Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That these bills be now read a second time.

I seek leave to have the second reading speeches incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The speeches read as follows—

MEDICARE GUARANTEE BILL 2017

The Turnbull Government is guaranteeing Medicare so that all Australians can be assured Medicare is not only here to stay, but will be strengthened into the future.

Australians place great faith in our world class health system. In 2015-16, 89.3 per cent of the population accessed a Medicare service, using over 384 million Medicare services.

The Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) is a key component of Australia's health system that has provided affordable access to necessary and lifesaving medicines for Australians for almost 70 years. Around 208 million services — 91.7 per cent of which were concessional — were provided under the PBS in 2015-16.

The Government is building on our world class system by strengthening Medicare. In this year's Budget, the Government will provide $1 billion to reintroduce indexation for certain items on the Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS). The Government is investing record funding for our public hospitals and will deliver an additional $2.8 billion in the 2017-18 Budget.

The Government has also committed to an additional $1.2 billion to list new and amended, cost-effective medicines on the PBS, as announced in this year's Budget. This adds to more than 1,400 new or amended listings on the PBS since 2013, compared to just 330 in Labor's last three years in office.

Labor rationed the PBS, they did not list life-saving drugs, when they could have and should have. We do.

The MBS and PBS combined will account for almost 45 per cent of Commonwealth health expenditure in 2017-18.

The Government is guaranteeing Medicare. According to those opposite, the Government was apparently meant to have sold Medicare by now. With this bill the Government is guaranteeing the MBS and PBS so that all Australians can continue to access timely and affordable health care and medicines into the future.

By law, we will establish a Medicare Guarantee Fund to pay for all expenses on the MBS and PBS from 1 July of this year. The fund will secure the long-term future for the Medicare Benefit Schedule and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

The Fund will consist of the Medicare Guarantee Fund (Treasury) Special Account and the Medicare Guarantee Fund (Health) Special Account.

Proceeds from the Medicare levy, less the portion set aside for the National Disability Insurance Scheme, will be paid into the fund to meet MBS and PBS costs. Because the Medicare levy does not and has not ever covered to full costs of providing healthcare in Australia, an additional contribution from income tax revenue will be paid into the Fund to meet MBS and PBS costs. The money will be placed in the fund every year – transparently, assuredly, responsibly.

In 2017-18, an estimated $33.8 billion will be credited to the Fund. The Medicare levy will contribute about $12.1 billion. The remainder, an estimated $21.7 billion, will be drawn from personal income tax receipts, equivalent to around 10 per cent of all personal income tax.

The funds credited from the Medicare levy will be equivalent to three-quarters of the revenue raised by the Medicare levy for the next two years. This will shift to become three-fifths of the revenue raised by the Medicare levy from 2019-20 when the Medicare Levy will need to be increased to cover the full costs of the NDIS and fill the funding gap left by those opposite.

The amounts credited to the Medicare Guarantee Fund will be held in the Fund for the sole purpose of meeting the cost of essential health care provided under the MBS and PBS. They will provide transparency about the costs of Medicare and the PBS and a clear guarantee on how we pay for them.

The Fund demonstrates the Government's commitment to Medicare by ring-fencing revenue for the sole purpose of MBS and PBS spending.

Ring-fencing the revenue in the Medicare Guarantee Fund will increase the public visibility of the costs of the MBS and PBS, the quantum of revenue generated by the Medicare levy and the additional revenue necessary to meet these costs.

The Fund does not change the demand-driven nature of MBS and PBS funding. To make sure that there is always sufficient credit in the Fund to meet MBS and PBS costs, the credit to the Fund will be adjusted at every Budget update. This will ensure that it is in line with forecast future growth in MBS and PBS expenditure over the forward estimates.

In the event that the Fund has insufficient contributions to meet estimated MBS and PBS expenses in any year, a special appropriation will meet those expenses. This ensures that MBS and PBS funding is always guaranteed.

Full details of the bill are contained in the Explanatory Memorandum.

MEDICARE GUARANTEE (CONSEQUENTIAL AMENDMENTS) BILL 2017

The Medicare Guarantee (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2017 makes amendments to the Health Insurance Act 1973 and National Health Act 1953 to reflect the proposed operation of the Medicare Guarantee Bill 2017, which secures the ongoing funding of the Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS) and Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS).

The MBS and PBS are currently paid under the Health Insurance Act 1973 and National Health Act 1953 respectively.

These acts meet payment obligations under those schemes by appropriating from the Consolidated Revenue Fund.

The Medicare Guarantee (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2017 makes a number of consequential amendments to the Health Insurance Act 1973 and National Health Act 1953 to replace the current special appropriations under those acts with the Medicare Guarantee Fund.

These changes will increase transparency around the cost of running the MBS and PBS and will guarantee the Government's commitment to fund the affordable health care all Australians rely on.

Full details of the bill are contained in the Explanatory Memorandum.

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Aged Care) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Medicare Guarantee Bill 2017 and the Medicare Guarantee (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2017. Let me be clear: while these bills might have 'Medicare guarantee' in their names, they do not do anything to actually guarantee Medicare. They are a sham, with no guarantee of policy stability and no guarantee of additional funding. In fact, at the same time as the government announced their Medicare Guarantee Fund in the budget, they were locking in cuts of billions of dollars to Medicare.

To understand why this fund is such a joke, we need to look at the government's approach to health, starting with the government's Medicare freeze. The former Prime Minister put in place a Medicare freeze in December 2014. It was the current Prime Minister who extended it to 2020. While this freeze has been in place, we have seen impacts on bulk-billing, with GPs saying they can no longer afford to bulk-bill all patients, and out-of-pocket costs soaring. For years GPs, specialists and health experts have been sending a clear message to the government: the freeze is hurting now and it should have been dropped a long time ago. This is what the AMA said during the election; I quote the AMA president: 'We know there are some GPs that are changing their billing practices. That commences today, on 1 July. The reality is that there are a lot of GPs who decided they could probably take the hit for a couple of years, but they are saying enough is enough.'

And still, after all this evidence, did they drop the freeze immediately? No. Australians will have to wait years until the freeze is finally dropped. These are not the actions of a government that understands the impacts of its health cuts and listens. These are the actions of a government that wants to pay lip service to the idea of doing something, but cannot bring itself to do the right thing. We know the impact the freeze is having on access to GPs, with bulk-billing for GPs dropping since the election and out-of-pocket costs skyrocketing.

But it is not just in the GPs' waiting rooms. It also impacts Australians who need specialist care. In the past 12 months 40 per cent of Australians needed to see a specialist. That is around 7.4 million Australians who need to see a specialist each year. But more than 600,000 Australians will delay seeing a specialist at least once because of the cost, with those in low socioeconomic areas more likely to delay because of cost. Keeping the freeze in place will continue to impact Australia's sickest and most vulnerable patients, such as people undergoing oncology treatment, children needing paediatric care and people undergoing dialysis.

The decision in this budget to keep the freeze in place for years comes when out-of-pocket costs for specialists have skyrocketed. Only last week, new data showed that on average patients are paying an extra $24 out of their own pockets every time they visit a specialist. That is up 42 per cent since the government introduced their freeze in December 2014. Every day the government's freeze continues is another day that Australians will pay more for vital health care.

The budget is woefully inadequate when it comes to hospitals funding. It was a bitter disappointment for our public hospitals that the government did not allocate any additional funding to address the blowout in elective surgery wait times or the queues in our emergency departments. Our public hospitals are in crisis under this government. Elective surgery waiting times are the worse they have been since records began to be kept in 2001. Patients presenting to emergency departments requiring urgent medical attention are being left in emergency departments for too long. In the last financial year, only 67 per cent of emergency department patients classified as urgent were seen within the recommended 30 minutes.

Critically, public hospital capacity is not keeping pace with population growth and is not increasing to meet the growing demand for services. The government's budget has done absolutely nothing to do this—nothing for elective surgery and nothing for strained emergency departments. And not only that; the government has changed the funding formula for 2021, meaning public hospital funding will revert to the level set in the disastrous 2014 budget without a new agreement.

In another sign of the government's appalling approach to public hospitals the Medicare Guarantee Fund does not even include public hospital funding, long considered an integral part of Medicare. How can this fund come close to guaranteeing Medicare when it does not even include hospital funding. Let's look at what this fund does. This fund simply changes the manner of appropriating funds from the budget for the purpose of paying MBS benefits and PBS payments. Currently authority to appropriate funding from the consolidated revenue fund, the only fund that constitutionally exist for the purpose of MBS benefits, is granted through the Health Insurance act 1973. Similarly, authority to appropriate funding from the consolidated revenue fund for the purposes of the PBS payments is granted through the National Health Act 1953. So, basically, the way the system works now is that the funds from the budgets are appropriated through the authority granted by two pieces of legislation directly for the purpose of MBS benefits and PBS payments.

What these bills will do is change this so that the consolidated revenue fund will be appropriated directly—firstly into the Treasury special account, then into the health special account and then on to MBS benefits and PBS payments. Former Health Secretary Stephen Duckett said: 'The Medicare Guarantee Fund is nothing more than a rebadging exercise. It changes the badge on a policy in the hope people might think it is a new policy.' Does this fund guarantee the government will not cut Medicare? No, it does not. Does this fund guarantee the government will not cut hospitals? No, it does not. Does this fund guarantee that the money the government will save through PBS price disclosure arrangements will be reinvested in new medicines? No. Once again, this is another example of desperate smoke and mirrors in an attempt to distract from the fact that the government is cutting billions of dollars from Medicare.

Only Labor can be trusted to fight for Medicare. Only Labor can be trusted to protect Medicare. So that is exactly what we are doing—introducing an amendment that will properly protect the future of Medicare. This amendment will mean the bill cannot be considered until funding to support universal access to public hospital treatment is included in the Medicare Guarantee Fund. As I have noted, it beggars belief that hospital funding, a core pillar of Medicare, has been left out of this fund. This is yet another sign of how this government approaches public hospitals with neglect and disdain. The government has also failed to properly invest in public hospitals, with their budget confirming they plan to return to the disastrous funding formula of the 2014 budget in the 2020-21 financial year. There is a reason this funding formula was so widely rejected and why it needs to be rejected again. The amendment will guarantee immediate and annual indexation of Medicare rebates that have been frozen by this government, including GP rebates and rebates for specialists, consultations, procedures and allied health services. Every day the government's Medicare freeze remains in place is another day that Australians will pay more for critical health care.

Finally, given that we know this government cannot be trusted with anything on health, this amendment will mean that the bill cannot be considered until there is a guarantee that savings from the Medicare Benefits Schedule review and agreements with stakeholders will be reinvested in Medicare and not used as an excuse for further cuts.

This government is hell-bent on gutting Medicare through any means possible. At the last election, Labor committed to reinvesting every single dollar of savings found through the ongoing Medicare Benefits Schedule review back into Medicare. The government has not made the same undertaking, and we know that they will cut into Medicare if they get their way. If the government votes against any of these amendments, it will be more confirmation that their budget was a complete sham. With their disastrous record of cuts to health and Medicare, we know the government can never be trusted to do the right thing.

I understand the amendment has been circulated. I move:

Leave out all words after "that" insert:

"the bill be withdrawn and redrafted to provide actual guarantees for the future of Medicare, specifically by:

(a) setting out the purpose of Medicare, namely to provide a universal public health insurance scheme that provides access to medical, pharmaceutical and public hospital services based on clinical need, not capacity to pay;

(b) including funding to support universal access to public hospital treatment, along with medical and pharmaceutical benefits, in the purpose of the bill;

(c) guaranteeing immediate and annual indexation of Medicare rebates that have been frozen by this Government;

(d) guaranteeing proper Commonwealth investment in public hospitals, so that all Australians can access acute care without financial or other barriers; and

(e) guaranteeing that savings from the Medicare Benefits Schedule Review and agreements with stakeholders will be reinvested in Medicare, and not used as an excuse for further cuts."

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

I will be brief. I rise to speak on the Medicare Guarantee Bill 2017, but let's be very clear that this is a bill about nothing. It is a Seinfeld bill. It does nothing. It gives no effect to supporting Medicare. This is a headline without any substance. It is all tip and no iceberg.

No-one is a bigger supporter of Medicare, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, the funding of our hospital system and our universal health care than the Australian Greens. We understand how critical it is that every Australian citizen gets access to world-class health care. Medicare, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, our public hospitals—they are all the foundation of our universal health system. They are critical tools to provide high-quality health care to every Australian. They need to be protected. Our system is not perfect, and we do need more investment and better targeting. We need to ensure that there is better access to our universal healthcare system and we will continue to strive to achieve those outcomes.

But you would think that, given the audacious name for this bill, it somehow achieves some sort of guarantee for patients to achieve those outcomes. The truth is that this bill does nothing. It strikes me as something that was developed out of one of the episodes of The Hollowmen. You have got a problem where the government is not trusted to be able to deliver health care for Australians. They are seen as a government that does not support Medicare and is prepared to cut funding for our universal health system. So what do we do? We have got to try to come up with a solution. Rather than actually addressing the substance of the problem confronting the government—that we need to see greater investment in our universal health system—someone from the brains trust in the government has decided: 'I know. What we'll do is the money that we park into consolidated revenue we'll call something that somehow gives the impression we're doing something to protect that money from further cuts.' It does nothing of the sort.

The truth is that, if this government wants to cut funding for health care, it can do it at the stroke of a pen. The so-called 'Medicare Guarantee Fund' offers absolutely no protection. Let's remember Medicare funds only a small proportion of all healthcare costs. Our hospital system, our pharmaceutical benefits system—all of the things that contribute to universal health care—are only funded in small part by the Medicare levy, so offering the Medicare Guarantee Fund offers nothing but window dressing. We know that the reasons for this bill are purely political. We know that the government was slammed during the last election campaign for its lack of support on Medicare. It must be said it was quite a crass campaign. The notion that the government was going to privatise Medicare got some traction and, of course, given the government's record, people simply do not trust them.

But, again, rather than dealing with the substance, what we saw was a response that is all about window-dressing. When asked at Senate estimates recently about how this bill actually guarantees Medicare, we simply could not get any answers from the government. They simply could not answer the simple question that was posed to them, which was: 'Just explain how this Medicare Guarantee Fund protects Medicare? If the government wants to cut funding for health care, how is it that the establishment of this fund prevents that from happening?' No answer. There was absolutely no answer. So I think what we have here in is an example of politics trumping decent policy.

We are not going to get in the way of this bill. We think that, ultimately, if the government wants to bring in legislation that it thinks somehow will allow it to claim the mantle of offering some sort of protection to Medicare, well, we will back that in. But, let us remember: when you are a government that has slashed funding for health care; when you have frozen Medicare indexation over a number of years, meaning that billions of dollars are being ripped out of the health system; and when you are a government that has tried to introduce Medicare co-payments but have been thwarted by the Senate, what you need to do is look at the substance of what you are doing, not offer hollow responses like the establishment of this bill. I think that the government needs to go back to the drawing board and recognise that, ultimately, what Australians want and what they deserve is a strong commitment—in practice, not just in spin—on how we are going to deliver world-class health care for Australians. The government might believe that Australians are gullible enough to think that this measure speaks to some sort of commitment, but we all know that most Australians are much, much smarter than that.

Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you Mr Acting Deputy President Back, and, given that this may be one of the last times that you will be in the chair while I am on my feet, I wish you well in your retirement and thank you for your service, which is obviously much longer than mine. Congratulations on everything that you have achieved while you have been here.

Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator.

Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to make a short contribution on the Medicare Guarantee Bill 2017. Really, my primary objective is to commit Labor, once more, to one of Australia's great institutions, and that is Medicare. We, on the Labor side of this chamber, are extremely proud of Medicare. We have always been great defenders of it. We initiated it back in the Whitlam-Hayden years. It was taken away by the Fraser government, aided and abetted by former Treasurer John Howard. The Hawke-Keating government brought it back. When John Howard finally became the Prime Minister of this country, we saw repeated attempts by the conservatives to whittle away Medicare and whittle away public health care in this country, and we are very proud that, again, the Rudd-Gillard government backed in Medicare. We see this repeated cycle in Australian politics: every time there is a Labor government in power federally we see attempts to strengthen Medicare, and every time we see a conservative government elected in this country we see repeated attempts to whittle away Medicare, undermine public health and boost private health at the expense of everyday Australians.

On this very day, when this bill was debated in the House, the opposition repeatedly gave the government opportunities to take a stand for Medicare. We gave them the opportunity to do something that was actually tangible behind this so-called Medicare Guarantee Bill. We gave them the opportunity to guarantee that Medicare would last well into the future, would continue to serve everyday Australians and would provide them with the public health care that they deserve and that they pay their taxes for, but this government did not want to do that.

This bill is a so-called Medicare guarantee bill but all it actually guarantees is that a source of funds exists for Medicare which already exists in consolidated revenue. This is just a pea-and-thimble trick by this government, which we know is not committed to Medicare, which in its last term of office tried to privatise Medicare. We see a look of horror from the government every time you talk about their attempts to privatise Medicare, but that is borne out by the facts—they tried to outsource Medicare claims processing to the private sector. The mere mention that this government want to privatise Medicare is greeted with howls of disbelief, which demonstrates exactly how sensitive they are to the reality that they do have a very long history, going back 30 years, of trying to undermine Medicare.

Today our Labor counterparts in the House of Representatives tried to give the government the opportunity to put some flesh on this legislation and demonstrate that they actually did guarantee Medicare, that they would continue to provide decent rebates for people receiving Medicare funded services and to provide GPs with rebates that actually increase not in two, three or four years time but immediately. But every time that this government was given the opportunity to put some flesh on its bones and demonstrate a real guarantee to Medicare, they ran the other way. I am sure I was not the only senator looking up over the course of the afternoon to see bell after bell being rung in the House of Representatives and wondering what on earth was going on. What was going on was that this government repeatedly failed to back amendments that Labor moved in the House of Representatives to actually guarantee Medicare, to actually guarantee that all Australians would receive quality public health care no matter who they were, no matter where they lived. Every single time one of those amendments was put in the House of Representatives today government members toddled in and voted against it.

We know that this is a government that knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing. Today was a prime example—they had the opportunity to vote for real guarantees to Medicare, to really guarantee that all Australian's would receive quality public health care. They voted against it repeatedly in the House and I have no doubt that they will vote against it in the Senate this evening. Australians have been watching this debate for long enough to know who the real defenders of Medicare are, and they are the people sitting on this side of the chamber—not the conservative parties, who take every opportunity they can to undermine public health care in Australia. Let us hope that at some point this government does listen to Australians and really does come forward with a genuine guarantee of Medicare rather than some ridiculous accounting trick that is not actually backed up by any weight or any substance, any commitment, to properly fund Medicare, to properly fund public health care into the future. Labor is the party of Medicare—we will always be that—and the Liberals continue to show that they do not understand it.

Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I know my colleagues have made a number of comments on essentially the accounting trick that has been moved in the Medicare Guarantee Bill and the Medicare Guarantee (Consequential Amendments) Bill to make it look like Medicare is guaranteed, but in practical terms these bills do very little. I would like to put on the record some comments about the use of special accounts and I think the broader push from this government to create special accounts. These are not bank accounts; they do not hold actual funds in them. I think Peter Martin, the economics editor for The Age, made an excellent point when writing about the government holding the NDIS to ransom with childcare cuts. He said there are no locked boxes, and there are no separate jam jars.

The funds for Medicare will still come from the same place, consolidated revenue, and that reflects our Constitution and how budgets are put together. Each year the government will sit down and look at the estimates of consolidated revenue coming in on the one hand and a list of expenditure going out on the other. Funding sources do not fundamentally matter in this equation—it is essentially incomings versus outgoings. Section 81 of the Constitution sets out that consolidated revenue is all of the taxes that the Commonwealth raises. This includes personal income tax, company tax, excise, the petroleum resource rent tax and the new major bank levy, which we have just debated and passed in this chamber.

On the expenditure side, we have many demand-driven programs like Medicare and the age pension, where, if you meet the specified criteria, the government will be able to appropriate money from consolidated revenue to pay for those services. Other government services, like the NDIS, are estimated and appropriated annually. A special account is just another way of appropriating these funds. Changing the appropriation source is relatively harmless, but it is worth pointing out that in this case these special accounts require the two ministers to calculate and credit sufficient amounts to be able to fund Medicare. Given the track record of those opposite—the robo-debt debacle and the census fail—you could be forgiven for being at least a little bit concerned about them having responsibility for paying our doctors and other transactions.

In relation to the NDIS, these broader points about special accounts are relevant not just to the meaningless and harmless Medicare fund but also to the NDIS. The difference is that the NDIS special account is a harmful political instrument. The government is using it to pretend that it is necessary for the future of the National Disability Insurance Scheme, to pretend that the NDIS is not fully funded and to excuse its harsh cuts, cuts that are not necessary because Labor fully funded the NDIS. Let me spell it out clearly for the benefit of those opposite: the costs of the NDIS are already built into the budget bottom line and have been since the 2013 budget. This government has reported those for the last four years, and the Productivity Commission has observed that the NDIS is on budget. There has been no blowout. Importantly, the Productivity Commission report says that, if implemented well, the NDIS will significantly improve the lives of people with a disability. Labor got the funding right, but it is now crucial that the government gets the rollout right. Those opposite only came up with this special account last year when they were looking for a new way to justify their harsh cuts. Not even the Commission of Audit of the former Prime Minister, Mr Abbott, or the Liberal's first budget in 2014, renowned for its cruelty, used the NDIS as a political tool like those opposite are now doing.

The 2013 budget set out the 10-year cost of the NDIS and the 10-year impact of the difficult but necessary decisions Labor used to fund the NDIS. These were not easy but, as a Labor government, we knew they were critical to the future of the NDIS. Savings included reforms to private health insurance of $6½ billion, reforms to superannuation of $6 billion and $20.6 billion from reforms to fringe benefits tax, reform to personal income-tax offsets, increasing the tobacco excise, reforms to import processing charges and, yes, increasing the Medicare levy. But, in our case, it was not accompanied by big unfair tax cuts for the highest income earners. These measures raised about $66 billion over 10 years, significantly more than the cost of the NDIS in the early years, and more than covered the cost of the NDIS in the year that the government claims it to be unfunded, 2018-19.

The increase in the Medicare levy was placed into a special account, the DisabilityCare Australia Fund, to provide visibility as the Commonwealth reimburses the states and territories. Just because our other measures were not put into a special account does not mean that they were not being used to fund the NDIS. We do not have special accounts for the age pension, child care, the Defence Force or the Treasurer's wage—and no doubt that is funded. Even the former Treasurer, Joe Hockey, understood that consolidated revenue was fungible when he introduced a tax receipt to show individuals where the proportion of their tax was being spent.

The government have looked at Labor's measures to fund the NDIS but they are not going into the special account; in fact, they ignore these completely in funding the NDIS. Instead, they use them to fund their own priorities, including part of their $65 billion tax handout to multinationals and the big banks, and they put at risk the NDIS.

The disability sector has raised its own concerns around a special account being established for the NDIS and the governance issues surrounding it. They include: undermining the shared responsibility arrangements between jurisdictions and the neutrality of the National Disability Insurance Agency structure; undermining funding stability, given it is tied to the budget cycle and political debate; and a lack of transparency and accountability. This government could choose to cut funding to the NDIS at any point by not crediting sufficient funds to the NDIS special account. And here is the kicker: when the parliament decides not to pass this government's harsh cuts, those opposite could use it to hold the NDIS hostage.

I will conclude my comments in light of the time, but these bills really are presentational. They are not worth the paper they are written on. You do not even need to look too closely at this legislation to know that. When it comes to Medicare, you cannot trust the Liberals and you cannot trust the Turnbull government. Only Labor can be trusted to fight for Medicare.

Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the senators for their contributions, and I commend the bill to the Senate.

Stephen Parry (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the second reading amendment moved by Senator Polley be agreed to.

Original question agreed to.

Bills read a second time.

Ordered that consideration of these bills in Committee of the Whole be made an order of the day for a later hour.