Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Women) Share this | Hansard source

I have a couple of general questions I wish to put to the minister before we move to any further action on the bills. One of those questions is following up on Senator Siewert's comments. It is appropriate that today we see the Australian Law Reform Commission report looking at equality, capacity and disability in Commonwealth laws. One of the keys aspect, as you would remember from our inquiry, was effective decision making in this process. The minister has pointed out in his contribution on the primary bill that he thought it was best placed to have these issues pointed out in the regulations, and I accept that that is the government's position. I would like a little more detail before we vote on exactly how the core principles and the things were talking about earlier, full ownership and understanding of the decisions, will be picked up in those regulations and that consistency across the various pieces of legislation.

The other point, which was also raised in our community affairs committee, was the fact that this bill allows access to people for legal and financial advice. In fact, it is a core part of this legislation before decisions are made. If the minister could clarify a little about the way that advice will be given—I remember I raised in the committee hearing my concerns about whether there will be resources across the country that have the ability to effectively work with people with intelligence disability in the legal sense and in the financial services sense and as that is a threshold issue in ensuring that people have that advice, could we get something on record while we are discussing the bill from the government's point of view about how those resources will be provided.