster and more efficient assessment of online claims for those who have been adversely impacted by a major disaster.

This is achieved by providing objective criteria on which to assess claims for the Australian Government Disaster Recovery Payment to support increased use of automatic decision-making.

Use of automation allows a person to enter their information to claim a payment, and a computer will check that information within limitations or business rules. If the information provided does not meet a business rule, it will “fall out” of the automatic decision making system and the claim will be assessed manually.

We know that everyone’s circumstances are unique. So, if someone does not meet the streamlined automation rules as introduced by the Bill, a person’s circumstances can be considered manually against a number of discretionary criteria.

And, if the information provided meets all the business rules, a person can receive a payment quickly – ideally within days as opposed to weeks or months.

This will be welcome relief to people right across Gilmore.

Deputy Speaker, in the Shoalhaven and Eurobodalla, we went on to have a further 10 disaster declarations; mainly floods, and storms.

And the Kiama local government area has also had 4 flood or storm disaster declarations, with 8,970 approved applications for the Australian Government Disaster recovery Payment, totalling $10 million.

Deputy Speaker, natural disasters, like bushfires, floods and storms, are here to stay, and it is imperative that we are prepared as much as possible.

It is important we get these changes in place quickly.

Services Australia needs to be able to process claims quickly during disaster responses.

These changes from this Bill, will help achieve that.