Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today I recognise the importance of the government's announcement to ban the use of adverse genetic testing results in life insurance underwriting. The government recognises the benefits of genetic and genomic health technologies, but they're benefits that cannot be realised in terms of prevention, treatment and monitoring of inherited conditions unless people are prepared to get tested.

I thank all those people behind the A-GLIMMER stakeholder report on the Australian genetics and life insurance moratorium. The report, led by Monash University and funded by the Commonwealth, investigated the effectiveness of the insurance industry's partial moratorium on requiring life insurance applicants to disclose genetic test results to access policies. The report overwhelmingly showed how Australian people were affected by this requirement. Australians were concerned about getting genetic testing due to the impact on their life insurance or even their potential future life insurance. It included people not even telling their children about their own genetic risks.

The requirement to disclose meant Australians with hereditary breast, ovarian or bowel cancers, endometriosis, genetic high cholesterol and mitochondrial disease—I acknowledge it's World Mitochondrial Disease Week this week. These are all diseases that have better outcomes if diagnosed early with genetic testing. That means better life expectancy, a reduction of health costs and, of course, this in turn is good for life insurance premiums too. No-one should be dissuaded from getting potentially life-saving genetic testing for fear of such discrimination. (Time expired)