Steve Fielding (Victoria, Family First Party) Share this | Hansard source

Sorry, Chair. I do get very concerned. We have seven groups of amendments, and this amendment has been out for some time. You would have thought they would be quite okay to work on this quickly. It is a very simple amendment. Then they come in here saying, ‘Look, you’ve reordered the business on us; we don’t know what’s going on.’ The reason we have had to reorder it is that you are, Minister, proving incompetent to do so. Fifty days next year—we will be in the same position—

I am sure that during the dinner break the minister in charge tonight will have had a bit more time to go through the issue at hand. As I said, this amendment was put out weeks ago, so there has been plenty of time for the government to look at this issue. I am also advised that the words are very similar to the requirement that this parliament imposed for handling Medicare Australia pathology records.

To help those who may be listening, the amendment moved by Family First is intended to make sure that patients’ medical records are handled by appropriate people, not by non-medical employees. The amendment would ensure that where a document containing clinical details is provided to a medical practitioner who is an employee of Medicare Australia only a medical practitioner in Medicare Australia can handle that clinical information. This is a very similar requirement to that which is in place for Medicare Australia, under paragraph 23DKA(7)(b) of the Health Insurance Act 1973, with regard to pathology records that contain clinical details relating to patients and, for that reason, should be applied here.

I hope that the response from the minister will be focused more on the issue than on how to manage the chamber. I am happy to go there any day of the week, but let us try to stick to the debate if we can.