Santo Santoro (Queensland, Liberal Party, Minister for Ageing) Share this | Hansard source

And by me. You are absolutely right. I take your interjection in the spirit that it is meant, and that is that things do suddenly arise, as happened for the government, where a very competent body brought a fairly technical situation to our attention and we had to respond. I want to come back to that right now.

During her contribution Senator McLucas queried the process by which we went about making the amendment to our amending bill. The amendment was drafted in response to an approach to my office by the Investment and Financial Services Association last week. IFSA—and I want to stress this—approached my office after the deadline for submissions to the Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs had closed and the committee had met. Otherwise you can rest assured that we would have brought the matter up for the committee’s consideration. I am satisfied that my office took very swift action in responding to the representations of IFSA last week. They have acknowledged that in discussions. I am also satisfied that we did all we could to implement this amendment swiftly and transparently and conducted the appropriate consultations with the appropriate members of the committee, such as its chair, Senator Humphries, and others through a revised explanatory memorandum, which I have just tabled. As Senator McLucas quite correctly identified, it was a new piece of information that we had to respond to, and we did that as expeditiously and transparently as possible.

Regarding Senator Nettle’s amendment, I would like to note that we provided a lot more advice with our amendment than the amendment proposed by the Greens just this morning. I say that with all due respect to the intention of the Greens’ amendment. Senator Nettle’s amendment suggests that the bill be amended to reflect that a person’s access to residential aged care is not discriminated on the basis of sexual orientation and that the definition of a member of a couple includes same-sex partners. In responding to Senator Nettle’s amendment, can I say that the government is committed to removing unfair discriminatory treatment from federal laws. This includes a commitment to eliminating unfair discrimination against all interdependent relationships. Both the Prime Minister and the Attorney-General have stated publicly that they are strongly in favour of removing unfair discrimination against interdependent relationships. The government has already made a number of changes to eliminate unfair discrimination in this area. The chief amendment proposed by Senator Nettle is an additional qualification to the definition of a member of a couple. The amendment alters the definition to specifically refer to same-sex partners.

The government believes—and I think the government’s views were quite adequately expressed by Senator Humphries in his concluding remarks—that these issues should be considered through a holistic examination of all government legislation rather than in an ad hoc way and is currently looking closely at further eliminating unfair discriminatory treatment against interdependent relationships. It has made these statements previously to the Senate. I certainly have done so in relation to other legislation that the Senate has been considering. In good faith I reiterate those sentiments to Senator Nettle and the Greens, but, regrettably and because of the reasons mentioned, we will not be supporting the amendment moved by Senator Nettle on behalf of the Greens.

Much to the surprise of all senators, I probably will not take all the time remaining to me, but I would like to address some other issues that were raised by honourable senators from both sides. Senator McLucas again raised the issue of the government’s response to Professor Hogan’s long-term recommendations. I again assure Senator McLucas that the government is very seriously considering its response. She would appreciate from her discussions with parts of the sector that it is a very complex issue. It is not a simple and easy issue to provide an immediate response to. I think Senator McLucas mentioned that the government has been considering its response for 16 or 17 months.