Michael Forshaw (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to also take note of the answers given by Senator Ian Campbell to questions without notice today. As usual, Senator Campbell fell into the trap of waxing lyrical and in the process made a whole range of outlandish and outrageous statements. One of the statements he made during his answer on the issue of the consideration of the access card legislation was that the Senate committee had six weeks to consider this legislation and he intimated that, if we could not do the job in six weeks, we must be pretty worthless. I note that the Chair of the Senate Standing Committee on Finance and Public Administration is in the chamber now. I want to pay tribute to my colleague Senator Mason because he has the role of chairing that very fine committee. I know that he has succeeded an equally fine previous chairman.

This legislation was referred to that committee by the Selection of Bills Committee on 8 February. From that date to the reporting date of 15 March is about six weeks. But of course Senator Ian Campbell was being totally disingenuous when he suggested that the committee has six weeks to consider it. The week following that referral was estimates week. There was absolutely no opportunity for the committee to consider the legislation. Also, as all of the senators in this chamber know, the secretariat had to move very quickly to advertise for submissions, and that occurred about one week later. The submissions are now rolling in in large numbers. The committee has established a program of public hearings to meet this Friday, and Monday and Tuesday of next week. Then we have to await the presentation of the chair’s draft to the committee for consideration, and that will probably take about another week or so. Then we have to table within three or four days after that.

This is an incredibly tight timetable. Effectively, when the committee starts its public hearings this Friday it will have under two weeks to report on this very significant legislation that is going to impact on the lives of millions of Australians and their families. The government itself acknowledges that. Every person in this country who currently has a Medicare card—and that is pretty much everybody and their families—is going to be affected by this legislation. It is substantial.

Senator Barnett’s comment that it is a voluntary card is absolutely ludicrous. You cannot participate in the Medicare scheme—the scheme established by Labor and opposed by this mob over there until they worked out that the public actually supported it—without a Medicare card. This is going to be a compulsory card. And it is going to cost $1.2 billion over the next four years to implement this system. But the government says, ‘Oh, you can deal with it in two weeks in a Senate committee and report on it.’ It has taken them years to put this proposal together.

Those of us who were at the estimates hearing two weeks ago and took the opportunity to ask some questions of the public servants at the hearing will recall that the public servants had a row of boxes of papers for this legislation that stretched virtually from one end of the main committee room to the other. We were all petrified when the secretary of the department pointed to this huge long row of boxes and said, ‘I have all the information on the access card here for you.’ I think you would have needed a semitrailer to bring it all up to the parliament. Senator Mason knows that what I am saying is absolutely true.

The opposition is cooperating with the processes for the consideration of this legislation before the committee, but nobody should ever accept this nonsense from Senator Campbell that somehow we have six weeks to do it. It is an outrage that a Senate committee should be expected to deal with this significant legislation in such a short time. There are major problems with the legislation in this proposal, as the government knows. Even this morning they announced further changes to the legislation. They are making changes on the run and yet they come in here and have the temerity to tell us that we should be able to complete the job within a couple of weeks. Frankly, this is going to come back to haunt you—just as you say the Australia Card came back to haunt us. The Australia Card was a good idea; this is not a good idea because you are getting it wrong and it will come back to haunt you at the next election.