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

I move the amendment on sheet 3056:

(1) Clause 602, page 564 (after line 8), at the end of the clause, add:

Review by Senate Committee

(12) The Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee, or such other committee constituted under a resolution of the Senate, must:

(a) begin a review of any rules made for the purposes of a provision specified in subsection (13) within 3 months after the day the rules are tabled in the Senate; and

(b) report the Committee's findings to the Senate as soon as practicable after completing each review.

(13) The following provisions are specified:

(a) section 14 (Aged Care Code of Conduct);

(b) section 15 (Aged Care Quality Standards);

(c) section 16 (meaning of reportable incident);

(d) section 17 (restrictive practice in relation to an individual);

(e) section 141 (Provider Register);

(f) section 154 (personal information and record keeping);

(g) section 162 (restrictive practices);

(h) section 163 (immunity from civil or criminal liability in relation to the use of a restrictive practice in certain circumstances);

(i) Chapter 4 (funding of aged care services);

(j) section 379 (aged care worker screening database);

(k) section 507 (register of banning orders).

This amendment in effect seeks to make sure that the government continues to allow that we have scrutiny and oversight more broadly around all of the rules and subordinated legislation and regulations that are yet to be seen not just by this parliament but, more broadly, by all of the stakeholders that are involved in this really important piece of reform.

We have been trying for a number of months to get some line of sight over the massive amount of subordinate legislation—or rules, as they are commonly referred to. In the original version of the bill, there were actually more references to the rules than there were pages of legislation. We have managed to get some oversight or some idea in relation to chapter 4, which is the financial framework component of this bill, but we are yet to see all of the other subordinate legislation. We believe that it is really important that the Australian public, but most particularly this Senate, be allowed to apply the processes that the Senate has at its disposal to have a look at this additional delegated legislation.

As we saw with the recent changes to this bill, we now have a bill that addresses and remedies many, many concerns that would not otherwise have been identified until after the bill came into effect if we had just agreed to shove the bill through when the government first wanted us to pass it some months ago. The inquiry process allowed us the opportunity to make significant changes, and that's why we're standing here today. By the government's own admission, the 92 or 91 amendments that they put forward to their own bill were a result of them seeing the value in addressing concerns that were raised through the process of scrutiny. And we believe that that process of scrutiny needs to be extended to all of the information that is yet to be seen.

In moving this amendment, we are very concerned about the fact that we are being asked today to pass, in good faith, a piece of legislation that does not have much information that one would normally expect to be available during the debate—information that should be available to us so that we can see the real consequences of much of the decision-making process at a much lower level. So we move this amendment in the hope that the government will support us by, first of all, informing us as soon as possible—preferably, we would have been informed by now—about the timeframes in which the schedules of rules and instruments will be released. But we also want to make sure that there is adequate time allowed for the scrutiny of those rules and subordinate legislation so that we are in a position to, hopefully, make some changes.

The problem, though, with subordinated legislation always is that, because it comes in by way of an instrument, it is only disallowable. So I make a great plea to those that are preparing these rules: make sure the rules see the light of day before they turn up in here for us to allow or disallow. It would be a pretty sad state of affairs if you actually failed to consult and we ended up with the same sort of debacle that we had with the original bill and exposure draft that we saw late last year, where an instrument had to be disallowed simply because of the unintended consequences of what it contained. A lack of consultation meant that this place made the determination that, on the balance of the benefit and risk that was associated with that instrument, we would vote it down and disallow the instrument. So I make that big plea. There is a need for greater scrutiny. We have evidenced that—quite clearly, I think—by the process that we're going through today. If we could make sure that we have a greater level of scrutiny going forward, everybody would be much better served from that, we'd have less frustration in this place and older Australians, who deserve to understand what's going on, would have greater oversight of what is going on.