Kylea Tink (North Sydney, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Assistant Treasurer. You announced 6½ weeks ago that the government was committed to legislating a total ban on the use of predictive genetic tests when Australians are attempting to access life insurance products. Despite this promise, genetic discrimination legislation has not been introduced. Assistant Treasurer, when will the genetic discrimination legislation be introduced and what is causing the delay?

Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for North Sydney for her question and acknowledge her genuine and longstanding interest in this issue, particularly before coming into parliament, in her role as the CEO of the McGrath Foundation. I also acknowledge your deep interest in ensuring we can put in place preventative measures to ensure that people with a predisposition to cancers and other preventable diseases have access to the best preventative medicines and procedures.

The government is committed to introducing legislation into parliament to remove the existing provisions, which would allow life insurers to lawfully discriminate against people who have had access to genetic testing and require them to provide that genetic-testing material as a condition of taking out life insurance. It's an important issue and we want to encourage Australians to have access to genetic testing. And can I take this opportunity to congratulate the minister for health for his great work in this area. The government has invested close to $1 billion into research in this area. We want to ensure that Australians have access to all the genetic-testing advantages that would enable them to take control of those dispositions in their life.

While I'm at it, I also want to pay credit to the great work of many members in this House for advocating on this issue. There are people behind me—the member for Macnamara, the member for Boothby, the member for Macarthur and so many others—and people on the crossbench such as the member for Indi and the member for Kooyong who have made very strong representations on this issue. Of course, while I'm at it, I want to pay great tribute to the work of Dr Jane Tiller from Monash University. There wouldn't be a member in this place who hasn't had representations from Dr Jane Tiller.

We are, as I said, committed to introducing legislation into the parliament in this term. There's only a day left in this year; it won't happen this year, but I can confirm to the member for North Sydney that work is underway on this issue. I've also had productive discussions with the Council of Australian Life Insurers, who have committed to ensuring that, prior to legislation coming before this House, they will voluntarily introduce a ban to ensure this material is not used in the way we are all concerned about.

It is important that all Australians have access to these preventative tests and are able to take control of their own health circumstances. We want to ensure that we expand the research into genomic testing, and we're doing that. We want to ensure the barriers to people accessing those are removed. The removal of the existing provisions in the— (Time expired)