Nicola Roxon (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

(1)   Clause 14, page 10 (lines 23-25), omit the clause substitute:

“14  Quality assurance requirements

                 The quality assurance requirements in Division 81 of the new Act commence from 1 April 2007.”.

For the convenience of the House, this is the last amendment that Labor will be moving to this suite of bills, and we will not ask that the House divide on the question. However, I do think this is a very important amendment and I encourage the government to consider it. This deals with the issue of quality assurance for the services that are going to be able to be accessed under the broader healthcare package. The current clause provides—and I noticed that, when summing up debate on the second reading, the minister also referred to this as an important part of the package—that there will be quality controls and standards that will apply as part of this whole package.

However, unfortunately the provision makes clear that any of those quality assurance issues and standards will not apply in relation to an insurance policy until 1 July 2008; although, as the House would be aware, this package of bills, if it passes through the other place, will come into force on 1 April 2007. This leaves a significant lag between the time that insured consumers will be able to benefit from the changes under the bill and the time that the services that they are accessing and that their insurers are paying for will actually have the sorts of consumer protections and guarantees that exist for current services.

Again, it may be a belts-and-braces provision—that we want to make sure that consumers are able to have full confidence in this changing scene in the health area. I do not think that there should be any concern about standards and quality assurance controls being in place. Everybody across the sector seems to believe that this is important, although we do acknowledge that there are different views about what those standards should be and how they should apply.

I know that the government have said that there is not anything in the bill that will compromise standards. Their view is that insurers of course would not cover other products that do not meet certain standards, and I would agree that health insurers have a very strong interest in making sure that the services that are used are of top standard. But in this place we regulate the control of quality and have standards in place for all sorts of services for very important public policy reasons; we want to make sure that any person who is treated under a service has the basic protection that they meet a certain standard.

Obviously the government accept this, because they are proposing to introduce standards. Unfortunately those standards are not going to be in place for 15 or 16 months. I know that the government are not confident that those standards can be ready in time. The effective date for the rest of the act, as I have said, is 1 April 2007; that still gives some time. I do not think it is wise for us to be legislating that standards will come into place after such a significant time lag, and I do not want to be in the position of any of us having to come back into this place and say, ‘We got that wrong and we should have made sure quality protections were in place.’ I would have thought it is in the interest of everyone—the parliament, the insurer and the consumer—to make sure that these protections are there.

We have these sorts of protections for hospital services; we have them for many other health services. It does not seem to me that we need to totally re-create the wheel; they are not being designed from scratch. Some different issues need to apply because of the settings that some of these services might be provided in, but that is all the more reason for us to make sure that there are strong quality controls in place. I agree that it is not appropriate to use the quality standards that apply in a hospital for a service that might be provided in a home, but it is just as important—maybe more important—if someone is going off unaided, perhaps without the assistance of other colleagues, to provide a service which can be provided in the home. We need to make sure that appropriate standards will still be in place for those people.

It is simply an issue of Labor wanting to guarantee that consumer safety is protected. We think that the quality assurance package for broader health cover products should be in place as soon as these products come onto the market. If the government say that there is nothing in the bill that will compromise standards, we do not see why this change will cause them any problems. I can understand, however, that this might be one of the amendments best suited to be dealt with following the recommendations we have not yet seen from the Senate committee, because no doubt it is an area that they are particularly turning their minds to. There are probably a number of different options for the way this issue can be solved. Making sure there is not a time lag is our vital concern. We want protections and standards to be in place so that we make sure that consumers are protected.

Question negatived.

Bill agreed to.

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