Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Tourism) Share this | Hansard source

The Australian Organ and Tissue Donation and Transplantation Authority Amendment (Governance and Other Measures) Bill 2021 acts on the advice of Dr Mal Washer, chair of the Organ and Tissue Authority board, to enable the board to have a more strategic and advisory focus. The current governance structure, where the governance board is the accountable entity, is unusual and has apparently not delivered effective and efficient governance to the authority. That is why the entire board has agreed with the chair's recommendation to return to a more common governance structure with the CEO being the accountable entity and the board playing a strategic advisory role. It is not clear to Labor why the government chose the current governance structure in 2017. It is not the usual governance structure employed by non-corporate Commonwealth entities like the Organ and Tissue Authority. This decision resulted in the Organ and Tissue Authority becoming the first non-corporate Commonwealth entity to have a governance board as the accountable entity. Again, the reasons for this decision remain unclear to Labor.

However, it is good that the government is now choosing to act on the board's view about the governance of the Organ and Tissue Authority, as represented by advice provided by the chair. This advice conforms with Labor's view that non-corporate Commonwealth entities like the Organ and Tissue Authority should have a governance structure that allows for the CEO, who actually runs the organisation and is accountable for its functioning, to be the accountable entity in the legal sense, all the while being guided by an advisory board that focuses on the strategic direction of the authority. This conforms to the governance structure of almost all other non-corporate Commonwealth entities. This bill will transition the role of accountable authority from the board back to the CEO and replace the existing governance board with an advisory board under the Australian Organ and Tissue Donation and Transplantation Authority Act 2008. These governance changes will revert the Organ and Tissue Authority to the approach first implemented by Labor in 2008. It is a sensible change, one that indicates that, unusually, the government has acknowledged that Labor got it right, and one that Labor supports.