Dear Department of Human Services,

This is an application for the purposes of the FOI Act.

I am seeking the following statistics:

1. The annual number of Disability Support Pension (DSP) recipients from 1992.

2. To determine statistics for each state and territory, reconcile with the figures in point 1 and provide the annual totals for each separate state and territory. That is, the annual number of DSP recipients for each state and territory from 1992.

3. The annual number of Newstart Allowance (NSA) recipients from 1992.

4. To determine statistics for each state and territory, reconcile with the figures in point 3 and provide the annual totals for each separate state and territory. That is, the annual number of NSA recipients for each state and territory from 1992.

The Department of Human Services only releases limited data in its Annual report. The current data is available from the link:
https://www.humanservices.gov.au/organis...

Archived reports from 1998-1999 up to 2010-2011 are available from the link: https://www.humanservices.gov.au/organis...

The online reports have limited and ambiguous information. There is no consistency from year to year. For example: the Centrelink Annual Report 2003-04 has on page 8 Number of Customers under 2003-04, 6.5 million and under 2002-03 6.3 million.

The Department of Human Services 2012–13 Annual Report includes: We delivered Age Pension payments to 2.3 million Australians.

Please advise if you require further clarification.

Yours faithfully,

Julie Middleton