Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Families and Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

You might clarify whether you were or you weren't suggesting that when you respond. My very clear understanding is that this bill was not generated because of 'a lack of interest'. However, I think it would be fair to say that some of the concerns and some of the delays and timing problems that have occurred with the administration and the rollout of this scheme have certainly come about because of different jurisdictions having different levels of prioritisation of particular issues. Clearly, the desired outcome we're trying to achieve here is to make sure we get some sort of clarity around how these decisions are going to be prioritised.

As you would well know, the process that sits behind the appointment of the board is, we believe, very important, but we would seek to make sure that—with all the right sorts of measures in place to ensure its integrity—it's not a process that in the future takes two years to go through to enable appointments to the board. We did need to address that. I raise that as an example, and there are a number of other situations that have occurred in other areas of the agency that that applies to. As I said, I haven't seen the 'lack of interest' comment. To my mind, it would suggest that it is about the relativity of prioritisation in decision-making. That is probably how I would have couched it.