Nigel Scullion (NT, Country Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Hansard source

The idea would be to do it sector by sector, because the needs of each sector are somewhat different. For example, the psychiatry sector has different concerns, if you like, than some of the other sectors, and it would be simply by agreement; it would not be case by case. With respect, I felt that, had we an opportunity to talk about this, the situation would have been a little different with respect to one of the amendments that you put forward, but I suspect we are going down the same path. I did not want to make this process far too onerous. So, rather than saying, ‘You have to do these things with every single audit’, we simply want to put in place, with each of the sectors, a process whereby they would know that they are keeping this specific data so that, when Medicare comes knocking on the door or whatever, that is the data they are keeping for Medicare and it is not going to include things that would cut across the provisions of privacy and those relationships. But that would have to be done sector by sector. That was the intent.