Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Hansard source

The reason I want to speak to this particular amendment, which relates to the exercising of the powers by the minister, is that I think it once again speaks absolutely to the fact that we have a piece of legislation that clearly has been rushed in being put together. It hasn't been well thought through. It hasn't been broadly consulted on. So what we find ourselves with here—and this is out of your own explanatory memorandum—is an amendment seeking to require the minister to have regard to matters when proposing to remove a listing from the rules or proposing not to carry out activities in relation to a debtor if there are unpaid fees and levies—because one of the bills that are sitting here actually provides the capacity for somebody who hasn't been paying their levies to have their devices or instruments removed from being eligible for reimbursement. It was very much a blanket requirement in this bill for that to be the case. Nobody had actually sat down and thought about what the implications may well be for the patients.

So what we've seen here is that today, at the eleventh hour, this amendment is being rushed in here. It was rushed in 20 minutes before it might well have been voted on had it not been that there were so many issues that I wanted to seek clarification on. This amendment now requires the minister, in exercising his powers to make a determination where somebody is going to be removed because they have not paid their fees or levies, to have regard to whether the exercise of that power by the minister 'would be detrimental to the interests of insured persons'—that is, the patient.

So we have this piece of legislation that would allow the minister, without any regard whatsoever for the potential implication on a patient, to remove a particular supplier because of unpaid fees or levies. We know that, in many instances with implantable devices, there are often ongoing requirements for the supplier to continue to provide support et cetera. So here we are. We have a situation where no-one actually bothered to think about the impact on the patient.

It also requires the minister to determine whether the exercise of these powers will significantly limit the professional freedom of medical practitioners to identify and provide appropriate treatments. So we have not bothered to worry about what the doctors might have thought. So here we are, with this piece of legislation being put through here, with no notice.

I'd also point out that there was no discussion with us either, clearly with the understanding that we have quite a strong interest in this particular suite of bills. Nobody bothered to tell us. It just arrived here 20 minutes before it could have been voted on, which significantly points out that this legislation completely and utterly disregarded, in one of these bills, the impact it potentially could have on patients and potentially could have on doctors. There's a lack of detail. It's policy on the run. It's a bit akin to building a plane while you're trying to fly it. It doesn't always end up terribly well.

This government should consider attending to the detail in the first place and making sure that its legislation has been thoroughly consulted, taking into account all of the implications, not just the implications of the top-line stakeholders but looking at who is the most important stakeholder in our health sector, and that is the patient. The government clearly forgot to bother about that here.

As we've seen in the discussion I've been having with the minister, we have no detail whatsoever. It is expected that we are just going to wave this through. I said earlier that the opposition would be supporting this suite of bills because we believe that it has been a long time coming. We must say, though, we are hugely disappointed, on behalf of the sector, on behalf of patients, on behalf of clinicians and doctors, on behalf of hospitals, on behalf of private health insurers, on behalf of device manufacturers, that we have got so little detail here.

Once again, we have created a massive level of uncertainty that we have also seen in the aged-care sector. Right now, we have aged-care facilities out there that don't know whether they're going to be closed down because of their inability to meet the mandated requirements of the legislation that has been pushed through this place that was impossible to deliver. Everybody knew at the time the legislation went through here that it would not be possible to deliver the mandated requirements because of the workforce shortages.

Once again, we have a situation where we don't want to stand in the way of policy reform. We absolutely don't, and we won't. I have to say, putting the government on notice, I'm getting sick and tired of coming in here and being expected to ask my team—and I'm sure many of the other frontbenchers on this side are sick to death of coming in here—to come in here and say, 'We want you to vote for a piece of legislation.' Then they ask you a question about that legislation, because one of their constituents has raised a particular issue, and we have our hand on heart and say, 'I don't know what the government's going to do because they're not going to tell us what they're going to do; they're just expecting us to take this in good faith.'

As I said, we will be supporting this amendment because the amendment is a good amendment. I'm really pleased that the government has actually seen that this is a good amendment. But I just really, really hope that this wasn't the only mistake that was made in the legislation. If there are more mistakes in this legislative package like this one, then we will be in a world of pain. The consequences won't be felt by the government, the opposition or the Greens, or anybody else in this place; the consequences will be felt by the patients of Australia who need medical procedures.

Unfortunately, we have a situation with the requirement of the government to push through its legislation and get it off its legislative agenda. Sadly, we are in a situation where the needs and the wants—and, I think, the obligation—that we have in this place, to pass fully informed, good legislation that is in the best interests of the Australian public, has been denied to us because of the lack of clarity and the lack of consultation that has been provided. I say to the minister: please guarantee that this is the only muck up in the legislation that is being fixed by this, because, of course, we're more than happy to support you in your rectification.