Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

The amendments that I and other colleagues have moved through the committee stage have pretty much solely been focused on trying to improve the accountability, monitoring and oversight of what are revolutionary and novel technologies. Many of the amendments have been aimed at providing more oversight from this place, in this institution. I'm obviously disappointed that we have chosen not to strengthen our arm in providing more oversight but instead leave it effectively to the scientific community to make these decisions.

I am intending here to move another set of amendments which, while would not really provide much oversight or monitoring, would at least provide to us some more information on what is occurring in these trials than what is currently prescribed in this bill. The bill, as amended in the House—and I do give credit again, as I did in the second reading speech, to Mr Kevin Andrews. He and others pushed for some more reporting, and I thank the government for agreeing to those amendments and providing some additional reporting than what was there originally. However, the reporting that is there now on a six monthly basis does not have to prescribe any particular information, so there are no guarantees that this will include details of how many trials have occurred, how many participants have gone through those trials, how many have been approved, whether or not there have been adverse events associated with the donation techniques or even what types of donation techniques have been used, and we'll come to those later in other amendments. I don't think it's appropriate that, for something as novel and revolutionary as this, it should ultimately be up to the people that are regulating this area what information they provide us—and I use that with a lower case 'r' as they're not a regulator exactly; they're overseeing this area.