James McGrath (Queensland, Liberal National Party, Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

The National Cancer Screening Register legislation needs to be in place to allow for the development of the National Cancer Screening Register, specifically to authorise the register operator to collect and use personal information from the eight separate state and territory cervical registers, the DHS bowel register and the Medicare enrolment data, to allow for the NCSR to operate. The legislation also authorises the migration of identified data from existing state and territory cervical registers.

If the legislation enactment is delayed beyond the end of September, there will need to be consideration of contingencies to support the commencement of the renewed National Cervical Screening Program, including whether it is feasible to delay the MBS items in order to provide adequate time to complete the NCSR build, given that most state registers are not able to support the renewed program. If the NCSR cannot commence operations for the National Bowel Cancer Screening Program by March 2017, there will be additional costs to government to continue the current inefficient arrangements with DHS.