Lyn Allison (Victoria, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I move Democrat amendments (1) and (2) on sheet 4916:

(1)    Schedule 1, item 52, page 20 (line 21) after “following”, insert “, so that all of the following are represented on the Council”.

(2)    Schedule 1, item 52, page 20 (after line 29), after subparagraph 20(2)(g)(vii), insert:

              (viia)    a background in, and knowledge of, the trade union movement;

              (viib)    the needs of users of social welfare services;

              (viic)    environmental issues.

These amendments go to the question of the expertise of council members of the NHRMC. I noticed that Senator Kemp said that what was being proposed by the ALP and the Democrats was an increase in, or at least a change to, the size of the NHMRC council. That is not correct. In fact, we were assured during the hearings of the Senate committee inquiry that there were already multiple areas of expertise among the existing members of the council. As I think Senator McLucas mentioned, we want to see it clarified in the legislation that this will continue to be the case. That seems to be a little unclear in the existing legislation.

Senator Humphries talked about the lack of a necessity for some of these areas of expertise and also said that there were no submissions in support of the amendments that we have put or the complaints that we have expressed about this loss of expertise—and that is true. But the other point that I made was that there was very little time for submissions, as this is another bill which is being rushed through, and we did not hear from the existing council. There seemed to be no avenue for us to ask them what they thought about the removal of this expertise. So we are to some extent in the dark on this issue. However, it seemed to us that leaving in these requirements for such expertise would do no harm, as it were, because of the multiple levels of expertise that are available.

I do take issue with Senator Humphries’s claim that expertise in trade unions, for instance, has no role, that it is not relevant. What about occupational health and safety? That is one area that comes to mind, and I am sure there are many others, where one would like to think that the NHMRC had a perspective from the union which might take that issue into account in determining priorities, grant application funding and so forth. Why remove expertise on the environment? Probably one of the biggest issues facing this country is climate change. We know that we are likely to see malaria and vector-borne diseases coming further south than is the case at present. That is just one example of where the areas of environment and medical research would coincide.

There is also the business of water and water treatment which we are going to have to face more and more as we deal with the problem of water shortages. We will have to look more and more at reusing water. Whether it is reusing it on the garden or reusing it to drink is another question. But I would have thought there was a really important health issue associated with water. I am certain that we could find many other examples. Air quality would be another one. That is very much a health issue. We know that people who live even quite considerable distances from arterial roads have much higher levels of cardiovascular illness. So you cannot separate the environment from health, and it is quite appropriate for someone who has expertise in this area to be on the council. The same can be said for a background in the users of social welfare services.

That is what these amendments go to. They insert a requirement for areas of expertise which are currently held by the council. We heard no real argument from the department for why such expertise should be removed, except to say that this was part of the streamlining process. That was on the one hand. On the other hand, we heard that it was not really necessary because most people have multiple levels of expertise. We stand by our argument that this requirement should remain in the legislation and I put it to other senators that this would be sensible. In the absence of any arguments to the contrary—as to why this should not happen—I would argue that these amendments should be supported.