Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Women) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The bill before us is a bill amending the Private Health Insurance Act 2007 to pause the income thresholds that determine the tiers for the Medicare levy surcharge and the rebate on private health insurance at 2014-15 rates for three years. We know this is part of a wider plan from the government to pause all increases across the board across various elements of legislation. We will be supporting this legislation. We on this side have actually looked at the budget very carefully and we had determined that there were elements of savings that should be supported, and this is one. So before there is any confusion in the chamber about what the position of Labor is on this point, and before we hear any strong contributions be urging us to support this very important piece of legislation, I just want to make it clear at the start: we are supporting it. However, in supporting the bill, we want make it very clear that we think that this is a context and we want to talk about the context in which this particular piece of legislation is brought forward.

I cannot help but remember when we as a government brought forward the legislation in 2012 to introduce means testing to private health insurance and heard the portents of disaster, the allegations and the accusations that reverberated around this chamber that that would be the introduction of a means test—a means test that we thought was fair and necessary to be scrupulously looking at budget issues across our system. We brought forward the means testing to this place and we heard debate here that said that this would be 'the end of private health insurance in our nation'.

The bill was sent to the Community Affairs Legislation Committee to consider the impact of introducing the means test—the means test that we are looking at today in terms of freezing the rates. In those hearings we had across the country streams of witnesses were brought forward to us saying that introducing a means test into the private health insurance sphere would be completely negative; that we would not see any further progress in private health insurance in this nation; and we would see queues of people at all the public hospitals across the nation because they were being forced out of private health insurance by this outrageously—and I use the adjective which I hate, but it is a direct quote from Hansard'draconian' piece of legislation that the evil government was imposing on the community. In fact, I draw people's attention to some of the comments that were being put around at that time. In the other place we had quotes by the opposition health minister of the time quoting from analysis. He said that they predicted that:

… in the first year, 175,000 people would withdraw from private hospital cover and a further 583,000 people would downgrade their private cover. Over five years, they predict that 1.6 million Australians would drop cover and 4.3 million would downgrade their cover.

I think it is important in this debate, where we as a considered opposition are supporting the government in this process to effectively look what is happening in our medical system across the country and in particular in private health insurance, that we have a look at what the reality was as a result of the 2012 changes. It is a fact that those portents of disaster that were put in this chamber just did not happen. The number of Australians with private health insurance continues to increase. In fact, it is at its highest level ever and continued to increase in spite of that change. So Labor at that time was able to introduced changes that improved the budget bottom line by more than $20 billion without gutting Medicare and without hundreds of thousands of people that were supposed to be going to cancel their claims cancelling their claims.

However, one of the deep concerns that I raised at the time of that debate—and I continue to raise—is that I am unsure and continue to be unsure about the confidence that people in this country have in private health insurance. I am concerned that people do not understand their own cover. I believe that there continues to be confusion in that area. I am not going to go into that debate now, because it is not of automatic relevance to this process, but I think it is an ongoing discussion for us. We support private health insurance. We support the fact that that is an integral part of our health system. However, I am deeply concerned and continue to be that, while people talk a lot about their cover and talk a lot about private health insurance, there continues to be some lack of knowledge in the community about exactly what their cover includes. It continues to be an issue. We have raised this at times certainly with Medibank Private while they still continue to be able to come to Senate estimates and we can talk with them. That may not be the case for much longer—and that is a piece of government legislation that the opposition will not be supporting. We have raised this consistently in terms of people understanding exactly how the system works and operates. One thing at this stage when we are freezing the rates of increase is that there could be an element of explanation required for the wider community to make sure that they know exactly what is happening and exactly how the process is going to operate.

Apart from my general concern and I think everyone's concern about the impact on the community of freezing the rate, one of the things that does worry me is that this, yet again, has been proclaimed by the government as savings that will be 'harvested' but will not be going back into the wider Medicare or wider medical system.

We know that the reason the government have put forward consistently for all these changes, the reason for all these savings, is the lack of sustainability of our current health system. We have heard statements made in this place and others about the dire state which our health system faces at the moment and into the future. These are facts that have been continually questioned, most recently in Australian Institute of Health and Welfare studies which do not reveal a crisis or a lack of sustainability in our medical system. Nonetheless, the government continue to say that they need to make these savings to ensure that our medical system continues to operate. However, the savings out of this measure to freeze rebate rates are not being returned to our medical system across the board; they are going to the Medical Research Future Fund.

Labor strongly support medical research. Look at our history; you will see that we have strongly supported medical research. However, this fund is one that we are still trying to understand. We are still trying to understand how this Medical Research Future Fund is going to operate.

We know that there are a whole range of savings measures proposed that are impacting on our health system. There is the $7 GP tax for every single person that goes to visit their GP—and, as we have found out through continually asking questions, it is not limited to savings that will be made by the government when they harvest all the $7 paid out by people going to see their GPs; it also relates to the pharmaceutical savings that are there, by increasing the amount of money people have to pay. But also, as we have found out and as has come out in quite a few contributions recently, the fact is that the new GP tax will not just be on visits to the GP. We know that it is going to be applied every time anyone accesses medical imaging services or any kind of testing.

Through the Senate Select Committee on Health and evidence from the Australian Diagnostic Imaging Association, information has come out which is extraordinarily confronting in this context, because one of the areas where people often do use private health insurance—and complain about the lack of the return—is when they are going through the complexities of having medical tests. Documents tabled by the Australian Diagnostic Imaging Association showed that previously bulk-billed patients will now face up-front costs of up to $1,263 for liver cancer diagnosis, $1,326 for thyroid cancer diagnosis, $2,207 for liver metastasis diagnosis and $712 for breast cancer diagnosis. These are deeply concerning figures that have been put out, and people have had to look at their own circumstances to see how they would cope with this kind of impost in terms of their own medical costs when they are desperately seeking services.

Those are the kinds of savings the government is talking about. But all of those savings, rather than going back into the medical system—which the government has described as being unsustainable and a danger into the future—is all going into the Medical Research Future Fund, and we still do not know how it is going to operate. What we do know, and we found this out through Senate estimates, is that not a lot of consultation went on to establish what this medical research fund will look like, how it will operate and who will be deeply engaged in it. If we are talking about savings, significant savings—not as significant as the means test that we introduced in 2012 in the budget but, nonetheless, significant savings, which we are supporting in this case alone, in this particular process; we are not supporting the others—we should know, we should have some certainty about, where the money is going and how it is going to benefit the community.

One of the things that did concern me is that through the Senate estimates process we found out that medical research bodies, including the highly regarded National Health and Medical Research Council, which is one of the bodies that have the greatest knowledge of and expertise in research needs in Australia, were not consulted on how this new medical research fund is going to operate. They were not deeply involved in the process when it was actually announced to the community.

Subsequent to that decision being in the budget, subsequent to the decisions about the savings that are apparently desperately needed in the medical system, subsequent to all those decisions being made, maybe now the government will actually work on engaging more people across the board on the area of medical research. It is a passion that we all share. It is not a contest—that my knowledge and support of medical research is bigger than your knowledge and support of medical research. It is a fact that we as a nation do respect medical research and do feel that there should be funding of the medical research industry so that we can continue to celebrate advances and the professionalism of medical researchers in our nation, such as the kind of work that is done in my own state, at the University of Queensland. I know that Professor Ian Frazer's ears have been burning for years as we praise his work! Only recently, on Saturday, President Obama pointed out when he was at the University of Queensland the work that Professor Ian Frazer has done, through that wonderful organisation, on Gardasil and other vaccines to fight the horrors of cancer.

We all know that there needs to be continuing support for medical research in this nation. What we on this side of the chamber do not understand is how that will occur. The government puts forward arguments for what the value of the savings will be from this measure and other measures at the same time as the debate goes on about the need for those savings to improve our wider medical system.

The proposal put before the community is that all that money that is gathered in this way will go into this medical research fund for which we have no detail, for which we have no plan, for which we have no actual knowledge about what that will do to benefit us as a community or what all the savings will do to prop up—using the government's own language—the current medical system. In this savings measure, we are concerned about that.

We are also concerned generally that the government is putting in danger—and I use that term quite considerably—the ongoing health of Australians in the kinds of savings it is purporting to put forward in the areas of the GP tax and also, as I pointed out, the whole area of medical imaging, which, again, will impose a cost on people that may affect their own decisions about their health. This is at a time when we have said for many years that we are encouraging people to take ownership of their own health, to actually take notice of their own symptoms, to learn about their own symptoms and to seek help at the earliest possible time. Consistently, the message over the last few years has encouraged people in Australia to understand their own bodies, to actually take ownership of their health and to use their medical system effectively and personally so that people can actually have the kind of health system that we all expect and we all deserve.

One of the other important things in our health policy over many years—a shared policy among governments of all flavours—is that we do want to ensure that people can trust the health system and know that they will receive good service, the best service they can possibly get no matter where they are.

As I said, we will be supporting this particular proposal because we do think it is a savings measure that we can understand and can actually point out to the community the way it will operate as it goes forward. It is also important that we actually do accept that the health system that we have is sustainable. We are not in a crisis in our health system. Certainly, this is not my own opinion—I would never pretend to have that professional knowledge—but I do think that we should take some notice of organisations such as the Australian Medical Association.

We know that the government, when they are in government and also when they were in opposition, have been very open to advice and information provided to them by the AMA. In fact, the AMA has been crucial to the development of health policy from the current government. We know that the Australian Medical Association President, Associate Professor Brian Owler, has talked about the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare's report, which I mentioned earlier, about the sustainability of our health system. Professor Owler said at the time:

The AIHW's report really makes a mockery of the government's claim that health care spending is out of control.

He went on to say:

There is absolutely no need for them to introduce the GP co-payment.

I am actually making that comment in this debate on the issue of the Medicare levy surcharge and the rebate on private health insurance rates because I believe that the government has put forward the argument for this change in line with all the other changes they put forward in the health budget on the basis that there is this crisis in health care and that our current system is not sustainable. We reject that proposal.

However, we believe that in looking to see where we can have the most effective delivery of service and the most effective budget decisions, pausing the income thresholds that determine the tiers for the Medicare levy surcharge and the rebate on private health insurance is something that we will support. It will provide some savings to the budget, which we hope will actually go to improving the whole of our health system—though we remain sceptical at best about the operations of this research fund for which we are yet to see detail or plan.

Richard Di Natale (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to begin by explaining what this Private Health Insurance Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2014 does. Pausing the income thresholds will mean that more people will be punished for not taking out private health insurance through an increase in the Medicare levy and fewer people will qualify for the private health insurance rebate. It is pretty straight forward: you pause income thresholds; there will be inflation bracket creep; fewer people will qualify for the rebate and more people will be pushed into the higher income bracket, which means that they will be charged an additional Medicare levy.

When we look at the impact of the private health insurance rebate, the Greens believe it is a good thing that there will be a saving of $600 million over the next four years as a result of fewer people qualifying for the health insurance rebate. But when it comes to the additional Medicare levy linked to private health insurance cover, we do not think that is a good thing. Let me explain my reasoning on that issue. Private health insurance should be a choice. It is not the role of government to create incentives and penalties when it comes to whether people take out private health insurance. It should be a choice for them, not a government policy.

I think we forget the history of how we got to this point where we now spend $5 billion of public money on subsidising people who take out private health insurance. It is interesting that we are having a lot of discussion about the historic free-trade agreement with China—and there is another one touted for India. Yet here we have got one of the biggest subsidies paid by the government to an industry that is providing very little benefit when it comes to the alternative of where that money could be spent. The private health insurance industry can set its fees knowing that every time it increases its premiums, it is the taxpayer that underwrites a third of that increase in costs. What a great business. What a terrific business. Every time I increase the cost of my product, I know the government will pay one third of that increase in cost. Terrific business if you can get it.

Let's have a little history lesson here. This was introduced by the Howard government. At the time, I remember that the Labor opposition—I think it was Jenny Macklin—suggested that this was one of the greatest public policy disasters in her memory. Many people on the Labor side indicated that they believed this was a serious mistake, and yet here we are, years on, and John Howard introduced the notion of a rebate and disincentives under the guise of 'taking the pressure off our public hospital system'. We had a big debate. We had the debate for decades: hospital waiting lists, emergency departments, health system under strain—sound familiar? We are there again. At the time, the solution from the Howard government was that we needed to increase the uptake of private health insurance: 'That is the solution to the health crisis that we are facing, to the increases in waiting lists and to the time that people have to spend in emergency departments.'

John Howard introduced a system of measures. The first was Lifetime Health Cover, which basically means: the longer you wait to take out your private health insurance the more you will have to pay for it down the track. That was followed by the 30 per cent private health insurance rebate. It is true: those measures did increase uptake of private health insurance. But, when you look at the main driver for the increase in uptake of private health insurance, it was not the rebate; it was Lifetime Health Cover. You only need to look at the graphs which chart the increase in private health insurance uptake to know that Lifetime Health Cover was the driver. The rebate was a little bonus to people who had already decided that they were going to take up private health insurance.

Here we are, decades down the track, having the same debate that was the genesis for the $5 billion subsidy of the private health insurance industry and nothing has changed. People are still waiting in emergency departments and waiting lists for elective surgery continue to blow out. Where were the purported benefits of this $5 billion subsidy to private health insurance? They have not materialised. Why? There are a number of good reasons for that. The first is that a lot of people just do not use their cover when they need it. People who have private health insurance who end up in emergency departments and then have surgery in public hospitals do not use it. So the taxpayer is paying a third of their premium for a product that they do not use. It makes absolutely no sense.

We know that having a public insurer like Medicare allows us to keep prices down. Private health insurance cannot compete because it does not have the monopoly that Medicare has over what it is prepared to pay for medical services and devices. That is one of the great things about Medicare: we have a monopoly insurer that can set a price. Private health insurers do not do that. It is the doctors in the system who can set the prices for the services that they provide. When you put together the fact that people do not use it and the many things we pay for through private health insurance cover, like some of the extras—gym memberships, the opportunity for people to see complementary health practitioners, and so on—it is no wonder that we have ended up with a situation where we are spending $5 billion and not getting a return for that money. You do not have to take my word for it. Any health economist worth their salt would tell you that, if you want to talk about fixing the health system, you have to start with a massive public subsidy to the private health insurance rebate.

The health economist Terence Cheng at Melbourne university did a study of this and said, basically, if you take the $5 billion that we now have going into private health insurance and invest that in the public health system, you get a dividend of about 2½. Let me give you an example. Dr Cheng says that, if you reduce the subsidy, you will generate a huge reduction for the taxpayer. Regarding direct savings from reducing the subsidy—let's say by 10 per cent, in his words, which is $359 million—if you needed to spend money directly on the health system through the public hospital system, you would spend $144 million. So, instead of spending $359 million in subsidising private health insurance, you could spend $144 million directly through public hospitals. On the whole, savings from reducing spending on rebates outweigh the predicted increase in public hospital costs by a factor of 2.5. So we are blowing good money after bad. There are a number of health economists who have done the same analysis. It makes sense when you understand the way the health system works and when you understand the monopoly that Medicare has as an insurer over the cost of services. It makes sense when you understand that a lot of people do not use their cover, and when they use their cover they use it on a range of benefits that do not add much value to the health system.

If private health insurance were an appropriate vehicle through which to get good value for money and fairness, I would be all for it. I do not have an ideological view that says we should or should not spend money on private health insurance; I just think we want to get value for money out of it, and we are not. We had John Howard, over a decade ago, telling us that the reason to introduce this policy was that we had a public health system under strain and we needed to spend $5 billion of public money on private health insurance to increase private health insurance uptake in order to fix the system, and we are having the same debate here now. In fact, with this policy we are going in the opposite direction, which is why the Greens will support this bill. It is not just an issue of value for money; it is an issue of fairness. Why should every taxpayer in the country have to subsidise the people who take out private health insurance? Why should somebody who makes a decision, based on their level of income, not to take out private health insurance contribute to the private health insurance cover of someone who does?

When we look at people who take out private health insurance cover the data is very clear. People who take out cover, on average, are much wealthier than those who do not. So we also have this massive redistribution of wealth. We have wealth being funnelled away from people on low incomes to people on high incomes to pay for a third of the cost of their premiums. What benefit do we get? We do not get one. If that money was spent directly in the public health system we would get a dividend of 2.5. For every additional $10 that we spent on private health insurance we would get $25 worth of the value out of the public system.

We have got ourselves caught in this idea that increasing private health insurance cover—that is, more people taking out private health insurance—is a de facto indicator of a health system that is functioning well. It is not. Private health insurance should be a choice. Anybody who wants to take out private health insurance cover should be afforded that choice, but it is not the role of government to create a system of incentives and penalties to allow that to happen, because we do not get the value that we would get if that money was spent directly in the public system.

What is worse is that we are now on a path that is taking us towards not just allowing private health insurance to cover services delivered in a hospital but the rollout now of trials that would allow people to use their private health insurance to cover services delivered in primary care—that is, when they go and see a GP. If you have private health insurance cover that might sound like a good thing; if you do not have private health insurance you are part of the 50 per cent of Australians who will be disadvantaged because of the implementation of a two-tiered, American-style health system, where you get one level of care if you can afford it, and another level of care if you cannot.

In closing, if we want to make use of the private sector in health then we should be engaging our private hospitals—there are many of them—directly. We should not use private health insurance as the vehicle for doing that. A government could easily contract a number of services through private hospitals—in fact, it does in many instances. That is the best way of guaranteeing value for money. But, when we are having a debate about the sustainability of the health system, to embark on a course that says the way to fix the problem is with a solution that failed 10 years ago is a mistake. It is ludicrous. It is nonsense thinking.

We should be looking at the $5 billion we now spend subsidising private health insurance cover for those people who decide to take it out and we should recognise that rather than spending our money in an area that fails both the fairness and value-for-money proposition and we should be redirecting that money directly into the public health system and our public hospitals. We know that for $5 billion we can get $10 billion of value. That is the proposition that faces us. It is a proposition that is backed by research.

If we are going to have a meaningful debate here let's not talk about freezing income thresholds. Let's be a little bolder, let's be a little more ambitious, and let's start talking about the sort of value for money we are getting out of this huge subsidy to the private health insurance industry, which knows that every time they decide to put up their premiums every sucker in this place is going to be paying for it. Every person in the country will be underwriting the increased cost of that premium. What a great business that is to be in! Increase your costs and charges and know that the taxpayer is going to be footing a third of the bill. Good work if you can get it!

We have a big choice in this country. The question now is: are we going to tackle the question of what a sustainable and fair health system looks like? If we going to do that we have to take on this inequitable, inefficient, unfair subsidy that delivers very poor value for money for the Australian consumer.

Nick Xenophon (SA, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I indicate that I will not be supporting this bill—for very different reasons, in a sense, to those of Senator Di Natale, who, I must acknowledge, brings to this chamber a lot of very valuable public policy contribution in the area of health. His work on the issue of Ebola was nothing short of outstanding. His advocacy in respect of that is to be welcomed but on this issue we will disagree, for a number of reasons. But I welcome the debate. I think it is important that we have a debate on these issues in terms of the public and private systems.

I will not be supporting this bill. I have spoken many times in this place about the need for balance between our public and private health systems. In fact, when the ALP was in government, as part of the negotiated agreement in respect of the Medicare surcharge the government and the then health minister Nicola Roxon agreed to the Productivity Commission undertaking to report on public and private hospitals. The report was issued in December 2009 and that did add to our understanding, which was hitherto quite lacking, about the benefit of having an integrated and symbiotic relationship between the public and private systems.

We need a strong private health system in order to provide good and better outcomes for Australians in conjunction with a strong and viable public health system. So I see the issue of a subsidy quite differently from my colleague Senator Di Natale, who I have great respect for in the contribution that he brings. I urge my colleagues to have a very close look at the Productivity Commission's very comprehensive report of December 2009, which indicates the importance of having two systems working in tandem—competing with each other, in a sense, and providing greater initiatives.

In an ideal world, where our public hospitals received all the funding and support they need, getting a balance between public and private would not be an issue but we have to accept that the public system is struggling and that we need to encourage people to take up and retain private health insurance to reduce that burden. It is a careful balancing act between using the rebate to support low- and middle-income earners in their private insurance, and using the levy to discourage higher-income earners from dropping their cover.

It is vital that we get the thresholds right for both the levy and the rebate. According to figures from Private Healthcare Australia more than two million Australians have either dropped or downgraded their private health cover since the former government's decision to means test the rebate in 2012. That is not good news in terms of having a strong private and public hospital system. That is nearly 36 per cent of the policies held during that time. The changes proposed in this bill by a coalition government will only exacerbate the problem. The impact of dropped or downgraded policies is felt by everyone. People who drop or downgrade their policies face significant out-of-pocket costs or long waits in the public system; private health insurers have to raise their costs to offset the drop in coverage; and the public system is put under more strain. The government has estimated that only four per cent of policyholders will be impacted by these changes as they get pushed into lower rebate tiers due to so-called bracket creep. But four per cent means about 520,000 people—over half a million people. If this measure is supposed to save $600 million over the next three years then we can extrapolate that each person will be over $1,150 worse off.

It is also worth noting that, at the coalition campaign launch in August last year, the then Leader of the Opposition, Mr Abbott, promised to fully restore the private health insurance rebate within a decade. In introducing this piece of legislation, which I see as retrograde and short sighted, the government is now even further from achieving that goal.

I would like to put the minister on notice for when we get to the committee stage—and I hope we do have a committee stage where she can answer this—or in her winding up of the second-reading stage of this bill: does the coalition still stand by that policy announced at the campaign launch for the coalition, in August last year, of fully restoring the private health insurance rebate within a decade? And, if so, does the minister acknowledge that this goal, this key election promise, of the coalition will now be even more difficult to achieve because you are actually going backwards? You are actually walking away from that promise made to the people of Australia at the last election.

It is also important to note that the government has sought to justify this move by stating that the savings from this measure will be allocated to the Medical Research Future Fund—a bit like the whole issue of the $7 GP co-payment. All I ask of the coalition is that they talk to some wise heads in the medical profession. Talk to someone like Dr Rodney Pearce—he is not a member of the Labor Party; in fact, I think he may have been a member of the Liberal Party. He is a former president of the AMA in my home state, a very highly regarded general practitioner and co-chair of a national group of GPs. He made the point that, when Michael Wooldridge was health minister, the GPs and the then government, the Howard government, worked together on an immunisation program that cost, I think, $30 million or $40 million, where rates of immunisation dramatically increased amongst children. The money that was saved with fewer kids going to hospital, fewer kids dying and fewer kids' parents having to take time off work because their kids were seriously ill from preventable diseases and illnesses was in the millions, if not billions, of dollars.

Do not turn GPs in this country into an enemy, and do not use this medical research fund as an excuse for some pretty awful policy. I just want to flag to the government, in case there is any ambiguity, that I will not be supporting the $7 co-payment, because it is a retrograde move. Listen to wise heads such as Dr Rodney Pearce, who say there are better ways to save money in the health system and get better outcomes. Respectfully, in terms of this measure and this excuse—this feeble, shallow, sham of an excuse—that we need to bring these changes through for this medical research fund, it is my belief that we should not be funding medical research by punishing people who are trying to do the right thing and protect themselves and their families by taking out private health insurance. We should be funding medical insurance in any event, and we need to be smart about that. As such, I will not be supporting this bill. Further, I call on both the government and the opposition to consider the findings of the 2009 Productivity Commission inquiry into the public and private systems and to come up with comprehensive policies to address the serious problems with our healthcare system.

Fiona Nash (NSW, National Party, Assistant Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to thank all the senators for their contributions to debate on this bill. The purpose of the Private Health Insurance Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2014 is to pause the income tiers for the Australian government rebate on private health insurance and the Medicare levy surcharge at the 2014-15 rates for three years. These amendments will be made to the Private Health Insurance Act 2007. These changes will impact individuals marginally below each income threshold whose income increases and who, as a result, will move into the next income tier sooner. These changes will not affect individuals with an income that remains $90,000 or below or couples and families with an income that remains $180,000 or below. It is estimated that the changes will impact on four per cent of policies.

The pausing of the income tiers is estimated to result in net savings to the government of $599.3 million over the four years from 2014-15. These changes will ensure that, as incomes rise, people contribute more to the costs of their own health care. This will contribute to fiscal consolidation and sustainability of the healthcare system in the future. These savings will be invested by the government in the Medical Research Future Fund, and I can indicate to Senator Xenophon that the government intends to honour all its election commitments.

In summary, this bill will pause the income thresholds for the Australian government rebate on private health insurance and the Medicare levy surcharge at the 2014-15 rates for three years.

Sam Dastyari (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that this bill be now read a second time.

A division having been called and the bells being rung—

Lee Rhiannon (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Acting Deputy President, there was a misunderstanding. I request that the division is cancelled and apologise for the inconvenience.

Sam Dastyari (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

With the concurrence of the Senate, the division is cancelled. Order! The question is that the bill be now read a second time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

As no amendments to the bill have been circulated, I shall call the minister to move the third reading unless any senator requires that the bill be considered in committee of the whole.

Nick Xenophon (SA, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do have some questions to ask in the committee stage—just one or two.

Sam Dastyari (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We will form into committee.