Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Hansard source

There is worse, as Senator Fifield says. I very rarely give praise to Labor Party politicians, but Senator Feeney seems to be doing a good job in the Defence area—in a part of the portfolio where I shadow him. He is diligent, he seems to be across that portfolio and he seems to do what is required of him in that. I would hate to lose him. It is reported that Senator Feeney wanted to leave the Senate to go to a lower house seat because his tenure in the Senate, on current voting indications, would be fairly limited. So he wanted to go to a safe seat in the lower house. But, with the Health Services Union, which apparently backs Senator Feeney, now no longer involved with the Australian Labor Party, Senator Feeney's chances of doing the numbers—or whatever it is you have got to do within the Labor Party to get pre-selection for a safe seat in the lower house—have dissipated and become rather untenable.

I raise this in the context of the debate on this bill. Is this performance data from non-government organisations? Is the Health Services Union a non-government organisation? If we were relying on data from the Health Services Union for the purposes of this bill, then it would seem we would be looking in vain, because I read in the papers—and I acknowledge that you cannot believe everything you read in the Age or the Sydney Morning Heraldthat it appears that the HSU is now notable for the amount of data that has gone missing. Nobody seems to be able to find internal data of the union's own affairs. Surely we are then not going to rely on this union, as a non-government organisation, to deliver some performance data which will allow this authority to conduct its activities. Perhaps we could find out in the committee stage of the bill whether the Health Services Union is a non-government organisation for the purposes of providing performance data. I mentioned these things in my speech on the second reading, so perhaps the relevant minister might be forewarned and be able to get some information.

Perhaps we could then ask which data that is reported from the HSU has gone missing. Is it data that might be useful for this authority, or is it just data about various memberships or is it data about what has happened to hundreds of thousands of dollars of members' money that appears to have gone missing? I appreciate that the missing data, the missing financial records, are, as I read, a matter of a police investigation in both Victoria and New South Wales at the present time. But it does raise the question of just what data has gone missing, how it has come to have gone missing, whether it is only, as the newspaper reports suggest, financial data of which a union official was using a credit card improperly, and what data there was that gave some detail of a printing contract that was entered into. Did that data indicate whether credit cards, to be paid for by the printing company, were issued to members of the HSU executive, who could then run up bills and not pay them back? I do not know what the answer to that is but perhaps it is something that could be inquired into in the committee stage. If we are relying on that non-government organisation to provide accurate performance data, then it would not seem to be a terribly satisfactory arrangement.

I am concerned that this authority is going to cost $109.5 million. If the government has that sort of money to splash around, I would much rather that they use it to help some of their low-paid workers in the health area. I am very conscious of course that the Health Services Union is a union which principally assists lower paid workers in the health area. If the union had not been spending so much time tracking down what happened to hundreds of thousands of unionists' membership dollars that went missing when Mr Thomson was in a position of authority, perhaps it would have been able to put a submission to the government saying, 'Is the $109.5 million for this performance authority a good expenditure of money or should we perhaps be using that $109.5 million to help with the wages of some of the lower paid workers?' I understand it is the lower paid workers that this union is supposed to be assisting.

These issues will continue to haunt this government. I can understand why a guy who was formerly the National President of the Australian Labor Party has arranged for the union to disaffiliate from the Australian Labor Party. I can understand that that is probably a fairly clever ploy to try to distance the Gillard government from whatever revelations will come out about the Health Services Union and the operations of that union by senior executive members who have very senior roles in the Australian Labor Party. I guess they think that disaffiliating the union from the Australian Labor Party will excuse the Australian Labor Party from whatever shenanigans might have been going on within the union.

When one sees this happening in the Health Services Union, one can only speculate how rife the use of union funds for personal benefit is right throughout the whole union movement. I would hope that some of my colleagues on the other side of the Senate who are former union members might use the opportunity at some stage in the debate to assure us that the type of activity that is being alleged in relation to ALP members who held high positions in the Health Services Union did not occur in their union—that they were never recipients or beneficiaries of shonky trading deals with printers or otherwise. One might hope that some of them would use the opportunity of debate in the Senate to criticise the Health Services Union and those who cannot seem to find out what happened to hundreds of thousands of dollars and to say: 'This never happened in our union. There was never a prospect where free lunches were given or free credit cards were handed out or wives' airline tickets were paid for or jobs were sought for members of the union who might want to get a benefit from someone from whom that job was being applied for.' They are the questions that spring to my mind when we hear that it is the NGOs who are going to use performance data for this particular performance authority.

I would be interested in who actually constitutes the performance authority. Have the personnel been announced? I am not sure, and I have not heard that they have been. I assume that, until this bill goes through, there will be no steps taken to determine the personnel for the National Health Performance Authority. One would hope that this is not going to be an authority comprising people from the HSU, for example, or people from other health unions. One would hope that, when the authority is set up, it will be set up by people with real skills and real understandings and who are independent and can make a real contribution towards improving our hospital systems.

I agree with previous speakers from the coalition side who have questioned the relevance of this authority, the rules relating to it, where they are going to get their performance data, what powers they have, and—I guess the bottom line—how is this new bureaucratic organisation going to actually improve the services and the provision of health care for the patients. After all, that is what is relevant to this parliament and should be the main issue of importance to the federal government—is what we are doing with this bill going to improve the particular on-the-floor health care of patients who rely on the health system? I hope those questions can be answered, perhaps in the Committee of the Whole, later on.