edits from review: fix authors, tighten phrasing, restructure analysis after letters, soften minister reference

src/content/how_bureaucratic_systems_interact_to_create_bad_outcomes.md

@@ -4,16 +4,16 @@ Modified: 2026-07-28 07:22
 Category: Policy
 Tags: bureaucracy, healthcare, superannuation, child-care-subsidy, australia
 Slug: bureaucratic-systems-bad-outcomes
-Authors: Andrew Ridgway... and Friends: glm-5.2.ai, nemotron-3-nano.ai, gpt-oss.ai, deepseek-v4-flash.ai
+Authors: Andrew Ridgway
 Summary: A parent's account of how Australia's health, tax and welfare systems interact to penalise families who access their superannuation for essential medical treatment for their children.
 
-This is going to be a long blog post. I do not normally like to generate public facing complaints of such a specific nature, but in this day and age it seems to be the only way to get people to stand back from their own processes and rules and sit down and actually listen to how a system works in reality. The long and short of it is that we have a compassionate release of superannuation system that is neither compassionate nor understanding, and is actively generating worse outcomes than the failure it was designed to address. I will outline my case below, but I am very concerned about what this means for the people who access this system for things like cosmetic dental.
+This is going to be a long blog post. I do not normally air complaints this specific publicly, but in this day and age it seems to be the only way to get people to stand back from their own processes and rules and sit down and actually listen to how a system works in reality. The long and short of it is that we have a compassionate release of superannuation system that is neither compassionate nor understanding, and is actively generating worse outcomes than the failure it was designed to address. I will outline my case below, but I am very concerned about what this means for the people who access this system for things like cosmetic dental.
 
 I recently had to deal with something no parent enjoys. My child injured her knee to the point it required surgery. She was just getting into rugby and doing some amazing things to get on top of her health, and we were faced with the inevitable choice that comes with this scenario in Australia: public or private health. What follows is the journey that happens when you try to use private health in Australia to get better outcomes for your child. We are going to look at the interactions between the private and public health system, the Australian Taxation Office and the compassionate release of superannuation system, and how that release then interacts with both the Child Care Subsidy and Human Services systems.
 
 The three systems in question are private and public health, the ATO and superannuation, and the Child Care Subsidy and Human Services. We recently attempted to take the matter through the Administrative Review Tribunal, but the invasive and costly structure put in place for that review means only one thing in practice. We have to let the system win because of its pervasive nature and internal culture of wearing the public down until they do not have the energy to fight any more. I will touch on the tribunal in passing, but this post is not about the tribunal process.
 
-This blog post is accompanied by emails to the respective Ministers, my local representative, and reach outs to news outlets. It will serve as the last gasp of hope that someone will actually listen, rather than send canned emails that treat me like a child who did not do any prior research. Yes, Jacqualine Myint, I am referring to the response to my previous enquiry which completely missed the point that I had already outlined how the systems were interacting.
+This blog post is accompanied by emails to the respective Ministers, my local representative, and reach outs to news outlets. It is the last attempt to have someone actually listen, rather than send canned emails that treat me like a child who did not do any prior research. Yes, Jacqualine Myint, I am referring to the response to my previous enquiry which completely missed the point that I had already outlined how the systems were interacting.
 
 I would like to note that Ali France, my local MP, has reached out to me to ask for my story to assist with her work in the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Health, Aged Care and Disability on improving access to specialty doctors. If that committee work is something that matters to you, they are accepting submissions at the Department of Health and Aged Care consultation page on specialist affordability and access. You can see it [here.](https://www.health.gov.au/our-work/consultation-on-specialist-affordability-and-access?language=en)
 
@@ -71,20 +71,6 @@ Our Child Care Subsidy was recalculated on the basis of our finalised tax. We di
 
 We attempted the Administrative Review Tribunal, only to be told that they wanted detailed breakdowns of our budgets and income. The experience is best described as the system asking a family that has just been financially punished for doing the right thing to also hand over its private financial life for further scrutiny. I will leave the tribunal process there, because the point of this post is not the tribunal.
 
-## Section 3: Analysis of how the three systems interact to create a terrible outcome
-
-It is clear from the timeline that the compassionate release of superannuation is not compassionate. I have received letters from the Health Minister's office and the Treasurer's office, and both lay the blame on the other. The Human Services Minister did not even bother to respond.
-
-I put this question to the respective Ministers. Why come up with a compassionate release of super option, designed specifically to address failures of funding in health care, and then go and make sure that when you use it the release will not only cost you extra in tax but will also reduce any welfare received? What about the people being pushed into using this mechanism for cosmetic dental, who will then discover the same trap on the way out? For reference, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority has reported in the past that a meaningful share of early release applications on compassionate grounds relate to dental treatment, often because public dental waiting lists are similarly stretched and private dental fees are high. When those people hit the income test the following year, the consequences are exactly the same.
-
-The outcomes here cannot be sustainable. I do not necessarily think that giving people access to their own super in times of acute stress is a bad idea in principle. But if the policy is going to be called compassionate, then it needs to actually be compassionate. It should provide appropriate tax treatment for amounts used for essential medical treatment, and it should not flow through to reduce income tested family payments. At the moment, every agency involved gets to claim that the problem belongs to another agency, and the family wears the cost.
-
-Tanya Plibersek, the lack of communication from your office is telling. To the Health Minister's office, why would you send me a response that simply repackages research I have already done and then wash your hands of the matter? To the Treasurer's office, you need to get someone with genuine training in how these systems interact to write your letters, because the response I received was the most egregious and insulting of all. It defended a design choice without ever addressing the interaction effect that I had specifically written to raise.
-
-This whole sorry saga belies a complete failure of joined up thinking across all of these systems. I am rapidly coming to the point where I ask what the point of our "world class health system" is when it thinks a better outcome is to stop a girl from playing sport, or to force her parents to use a mechanism that they have to dig into their own pockets for, after paying into the system a rather massive amount via tax. If we had gone with the public option, I can guarantee you that the comorbidities it would have caused would have made it much more expensive down the road, both for my daughter and for the system.
-
-Perhaps this public post will make it easier for these bureaucrats to understand that their part of the system is not the only piece. It is the interactions between the pieces that need to be considered, and in this case the interactions between the health, tax and Human Services systems mean that, in the end, I should have just gotten a personal loan, because that would have cost me less than the tax and lost benefits combined.
-
 ### The correspondence, for the record
 
 What follows are the substantive letters exchanged with the relevant offices. I have reproduced them so that the reader can see exactly what was said, in the same form that it was said, and judge for themselves how seriously the substance of my concerns was engaged with.
@@ -176,7 +162,7 @@ Kind regards,
 Jill McKay
 Chief of Staff
 
-### What the letters actually tell us
+### The Letters
 
 Read together, the three letters paint a clear picture. The Treasurer's office confirms the design of the system. Early release is taxable, it counts as income for income tested payments, and the Government has no current plans to change that. The Health Minister's office confirms that gap cover is voluntary, that informed financial consent is the main consumer protection mechanism, and that the Government's principal response is an upgrade to a website. The local member's office acknowledges the problem, points to a committee inquiry, and stops there.
 
@@ -188,7 +174,23 @@ So nothing is anyone's problem, and the family pays the difference. That is not
 
 It is worth saying, for the avoidance of doubt, that none of the people I dealt with in the public service were individually unreasonable. The surgeon was excellent. The accountant was helpful. The staff in the various call centres were polite. The problem is structural, not personal. The system is built in a way that produces this outcome, and the only way to change the outcome is to change the system. Posting this publicly is not an attack on the individuals involved. It is an attempt to make the structural problem visible enough that someone with the authority to fix it takes an interest.
 
-There is also a wider question here about the cost of forcing families into the public system. The official wait time we were quoted was twelve to twenty four months for the initial specialist appointment alone, before any surgery. In a young person, that delay is not neutral. It changes the kind of injury from a recoverable one to a chronic one, it lengthens the period of disability, it reduces the chance of return to sport, and it increases the lifetime cost of treatment. If the policy design of the compassionate release system is meant to relieve pressure on the public system by allowing families to go private, then the policy design of the tax and welfare systems is undermining that intent in the year that follows.
+There is also a wider question here about the cost of making private care the only timely option. The official wait time we were quoted was twelve to twenty four months for the initial specialist appointment alone, before any surgery. In a young person, that delay is not neutral. It changes the kind of injury from a recoverable one to a chronic one, it lengthens the period of disability, it reduces the chance of return to sport, and it increases the lifetime cost of treatment. If the policy design of the compassionate release system is meant to relieve pressure on the public system by allowing families to go private, then the policy design of the tax and welfare systems is undermining that intent in the year that follows.
+
+## Section 3: Analysis of how the three systems interact to create a terrible outcome
+
+It is clear from the timeline that the compassionate release of superannuation is not compassionate. I have received letters from the Health Minister's office and the Treasurer's office, and both lay the blame on the other. The Minister for Social Services did not even bother to respond.
+
+I put this question to the respective Ministers. Why come up with a compassionate release of super option, designed specifically to address failures of funding in health care, and then go and make sure that when you use it the release will not only cost you extra in tax but will also reduce any welfare received?
+
+What about the people being pushed into using this mechanism for cosmetic dental, who will then discover the same trap on the way out? For reference, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority has reported in the past that a meaningful share of early release applications on compassionate grounds relate to dental treatment, often because public dental waiting lists are similarly stretched and private dental fees are high. When those people hit the income test the following year, the consequences are exactly the same.
+
+The outcomes here cannot be sustainable. I do not necessarily think that giving people access to their own super in times of acute stress is a bad idea in principle. But if the policy is going to be called compassionate, then it needs to actually be compassionate. It should provide appropriate tax treatment for amounts used for essential medical treatment, and it should not flow through to reduce income tested family payments. At the moment, every agency involved gets to claim that the problem belongs to another agency, and the family wears the cost.
+
+To the Minister for Social Services, the lack of communication from your office is telling. To the Health Minister's office, why would you send me a response that simply repackages research I have already done and then wash your hands of the matter? To the Treasurer's office, you need to get someone with genuine training in how these systems interact to write your letters, because the response I received was the most egregious and insulting of all. It defended a design choice without ever addressing the interaction effect that I had specifically written to raise.
+
+This whole sorry saga belies a complete failure of joined up thinking across all of these systems. I am rapidly coming to the point where I ask what the point of our "world class health system" is when it thinks a better outcome is to stop a girl from playing sport, or to force her parents to use a mechanism that they have to dig into their own pockets for, after paying into the system a rather massive amount via tax. If we had gone with the public option, I can guarantee you that the comorbidities it would have caused would have made it much more expensive down the road, both for my daughter and for the system.
+
+Perhaps this public post will make it easier for these bureaucrats to understand that their part of the system is not the only piece. It is the interactions between the pieces that need to be considered, and in this case the interactions between the health, tax and Human Services systems mean that, in the end, I should have just gotten a personal loan, because that would have cost me less than the tax and lost benefits combined.
 
 ### Where this leaves us