Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

I discourage senators from supporting this amendment because the bill before us already provides some very clear reporting requirements; section 19 of the Research Involving Human Embryos Act requires the Embryo Research Licensing Committee of the National Health and Medical Research Council to report to the parliament about the operation of the act and the operation of licences issued under it every six months and also when required by either house of parliament. So it's been very clearly established that there is to be frequency and even on-demand, where required, reporting arrangements put in place. Others have noted the role that the NHMRC has in relation to accountability to the parliament through estimates and other vehicles as well.

The second reason as to why I discourage support for this is that, as well as it potentially being duplicative and confusing, it runs the risk of undermining some of the privacy considerations that are clear. This amendment would remove the provisions that ensure that reports that are provided do not identify any person or are not capable reasonably of being used to identify any person. Clearly those privacy considerations are important, and so I would urge the Senate to support the existing quite comprehensive reporting arrangements.